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2004年:
Manager In A Strange Land:Optimizing A Team
摘要
We got the idea from reading The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. Like
most management books,there's a very low ratio of actual information
to word-count in this book. It's a novel about a poorly run machine shop,
and the guys realized they had a bottleneck process,and dealt with
it. The idea of optimizing bottleneck functions appealed to the coder
in me,of course.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040103/fristrom_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:Reuse and Replace
摘要
At this point I had learned my lesson but Treyarch had not; a separate
project that I wasn't involved in,given a choice between re-using an
engine(granted,it was written by the Japanese ) and starting over
decided to start over. They used Treyarch's renderer,but what they did
not have was a toolset for making levels.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040109/fristrom_01.shtml
What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of NPCs?
Earnest Adams has found that the believability and emotional sophistication
of cahracters can have a significant effect on gameplay. In this column,
he describes the dimensionality of the different groups he uses to classifiy
them,and explains why making the effort to enhance their realism is
a good thing.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040116/adams_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:Crunch
摘要
In Rapid Development,Steve McConnell cites a study that shows coders
being at their most productive when they work fifty-hour weeks. After
fifty,you start seeing diminishing returns,as people get tired,
start making mistakes,take more breaks,eat their catered dinners,
or whatever. If efficiency is our goal,then we should send everyone
home once they've put in their ten-hour day.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040123/fristrom_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:Multi-Class Characters
摘要
No,this isn't an article on RPG design. Allow me to wallow in geekdom
for a moment,though. In your typical fantasy RPG,you can play a fighter,
wizard or thief. Some RPGs also allow you to multi-class(play a fighter/wizard,
and so on )。 You can do the same thing in game development,too. You
can hire artist/programmers.(Technical artists.) You can hire programmer/designers.
(Gameplay programmers. ) You can hire game designer/artists.(Level
builders. )
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040130/fristrom_01.shtml
Developing Your Own Replay System
摘要
Having a replay feature in a game can definitely enhance the player
experience. It's an opportunity to show your polished graphics from a
different view,it gives the player more time to appreciate how intelligent
and naturally your AI behaves,and it's a component that can enhance
the gamer's experience.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040204/wagner_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:Milestones Considered Harmful?
摘要
DeMarco and Goldratt say that instead of having deadlines,we should
have optimistic goals. We will almost always miss these optimistic goals.
But we won't lose any time to gold-plating.
But what if something goes wrong?(Which happens over and over and
over on a game project. ) If you make optimistic goals,you'll probably
miss them. That's why,instead of putting the padding between the milestones,
you put the padding at the end.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040206/fristrom_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:The Dead Zone
摘要
(Greg John,senior producer on Spider-Man 2,points out that construction
analogies are dangerous because in the construction industry,there's
a well-defined blueprint and the work itself isn't terribly creative.
All I'm saying is that in this case —— unfinished buildings don't look
finished and neither do unfinished games—— there's a parallel. Ed Del
Castillo,CEO of Liquid Entertainment,has an interesting story that
may indicate the opposite,however. Ed hired a guy to do his pool,
and the contractor advised against creating a blueprint,saying it would
be a lot of extra work and money,and Ed would probably want to make
changes to the pool once he saw the actual work anyway. The guy suggested
that 't they "just get at it." Maybe construction is more like software
development than we thought.)
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040213/fristrom_01.shtml
Design and Development of Simulation/Game Software:Implications
for Higher Education
摘要
Twenty-two designers of home entertainment computer games were surveyed
and interviewed about the prospect of simulation/game software to be developed
for use in online education. Specifically,their perspectives were probed
with respect to three dimensions:a) designing for open exploration
of a specific closure (winners and losers),b) relative commitment
to objective or subjective representations of knowledge,and c) preference
for pre-planning or a tolerance of the iterative nature of software development.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/education/theses/20040223/warren_01.shtml
Autonomous Real-Time Camera Agents in Interactive Narratives and Games
摘要
Visual storytelling,be it in films or interactive forms of narratives
like computer games,is a complex and very sensitive field. Images and
their composition play an important role in our perception and interpretation
of a visually presented story. In contrast to classical cinematography,
research in the field of interactive narratives and the application of
cinematographic concepts to this field is still rather young. In this
thesis,we investigated such concepts,with a strong focus on dramaturgical
means of expression of cameras and the active visual emphasis of(interactive)
narrative content. Based on a formalization of these dramaturgical principles,
we developed an autonomous real-time camera agent implementing this knowledge.
