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分析游戏关卡设计之拟人化的场景和环境(1)

发布时间:2012-05-23 17:59:49 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Matthew Hodge

在本系列文章的第一部分中,我将详细阐述塑造关卡环境的过程。在此我们便能够将内心对于游戏的愿景清晰地呈现出来,并确保这些环境足够特别且能够让人感到愉悦。(请点击此处阅读本系列第2部分

level design part 1(from gamasutra)

level design part 1(from gamasutra)

在现实世界中,自然风景并不是因任何挑战或娱乐目的而存在。瀑布旁边的石坡并不是为了帮助人们渡河才出现的。现实世界的风景固然美丽,但是它却不是为了让人们在此冒险而形成。这里充满着各种难以通过的险境和死角。尽管分布着许多蘑菇,但是这种分布却不具备任何策略性或者也不如玩家期待的那样能够促成能量升级。

蘑菇(from gamaustra)

蘑菇(from gamaustra)

而在游戏世界中,环境的最大利益并不只是在玩家爬山1个小时候提供一些有趣的啤酒花,并钻到被伐掉的树下这样简单。游戏环境真正需要做的是在玩家游戏的沿途中创造出更多有趣且具有挑战性的障碍。

当我在“The Legend of Sky”创造关于关卡设计的理念时,我遇到了一个问题,即难以平衡游戏外观、感觉与有趣且具有直觉性的布局之间的关系。但是当我开始将环境当成角色来看待时,所有的障碍便瞬间瓦解了。

我列出了所有环境普遍存在的一些角色特征,以及一些独特的环境角色特征:

普遍的环境角色特征:

*玩家的导师

*忠诚

独特的环境角色特征:

*背景故事

*性别

*服装

这些设计要点都是面向于平台关卡而言,但是它们大多数都能够适用于各类游戏。让我们以《TLoS》为例,我将详细阐述这些要点是如何应用于概念关卡“被遗忘的悬崖”中。

环境中的智慧(玩家与导师间的关系)

说到导师时,我们总会立刻联想到老师。而在这里老师却不是出于教学目的而存在。它们将丢给你重重障碍,通过各种轻蔑的言论去激励你。通过这种特殊的方法,它们将为你指出你所需要的策略,并帮助你克服它们所设立的挑战。不管是在何种情况中你都需要努力学习一些有价值的技能,以此帮助你更好地理解并克服生活中的挑战。

这便是一个优秀的游戏关卡所具有的特性。尽管游戏挑战设计不能有效地推动玩家前行,但是通过游戏的特别视角,巧妙的对象设置以及玩家在之前所体验到的挑战,它们便能够明确穿越游戏的有效策略。游戏环境正是通过呈现出各种障碍和解决方法而扮演着玩家导师的角色。

忠诚的环境

环境要不就得支持玩家或敌人,要不就得同时放弃它们。这就意味玩家是受到挑战还是获得帮助要取决于其所处的背景环境。如果环境设立在敌人的主场中,玩家便会面临更多挑战而获得更少的帮助;反之亦然。而如果环境处于中立领域(游戏邦注:即环境既非玩家的领地也不是敌人的领地),那么挑战和帮助便会趋于中和状态。

超级马里奥(from gamaustra)

超级马里奥(from gamaustra)

我们能够在大多数《马里奥》游戏中看到这种忠诚理念。例如在《超级马里奥64》中游戏是围绕着城堡展开。虽然这里也存在各种挑战,但是玩家却可以轻松地解决它们。但是当玩家沿着城堡往地牢前行时,挑战的难度系数也会随之升高。因为不管地牢是属于哪一方,它都不可能表现出“友好”或“善意”。

然后我们便能够穿过墙上的图像到达一些经典的关卡。这些关卡都比城堡世界更具有挑战性——就像Bowser关卡那样。Bowser关卡发生在敌人的领地,所以比起其它普通的关卡(不带忠诚性),这里的环境和障碍会让玩家感到更加沮丧;但是如果玩家记得他们在之前环境中所学习到的,它们便会采取有效的策略去对抗敌方领地所存在的种种不利因素。在这种环境下,游戏的进展速度非常快且充满紧张感。并且在这些关卡中玩家将找到并采用自己的获胜策略,而不非受到游戏的引导。

