Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
n Load Constantly: This is for open-map games where players can go anywhere
they like. Examples include flight simulators, racing games, massively multi-
player games, and action/adventure games like Rockstar
'
s Red Dead Redemption.
The first scheme trades one huge loading pause for lightning fast action during the
game. These games have small levels or arenas that can fit entirely in memory. Thus,
there
s never a cache miss. The game designers can count on every CPU cycle being
spent on the game world instead of loading resources. The downside is that, since
your entire playing area has to fit entirely in memory, it can
'
t be that big.
Shooters like Halo on the Xbox360 load resources at pinch points. The designers add
buffer zones in between the action when relatively little is happening in the game.
Elevators and hallways with a few elbow turns are perfect examples of this technique.
The CPU spends almost no time rendering the tiny environment in these areas, and
it uses the leftover cycles to load the next hot zone. In elevators, players can ' t change
their minds in the middle of the trip until the elevator gets to the right floor, which
happens to be timed to open exactly when the next area is loaded. Elbow hallways are
constructed so that the loading time will always be less than the maximum running
speed of the player. The more loading is needed, the longer the hallway will be.
One thing you may notice is that with each of these designs, the ResCache needs to
load in the background while the rest of the game continues to run. This turns out to
be pretty tricky stuff.
'
Buffer Zones in Your Game Affect Pacing and Player Tension
These buffer zones will exist in many places throughout the game, providing
the player with a brief moment to load weapons and rest happy trigger
fingers. The designers at Bungie took advantage of this and placed a few
surprise encounters in these buffer zones, something that always made me
freak out when I was playing Halo.
Even better, the folks at Bungie were wise enough to use the hallways to set
the tone for the next fight with Covenant forces or the Flood. Sometimes it
was as simple as painting the walls with enemy blood or playing some
gruesome sound effects.
Gamers Don
'
t Want to Read, They Want to Play
Don
t make the player read a bunch of text in between levels just to give yourself time to cache
resources. Players figure this out right away and want to click past the text they
'
'
ve read five or six
times. They won
'
t be able to do so since you
'
ve got to spend a few more seconds loading resources,
and they
'
ll click like mad and curse your name. If you
'
re lucky, the worst thing they
'
ll do is return your
game. Don
'
t open any suspicious packages you receive in the mail.
 
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