Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.10
I n
Calamity
Annie,
the player is given a choice to light a cigarette by firing a pistol.
But most of the choices a player makes in a game are much more subtle. Let's go back to the
future, to our game of teleportation, fences, and food capsules. When the player teleports to
avoid that first electric fence, she's actually making a few choices. First: she decides when to
teleport. When the fence is about to touch her? As soon as there's room behind it? When's the
safest moment to teleport? Or should she try to get past the fence as quickly as possible? That's
a choice.
Second, where does the player teleport? The player has to teleport somewhere behind the
electric fence to avoid getting shocked by it; that's her only requirement. She could teleport
to the left side of the screen, the right side, right behind the fence, as far away as possible. She
could teleport in front of the fence, realize her error, and quickly click behind the fence to tele-
port there. As long as she ends up somewhere behind it, all that space is equally valuable.
Well, what if we make some spaces more valuable than others? Those food capsules are a way
we can do that. Maybe the game keeps track of how many food capsules the player's collected,
as a kind of score. Teleport onto a food capsule to collect it. The capsules are small, so the player
will have to teleport to specific positions on the screen to collect them.
