Strides Interactive

Micro in-game mechanismsFiled Under: Weekly Tuesday Dose of goodness

Greetings to all!

A lot of people or game developers wannabe think that micro in-game mechanisms are easily dealt with by coding.

This is actually not true. A mechanism is a end-to-end flow system which requires proper design and planning. So, for example,  a simple “player gets bonus” mechanism. Do you think that it’s easy to implement?

Think again…. it ain’t no pushover.

Let’s take a trip back into the past to the simpliest form  of games ever written for the personal computer.

PONG!

This so-called simple game in the eyes of the players is actually not so simple to implement at all. Let’s take a look at the number of systems thas has to be implemented in order to make the game A GAME.

1) Simple collision detection, possibly, a simple rectangle intersection between both players and the ball itself should suffice. Justifications: The players don’t rotate therefore always hitting the Y-axis of the player’s pads.

2) A simply physics system that simply updates the position of the ball per frame

3) A frame control system for execution and rendering cycles per second

4) A game state machine to determine match begin, win, lose, normal game state

5) Sound effects interface or direct usage if any

Connect the dots together and you’ll realise that there’s a lot of work to do.  Therefore, a good game developer will not jump in and say that this is just a simple 15 minutes job. Investors may make such a comment, but the  game developer should know better.

Next, let’s talk about the bonus sub-system.

Scenario: You destroy a special craft, a bonus comes out of it. You reach out to grab that bonus to enhance your ship further. Here’re the considerations:

1) Bonus behavior
- Path of movement
- When does it exit the game
- How fast or slow or randomly does it travel?
2) Collision detection (shallow) - you don’t expect players to match pixel to pixel with the bonus right?
- Shallow rect-to-rect (2D) or AABB (3D) collision required
- Cannot use complete depth collision detection
3) Effects on player
- Weapons power up
- Shield power up
- Warheads increase
4)  Managing multiple players
- How to upgrade the right player?
5) Managing bonus overshots
- What to give the players should they have the maximums?

So you think it’s easy to implement ALL within 15 minutes? I don’t think so. If you do, you seriously need some bad experience to learn it the hard way.

In conclusion, do not look lightly upon  micro in-game mechanisms, they may look insignificant to players, but players DO appreciate and complain should there be a bug with it.

Imagine if a player gets shield repair when he expected his weapons to be upgraded.

All in all, all sub-systems should be well-designed before implementation. This is not ideal, this is a requirement. If one can’t learn to crawl, forget about learning how to walk; because that person will fall eventually.

Regards,

Jeremy