Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
If you choose this approach, you will need to devise a suitable algorithm for gener-
ating point values; in games such as American football and rugby, in which
different kinds of scores produce different numbers of points (touchdown, field
goal, and so on), certain score values are much more common than others. It's
extremely rare, for example, for a team to end an American football game with a
score of 2. You'll also need to make sure that your algorithm creates reasonable
scores and a reasonably random distribution of scores. No professional soccer game
should ever end with a winning score over about 15, and even that will be rare;
your algorithm should produce many more games with winning scores of 4 or less.
Unfortunately, the dice-rolling technique doesn't generate any statistics other than
the scores themselves. In a particularly statistics-rich sport such as baseball, if you
don't generate performance data for each individual athlete, some fans will con-
sider your game to be a lightweight simulation rather than a serious one. It's up to
you to decide just how important that market is to you and how much effort you're
prepared to exert to meet their expectations.
Home-Field Advantage
Considerable debate has raged over the years about whether to build a home-field
advantage into sports games. Although the home-field advantage is statistically
significant in a number of sports, it's better not to build it into the mechanics of
the game. Players like to feel that they are playing a fair game, and if they know
that the odds are artificially stacked against them whenever they play an away
game, they will resent it. It's also unclear exactly how the home-field advantage
should be implemented. Fans normally observe the home-field advantage from
win-loss statistics, but of course, the computer can't simply turn a loss into a win.
You could shave off a percentage of goal-scoring attempts, but even this slight
intervention is likely to generate odd side effects. If a scoring attempt that clearly
should have succeeded fails for no visible reason, the players are bound to notice it.
If you feel you must simulate home-field advantage, the best (and least detectable)
way to do it is probably to improve all the ratings slightly for all the athletes on
the home team.
The Game World
The setting of your game will be the normal venue for the sport, usually a stadium
or an arena. It adds a great deal of verisimilitude to present these as accurate copies
of real places. Players enjoy being able to recognize the architectural details of their
favorite stadiums. Some sports, such as basketball or American football, require a
playing area of a fixed shape and size, but others do not—different baseball fields
famously have different effects on gameplay. Some sports, such as skiing and bob-
sledding, take place in venues that vary enormously and require a great deal of
practice to learn.
