Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
construction and management simulation. For example, exploration and growth
do feature in
StarCraft
, but only to enable the player to fight more effectively; play-
ers must explore the area to be conquered and set up resource-processing factories
for converting resources into troops and vehicles.
STRATEGIC CONFLICT
Conflict is most often characterized as combat between groups of individual com-
batants; by long tradition, these combatants are known as
units
. A unit can be
anything from an ancient Egyptian warrior to a Napoleonic cavalryman to an
imaginary spacecraft. Not all units fight; some can be used for transport, scouting,
or other purposes. Units also need not be movable; a fixed gun emplacement is still
a unit. In most modern war games, specialized units, often portrayed as buildings,
are used to produce new fighting units. These buildings generally don't move and
don't fight, but they can be destroyed if attacked and perhaps can be repaired by
repair units. Although it is not an industry standard term, this chapter refers to
such buildings as
factories
. In general, the term
units
will mean fighting units, not
factories.
The main characteristic that distinguishes units and factories from anything else
on the battlefield is that they are under a player's control and provide some benefit
to him, so if they die or are destroyed, that benefit is lost to the player. Units may
be atomic, with no individually distinguishable parts (such as an infantry soldier
with a rifle), or compound, with separate parts that can be added and removed and
perhaps destroyed without completely destroying the whole unit (such as a large
ship with many guns). Each unit behaves according to particular performance
characteristics, such as how long it can survive when under attack, how rapidly it
can fire a weapon, or how fast it can move. The later section “Core Mechanics” dis-
cusses these attributes in more detail.
To give the player interesting options, almost all war games offer the player a
choice of different kinds of units. In chess, there are six kinds; in more representa-
tional games, there may be dozens. Checkers starts with only one kind of unit, but
later in the game a new kind can appear, a king.
Most war games seek to reproduce the classic situations and tactics of military com-
bat, whether at particular points in history or in imaginary conflicts. Depending
on the degree of realism offered, tactics can include flanking maneuvers, sneak
attacks, creating diversions, cutting off enemy supply lines, killing the superior
officers to leave the troops without leadership, taking advantage of the effects of
bad weather, and so on. In order for the player to use these tactics, the units and
the rules of the game have to be designed in such a way as to support them. If you
want your game to include sneak attacks, for instance, you will have to include a
mechanism that hides the enemy's movements from the player. Obviously on some
level the computer knows everything that is happening, but you can design the
computer's AI to ignore the player's movements if the software determines that the
player's units are not visible to the computer's troops.