环境中的背景

我们有必要抽出一些时间仔细想想如何才能真正创造出关卡中的环境。这同时也能推动着我们思考应该呈现何种挑战以及它能够带给玩家何种感觉。

在我设计的关卡“被遗忘的悬崖”中,其背景故事便是源于地理上的变动。《TLoS》世界的形成是源于未来所发生的灾难。在经历了一系列情境后,我们的游戏世界平面发生了变化,并与另一个现实合并在一起。尽管我们所了解的大多数世界都是沉入到“大地”之下,但是“被遗忘的悬崖”却是火山向上喷发所形成的,这也是玩家通往新世界的入口。

forgotten Cliffs(from gamasutra)

forgotten Cliffs(from gamasutra)

根据这一背景故事我们便能更好地明确游戏的图像风格,以及呈现在玩家面前的障碍类型。如果缺少了合适的故事背景,我们便会觉得关卡环境是没有意义的。我们应该让游戏环境能够通过障碍和地理功能去传达目的,并最终引导着玩家进一步沉浸于游戏中。

它是男孩还是女孩?

在图像设计中,我们总是会将拥有锋利外表的对象判定为男孩,而将曲线柔和的视为女孩(以前的设计课程中老师持有这种观点)。但是今天的游戏世界中却出现了一种较为中立的性别设计标准——并且也更加适合我们当前的例子。

魔兽世界关卡(from gamaustra)

魔兽世界关卡(from gamaustra)

让我们以《魔兽世界》中的环境设计为例子。当我们看到“荒地”时,我们自然会将这个充满锋利的悬崖峭壁的领域归为“男性”环境。而在暗夜精灵地区因为拥有许多连绵起伏的群山,并且这种曲线的幅度显得较为柔和,所以我们会将其定义为“女性”环境。

gender Slider(from gamaustra)

gender Slider(from gamaustra)

据此我们可以勾勒出一个性别滑动器,并沿着一个斜坡从黑滑到白。如果我们将黑当成男孩,将白当成女孩,那么这个斜坡是否就意味着我们的级别下滑?其实与现实中的很多东西一样,黑与白的真正价值很少能够明确地表现出来。而环境中的性别也是如此。尽管《魔兽世界》中的荒地充满悬崖峭壁,但是你同样也能够在这些悬崖找到柔和曲线的存在。

为了创造出具有独特且让人印象深刻的关卡环境体验,我不仅需要明确关卡的性别,同时也需要呈现出它们的不同特性。如此我才能更好地塑造出定义元素以及环境中所支持的各种功能。

“要穿些什么?”

行头便是我的“环境角色”列表中的最后一个项目。这包括环境中的纹理和外围结构/道具。在我自己的关卡中,背景故事象征着过去的世界,男性环境也是就活跃的火山活动而造就的悬崖峭壁而言。所以我们可以将这一关卡的个性总结为是一个愤怒的男人努力压抑自己对于这个世界的怒气。而这样的人应该穿些什么样的衣服呢?

原来的悬崖峭壁和肮脏的地面将会随着火山的平息慢慢被绿色植被所覆盖。长长的火山岩浆穿越于此,趟过岩石的边缘,就像是腰带一般。而残骸和遗迹更可当成过去世界所赠予的装饰。

总结

通过拟人化游戏关卡和环境,我们最终创造出了独特,有趣且能够真正表现出我们想法的关卡。我将在之后的文章中继续阐述关卡设计的其它内容。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Level Design Part I: Personification (environments are characters too)

by Matthew Hodge

In this first of a three part post, I detail my process of characterizing a level’s environment. This is a great way to dial in a clear vision for a game, and ensure each environment is unique and entertaining.

In the real world (as we understand it to exist) natural landscapes are not formed for the purpose of providing a challenging and fun path to traverse. A rocky ledge beside a waterfall isn’t going to be perfectly positioned so that one can time a jump to land on debris that is flowing over the edge at regular intervals. It’s sad, I know. While beautiful, the real world just isn’t pieced together so that one can fluidly adventure through it. It’s full of unreasonably difficult locations and dead ends. While containing many mushrooms, they are not strategically placed or have quite the same power up effect as a knowledgeable gamer would expect.

