Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
CHARACTERS AND OBJECTS
In action games, the player's avatar must be extremely easy to pick out. FPS games,
in which the avatar is not displayed on-screen, don't present this problem, but in
other action games, the avatar may show up in a clutter of other graphics. The ava-
tar must be distinctive, with a unique shape, color, or position on-screen. Lara
Croft, for example, wears a distinctive shirt in a teal blue used nowhere else in
Tomb Raide r.
If the player can see a splash of that particular blue on the screen,
then he knows he is looking at Lara.
Quickly identifying enemies is equally important. The majority of action games
use color schemes that indicate enemies, extending the idea of the avatar's unique
color so that enemies, too, follow a common scheme of color or appearance. In the
film
Tron
, you can easily identify the bad guys because they're the ones in red; the
good guys wear blue.
Two - dimensional scrolling games f requently use position to disting uish the avatar.
In these games, the world moves around the avatar, which remains in the same
absolute position, or at least on the same horizontal or vertical line, on-screen,
giving players a fixed point of reference by which they can orient themselves.
CONTROLS
Action games (with the exception of fighting games) require simple controls.
Because of the fast pace of these games, the physical act of using the controls
should, wherever possible, directly translate to avatar action—pushing left on the
controls makes the avatar go left, pushing right makes the avatar go right, and so
on. For 2D games, this is simple to design, but for first- or third-person 3D games,
the third dimension complicates matters. Until recently, all input devices—
joysticks, mice, D-pads, and so on—have allowed input in only two dimensions,
so movement in the third dimension had to be controlled by separate—usually
binary—buttons, which is less convenient. Nintendo's Wii controller can input
control data in three dimensions.
Some action games have attempted to implement more complex control schemes
for 3D movement. The success of these games depends on the lengths to which
players are prepared to go to learn the system. Games that succeed in this are usu-
ally the games that set the standards for new genres. For example, the
Doom
and
Quake
modes of interaction for FPS games are ubiquitous nowadays, but they're still
by no means simple for a beginner.
As already mentioned, the user interface for fighting games presents more diffi-
culty. Moves such as walking, kicking, and punching may be straightforward, but
for the more complex and rewarding combo moves, the player must perform a long
string of commands in the correct sequence. Because the commands bear no rela-
tion to the actual move executed, players find them harder to learn and remember.