The prototype of this virtual camera system was integrated into the computer-game
'Half-Life' and the authoring tool 'alVRed' to give examples for the practicality
of the system.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/education/theses/20040308/hornung_01.shtml
Improving Player Choices
摘要
Because it is simply one of the most powerful aspects of fun in gameplay,
we need to look more closely at choice as an aspect of fun. What makes
a choice interesting versus uninteresting? How can you design choices
that are more interesting than not?
One of the most important aspects of choice is consequence. For a
game to engage a player's mind,each choice must alter the course of
the game. This means the decision has to have both an upside and a downside
; the upside being that it advances the player one step closer to victory
; and the downside being that it hurts the player's chances of winning.
This concept seems simple,but you'd be surprised at how many games
force the players to make choices that have no impact upon whether they
win or lose.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040310/fullerton_01.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:The Czar Chart
摘要
Fickle employees are a part of business. Loyalty is a forgotten concept
——these days,if you have talent,you ask,"What can the company
do for me?" first,and "What can I do for the company?" second.
And there's nothing wrong with that ——since the typical company's goal
is to give their employees as little as possible,and get out of them
as much as possible,it's not surprising that people have this attitude.
If they didn't have this attitude,they'd be taken advantage of.
When it comes to videogames,we are mostly volunteers. We have talents
that could probably earn us more money if we worked in other fields. Some
of us are here because we've heard anecdotes about a few people who got
rich,but most of us are here because we want to make good games.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/columns/fristrom/20040312/fristrom_01.shtml
Book Review:Chris Crawford on Game Design
摘要
Throughout the book Crawford refers to various seminal games,and
covers several of them(mostly his own-Balance of Power probably being
his most well known ) in detail,taking apart each game to see what
made it interesting or appealing to different people. The chapter covers
almost Crawford's entire ludography-successes and failures exposed in
all their gory innards,including a small piece of history on how each
game came about.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/columns/books/20040316/index.shtml
Learning by Design:Games as Learning Machines
摘要
How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn their
long,complex,and difficult games-not only learn them,but pay to
do so? It won't do simply to say games are "motivating". That just begs
the question of "Why?". Why is a long,complex,and difficult game
motivating? I believe it is something about how games are designed to
trigger learning that makes them so deeply motivating.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040324/gee_01.shtml
Gonzalo Frasca Discusses Academia and Political Gaming
摘要
Right now the games industry and the academics are in two different
worlds. They're getting closer,slowly,but it's going to take a long,
long time. I can't consider the two things to be separate. There's a lot
of things involved,and a lot of people arriving from different perspective,
so it's very rich. But you also have to have a direction - my agenda is
to take theory and turn it into practice to make better games. Other academics
are most interested in research by itself,and that's OK too.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040324/interview-frasca_01.shtml
14 Ways of Drawing Players in With an Opening Cinematic
摘要
David Freeman,author of Creating Emotion in Games and popular game
industry writing consultant,spoke this afternoon about fourteen techniques
that a game designer can use to draw players into a game through the use
of an opening cinematic.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040324/postcard-kane_04.shtml
Encouraging Innovation in Game Development
摘要
Innovation,he said,is the core reponsibility of a platform holder.
He sees it as Sony's job to push innovation on the part of software developers,
faciliate growth in whatever direction the market heads,identify future
potential in both hardware and software,and to bring all these things
together into an enhanced interactive experience for the user.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040325/postcard-kane_02.shtml
Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates,Online Community Management,Cutlass
Waving
摘要
So I left my girlfriend playing PopTop's game Bejeweled one day with
the laptop in bed,and I came back six hours later,and she was still
there. Puzzle games are so compelling,but so vapid and empty as an
experience. But if you put that into a massively multiplayer game,you
solve both problems.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040325/interview-james_01.shtml
The Experimental Gameplay Workshop
摘要
The third annual Indie Game Jam,introduced by game designer Chris
Hecker,kicked the workshop off on a high note. Each year at the Jam,
developers make as many innovative games as possible during a four day
period using a custom game engine made specifically for the event. The
engine is always built around a single technology focus,and this year's
focus was gameplay physics. The Game Jam challenge:to create 2D games
in which physics drives gameplay.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040326/postcard-kane_01.shtml
Cross-Platform User Interface Development
摘要
Since no major console comes with a keyboard and some don't even support
them,console games rely on a software solution for text input. Console
developers have taken many different approaches toward soft keyboard design.
