Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
CHECKPOINTS
Some action games allow the player to explicitly save and resume the game at any
time, which allows them to recover from failure, but many do not. Older games
required the player to start again from the beginning of the current level or even
the beginning of the entire game. This is now considered poor design. In many
modern games, the avatar's new incarnation appears in the same location at which
it died, or if that is impossible (for example, if Mario falls into water), then the new
avatar appears in the last safe location it occupied before it died (for example, the
last platform that Mario occupied before he fell into the water). The state of the
level remains unchanged—the avatar just appears, and play resumes. Apart from
the loss of a life and perhaps the loss of the avatar's possessions, the player is not
punished for letting the avatar die.
Avatars may also reappear at a
checkpoint
. Checkpoints mark the positions on a
level at which a player's avatar may appear in its next incarnation if it should die
in that level. As the player progresses through a level, he passes through one or
more checkpoints along the way, usually marked by some visual indicator that
changes to inform the player it has been passed. In
Sonic the Hedgehog
, for example,
streetlamps mark the checkpoints, turning from white to red when the avatar
passes them (see
Figure 13.6
). If the avatar dies, the level is reset to the condition
it was in when the player last successfully passed a checkpoint, and the avatar
reappears at the checkpoint location.
FIGURE 13.6
This lamppost check-
point (between the
totem pole and the
tree) in
Sonic the
Hedgehog
turns red
when the hedgehog
passes it.
