Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
through ancillary rewards such as new clothing. But you can also make them grow
in a literary sense: become more mature, well-rounded people. A character who
doesn't grow, especially over the course of several games, eventually begins to seem
like a cartoon character with no emotional depth.
It will be easiest to implement these features if you organize your game into a
number of discrete levels, each of which contains its own environment, starting
conditions, victory condition, and so on. However, levels are naturally rather artifi-
cial. If you want to offer a strongly storylike experience, you may prefer to avoid
having breaks between one level and the next, and try to create an entirely seam-
less experience.
Half-Life
is a famous example.
DESIGNING THE PACING
The pace you choose for your level will depend to a considerable extent on the
genre of the game you're creating; players expect a faster- or slower-paced game
depending upon the genre. The fastest-paced games of all, the old 2D side-scrolling
or top-scrolling shooters, required players to move the joystick and bang the fire
button continuously just to survive. Multiplayer deathmatch shooters such as
Quake
and its kin represent the modern equivalent. (Stealth games such as the
Rainbow Six
series, which involve careful planning, often move at a slow pace except for a brief
wild flurry when the enemy comes into view.) Adventure games use the slowest
pace because much of the activity consists of interactive dialog (generally a story
action rather than an action the player takes to surmount a challenge), exploration
without much effort, and puzzle solving in which the players can take as long as
they like. Play a variety of games and study their pacing. Chapter 13, “Action
Games,” discusses pacing extensively because it is so important in that genre.
CLASSIC ARCADE PACING
In arcade games, especially old ones such as
Space Invaders
, the pace at which the
player faces challenges becomes faster and faster as each level progresses. If the player
succeeds in beating the level
—
destroying all the invading aliens
—
he gets a few sec-
onds of rest before the next level begins. The next level offers identical challenges, but it
starts at a faster pace than the previous level started and ends at a faster pace than the
previous level ended. The pace of
Space Invaders
increases both within each level and
from level to level until it overwhelms the player and he loses the game. He cannot win;
he can only hope to get a high score.
This classic arcade pacing explains how arcade games used to make their money. This
scenario is now considered a bit old-fashioned and inappropriate for console and PC
games because they don't need to make the player lose to force him to put more money
in the machine. However, with the continuing popularity of retro gaming, classic arcade
pacing remains common in simple web-based games such as
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