Microsoft,however,has done usability testing on the subject which
showed that players overwhelmingly preferred a horizontal,alphabetic
layout over other virtual keyboard designs.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040326/caminos_01.shtml
Book Review:Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
摘要
In summary,when you require an introductory text to game design,
Game Design will easily fulfill that need with a thorough and rigorous
overview.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/columns/books/20040330/index.shtml
Manager In A Strange Land:Better Communication Through Software
摘要
At times on the Spider-Man team it feels like we're over-communicating,
with e-mail spam about trivial design decisions flooding the team to the
point where people stop reading e-mail,and noise and distractions in
the hallways at the point where it disturbs other teams on other projects.
And yet,on the other hand,sometimes key things don't get communicated,
and mistakes that cost people days or weeks are made that could have been
avoided if only the right two people had let each other know what they
were doing.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/columns/fristrom/20040409/fristrom_01.shtml
The Secret's in the Schedule:Bending The Mythical Man-Month
摘要
In part 1 of this two-part series,Michael Saladino begins his treatise
on applying The Mythical Man-Month to managing game developers. Whether
you have or have not read the book,Saladino shows you how to apply its
lessons (and likely convinces you to read or re-read it as well)。
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040421/saladino_01.shtml
Instrumentation:The Game Composer's New Challenge
摘要
We game composers are now facing what every composer faces——the
broader the palette,the more difficult the choices. Now that we're
unrestricted and free,we burst upon a field already teeming with activity
rather than taking heart in the "making more with less" skill with our
little band of colleagues. The question now becomes,"how can I make
my game music unique,while still appealing to the masses?" To answer
this question let's explore some possibilities,starting with composition,
since composition and instrumentation go hand-in-hand.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040430/brandon_01.shtml
Designing with Gameplay Modes and Flowboards
摘要
Ernest Adams describes his approach to designing games,in which
he looks at the gameplay mode and constructs a "flowboard"—— a combination
of flowchart and storyboard —— of the structure. Here's how he does
it.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040510/adams_01.shtml
Watching Games And Playing Movies:The Influence Of Cinema On Computer
摘要
Usability advocates a user-centred design philosophy. User-centred
design is crucial in balancing the difficulty level and challenge of a
game. It is important that a game ?s difficulty level is well judged because
'if an application is too difficult,the user is likely to be frustrated
; if it is too easy the user is likely to be bored'. A game must offer
a suitable level of challenge against which the user can test their skill
and therefore earn the subsequent feeling of satisfaction derived from
completion. Game difficulty should not be achieved through usability problems,
yet the drive for usability must stop short of removing altogether the
challenge from a game. User-centred design is essential in resolving this
contradiction.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/education/theses/20040515/mcgann_01.shtml
The Anti-Communist Manifesto
摘要
Each product is different,but I see the game director,the art
director,the producers,and the programming director as obvious,though
not exclusive,choices. If the game is heavy in art,then maybe it
is only the art director. On a game that is all about technology,then
maybe it is the programming director. The important point is that having
live talent in the product vs. inanimate characters does not lessen the
value of those that put the product together.
URL:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040520/moledina_01.shtml
Bad Game Designer,No Twinkie ! V
摘要
'I was in a building that was about to be destroyed by a bomb. I misinterpreted
my orders,thinking I was supposed to escape,when in reality I was
supposed to find and defuse the bomb. Checkpoint A was the moment I was
told about the bomb and shown how much time remained before detonation.
I ran as fast as I could through the level,bypassing the room with the
bomb,and further fighting my way past enemy soldiers. Just before time
ran out I passed a checkpoint ('B' ) and thought I had succeeded,only
to have my game end about 5 seconds later due to the bomb going off. When
my game restarted,it was at the newly acquired checkpoint,so the
bomb went off again after 5 seconds. This kept happening over and over,
with no chance of me backtracking to resolve the issue.' URL:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040611/adams_01.shtml |
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