Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.12
Janet had better think before she shoots in this room.
Our rules and our objects are the vocabulary we use to develop our verbs. Again, we want to
avoid introducing so many rules or objects that some of them won't be allowed to develop
fully—that they won't see enough use. We also want to be thrifty because all these new rules
are things that the player has to learn and keep in her head. Every new rule takes a little of the
player's attention from every existing rule. The more rules, the more conditions, the thinner the
player's understanding of the game is spread. The thinner her understanding, the more
she'll
forget things, become confused, and fail to predict what some new object will do or how it will
combine with existing objects.
We can get a lot of development of our verbs out of the objects we have if we use them well.
On Venus, we introduced an object that functions like the earlier “robot cages” but releases a
new robot when shot. We can get a lot of interesting situations out of this object alone. There's
the room where the walls are covered in caged robots: the player fights mobile robots, but a
missed shot means more robots can potentially escape. Or imagine a tunnel, the exit of which
is blocked by a caged robot. To get through, the player has
to free, and then destroy, the robot.
Maybe there are robots chasing from the other side of the tunnel!
The “caged robot” object is in keeping with our existing understanding of the rules: robots
chase Janet, and cages release what's inside them when shot. And the preceding scenarios
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