Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the dividing line between direct and indirect control is a fuzzy one.
Certain player activities, such as choosing where to build something, constitute
direct control of the game. Others, such as trying to boost sales by reducing prices,
are classed as indirect control. Reducing prices is a direct action with respect to the
prices themselves, but not with respect to sales; the (hoped for) consequent rise in
sales is the result of the player's indirect control of the game.
CONSTRUCTION
In most CMSs, construction itself is not challenging: The player clicks the mouse
on a location, and something appears there. The challenge is in obtaining the
resources needed for the construction. Construction lets the player exercise her
imagination and create something unique and personal. Accordingly, you, as the
designer, need to find a way to make the user interface for construction easy and
enjoyable to use.
Construction mechanisms in CMSs tend to be of two types: purchase-and-place or
plan-and-build . Games in which construction is the primary activity tend to use the
purchase-and-place mechanism; games in which the player alternates between con-
struction and management modes are more likely to use the plan-and-build
mechanism.
In the purchase-and-place construction mechanism, when the player buys an
object (a segment of wall, say), the game deducts the resources to build that object
from stockpiles, and the object immediately appears in a designated location. This
lets the player build rapidly, adding pieces like using LEGO blocks. You should use
this mechanism if construction is the primary activity in your game. The activity
needs to be easy and continuous, not something the player has to wait for. This is
how SimCity works: Zoning property and constructing civic amenities such as
police stations and airports happens instantly because zoning and constructing
are the primary activities in the game.
The plan-and-build mechanism is more often seen in games in which the player
does a little construction, then some management, then more construction, and so
on. In plan-and-build, the player marks out an area in which new construction will
appear. The game sometimes displays the new building in a ghostly, semitranspar-
ent form to indicate that it is under construction. However, construction takes
time. If the game includes simulated people, you might be able to see them at work
on the building; if those people stop work, the building might be left in a partially
completed state. You will find plan-and-build in strategy-CMS hybrids where the
player may be under threat of invasion and time is of the essence.
In plan-and-build, you don't have to remove all the required resources from storage
at once because the construction takes place over time. In the Settlers series, wood
and stone have to be transported a little at a time from stockpiles to the construc-
tion site. This puts an extra burden on the player to manage his resource flow but
also gives him more control. In contrast, the Age of Empires series uses
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