Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda


 ~ Notes on Mike Stout ~

When playing through the levels its a good idea to make note of there a few things.
  • Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?
  • Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?
  • Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the gameplay? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?
  • Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?

Level Flow - The level flow of the first level is linear but with shortcuts if the player is aware fo them or has the ability to take them. The player does not need to complete 100% of the level but just the main objectives to reach the end goal. There are a few different paths you can take but will inevitably end up on the main path. There are only a few instances where the player will have to go back on cover grounds but usually only to achieve side objectives.

Linear But Not -  They use tricks like adding extra rooms at the start of the level, side shortcuts in various places that you would only know if you had done it before or smart enough to figure it out yourself. Revisiting covered ground near the beginning of the level but always leading the player towards the main critical path in the game also gives the player the feel of a less linear path within the game.

Ramping - The level of difficulty on the optimal path seems to increase steady, subtly and intentionally. It may not seem this way if you go off the main path due to repeating encounters upon entering new undiscovered area's that are not part of the main path. They do this using both increasing the amount of enemies in the area and the environment in which you fight them (blocks).

Variety -  In the initial level they seem to only have one type of enemy per area but the number of them changes area to area and also adding in the environment changes like blocking walls etc. Meaning they can steady increase the difficulty of the encounters in each zone. Worth noting they never repeat the same fight over as each area is slightly different and increasing in difficulty. They also do not mix the enemies to increase its difficulty which is common practice these days.

Training The black rooms in Zelda were originally designed to show hits & tips to the players but due to translation problems the English version did not provided this where as the Japanese version did.

What Did We Learn?

  • It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.
  • Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.
  • Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localization errors.



Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Don't be a Vidiot

What Computer Games Designers Can Learn From Non-Electronic Games
~ Greg Costikyan ~

We start by looking at the games industry and how as of recently we have seen an enormous amount of dull and derivative titles. Best seller lists are filled with games based on old mass-market boardgames which is killing of the paucity of innovation in a field that was once known for originality and creativity.

This is a puzzling development as you can do almost anything with software, if you can define it, you can develop it. The creativity limitations within the industry are only limited to our imagination due to this, which is why it is surprising to see so many re made concepts filling the shelves.

Some claim that the consolidation of computer gaming into a handful of recognized sub-genres is merely indication of a maturation of the industry, implying that we have now established the types of games people want to play. As the field has only existed for 20 years (30 now) and the capabilitys of the machines we work improve all the time Costikyan finds it hard to believe this to be true.

fresh creativity and innovative ideas within the industry have always pushed the boundaries of what we believe to be these sub-genres and usually spurring on enormous movement down the retail pipe line. i.e Sim City, M.U.L.E, Tetris, Doom...all of which were the first of their game type and expanded the industry.

This may also be down to publishers being reluctant to fund new and novel idea's, but it could also be said that they may not be pitched many really creative concepts either. There is always a risk of a new idea being a failure as there is nothing to judge it against and would be considered a gamble, this is why we see so many re engineered concepts time and time again, because they are a safe be.

The term "Vidiot" aka "Video Idiot" is a term used by Costikyan which describes a games designer that has only focused on what has been developed over recent years within the video games industry, there for constraining their imagination to what exists in the here and now. Your palette of techniques, your grasp of the possible, will be limited.

 If you read widely and explore all types of games in all there manifestations, you will see that the universe is large, that the range of techniques is enormous, that this truly is a medium of great plasticity.

The non electronic games have been around far longer than electronic ones, and far more gaming styles have been explored in non electronic media. This is because it is much cheaper to create a game with paper and pen rather than huge sum's of time coding or modelling on a computer, not to mention we have been playing games like this since the dawn of man...pretty much.

history didn't begin with PONG.

Side notes -

The second the activity external to the game. Miniatures gamers spend more time painting their figures than they do actually playing. They find that task enjoyable and interesting, in the same fashion as kit modellers. It is a form of modelling, in a way, particularly for those who get into "kit-bashing".
That's a point worth thinking about, again particularly for online games; is there a way to give players an offline activity that supports the game and is enjoyable in its own right but doesn't require them to consume bandwidth and server time?

Children learn through play; so we may assume that games, which are merely formalized play, have existed since the evolution of language made it possible for people to negotiate and agree upon rules.

The wargaming industry began with TACTICS, published privately by Charles Roberts in 1953. In 1958, he founded the Avalon-Hill Game Company, and began publishing both wargames and mass-market games for adults. Avalon Hill published just one or two titles a year, but quickly attracted a substantial cult audience for their games. They launched a magazine, The General; classified oppponents-wanted ads in the back pages helped to create a community of wargamers, as the letter columns of the science fiction pulps did in days of yore