Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
were predictable: since they always chose to move toward the queen, if a bunch of them were
coming from the same place, they'd all march toward her in a line, blundering straight into her
bondage laser.
It was much more interesting, I discovered, to mix the random-moving slaves with the queen-
chasing gladiators. That made for much more complex situations and much more meaningful
choices.
Having objects that complement each other is important to constructing situations. Look at
DOOM
(1993). The game introduces early on a monster called an imp that throws fireballs at the
player (which travel in a straight line) and a monster called a pinky demon that attacks by biting
and takes circuitous paths to reach the player to try to dodge her fire. Many of the most precari-
ous scenes in the game require the player to manage these two different avenues of attack
simultaneously.
For the mining game discussed previously, we wanted to be sure to design objects that could
be combined to create interesting scenes and meaningful choices. For example, in Figure
3.22
,
the turrets potentially set off a chain reaction of falling rock creatures that ultimately destroys
the turrets and clears the way to a bunch of crystals, but the player must dodge both the falling
rocks and the turrets' bullets. The player could set off the chain reaction with her own bomb.
There are many ways, involving conservative and risky choices, to play out this scene.
Figure 3.22
A scene in the mining game with a combination of turrets and rock monsters.
This scene doesn't appear until after both the turrets and the rock monsters have been intro-
duced individually (something we did in earlier scenes). The player is unable to make those
choices—conservative versus risky, whether to initiate the chain reaction with a bomb, with a
bullet, or try to avoid it entirely—unless she first understands how the individual objects—the
rock monster and the turret—work. Without that knowledge, based on earlier experiences, this
room is a trap, not an arena for player choice.