In the game world, its not in an environment’s best interest to provide only a couple of fun hops followed by an hour of uphill walking, just to duck under a fallen tree. A game environment needs to provide enjoyable and challenging obstacles every step of the way.

When developing my concept for level design in “The Legend of Sky”, I ran into difficulty trying to balance a believable look and feel, with a layout that is both fun and intuitive. My designer’s block was finally broken when I decided to start looking at the environment as a character.

I listed out character traits that should be common to all environments, and those that are unique to each environment: Common environment character traits:

Mentor to player

Discernible allegiance

Unique environment character traits:

Back-story

Gender

Apparel

These design points are geared towards platforming levels; however, much of these principles can be applied to most types of games. Using TLoS as an example, I’ll walk through how each of these points has been applied to the conceptual level “The Forgotten Cliffs”.

Environment Wisdom (player mentor-ship)

When we think of a mentor, gear your thoughts towards a sensei. A sensei will seem adversarial for the purposes of teaching. They will throw obstacles at you. They often talk down to motivate you. Through all of this, they will point to the strategy you need, to overcome the challenges they’ve created. In each instance, you will have learned valuable skills that will help you to understand and overcome challenges throughout life.

This is how a good level will play. The challenges are designed to give the player a little struggle, but through the use of camera angles, clever object placement, and experience with previous challenges, a clear strategy is presented that guides the player through. With presentation of obstacles and solutions, the environment is designed to mentor the player along their way.

Environment Allegiance

The environment should side with either the player the enemies, or neither. What this means is that while challenging and assisting the player, the level of challenge and assistance should be skewed toward the level’s back-story. If an environment is the home ground of the enemy, the challenges should be hard and the assistance minimal, and vice versa. If the environment is an area that is home to neither, there should be a blend, or medium difficulty.

We see this concept of allegiance demonstrated in most Mario games. For instance, the home ground in Mario 64 is the castle that serves as the hub world. There are challenges presented, but they are typically easy to accomplish. The challenges can get a little more difficult as you venture below the castle into the dungeon. Dungeon’s, regardless of who they belong to, are designed to not be friendly.

Then we have the typical levels that are mostly reached via jumping into paintings on the wall. They are more challenging than the castle world, but not as much as the Bowser levels. The Bowser levels take place on the enemies home ground. The environment and obstacles can be downright frustrating when compared to the average (no allegiance) levels; however, if the player remembers everything the previous environments have taught them, then the player should be able to spot the strategy that even the enemy’s home ground is offering. In well designed enemy levels, it often doesn’t even feel that the strategy is offered. Everything happens faster and more intense. In these levels it should feel that the player found and took their winning strategy, as appose to having been guided to it.

Environment Back-story

It’s important to take time out and imagine what brought a level’s environment into existence. This will help in imaging what sort of challenges it will present, and it’s overall feel.

In the case of my level “The Forgotten Cliffs”, the back-story is one of geographic violence. The world of TLoS exists due to catastrophic events brought on by our near future modern society. Through a string of situations, our world shifted its plane of existence and merged with another reality. While most of the world as we know it was plunged below the Earth, the Forgotten Cliffs were the result of a volcanic upward thrust, that still exists as a vent for this new world.

This back-story has helped in determining visual style, and the types of obstacles to present the player with. Without a good back-story, a level’s environment can find itself suffering from meaninglessness. An environment should convey its purpose for existing through its obstacles and geographic features, which ultimately lead to better player immersion.

Is it a Boy, or Girl?

In graphic design it is taught that strait lines and sharp surfaces are masculine design qualities, while curved shapes are feminine; at least that was taught a decade ago when I had a design class. I suppose today’s world might throw in a gender neutral design standard – which would actually work well in this instance, because some levels work best with a design that is somewhere in between.

Looking to modern games as an example, let’s consider some of the environment designs in “World of WarCraft”. If we look at the Badlands, we see an area defined by sharp towing cliffs. This would be a more masculine environment. On the flip side, many of the night elf areas have rolling hills and structures with curves (note that the curves are often implied through textures).

It can help to picture a slider that slides a long a gradient from black to white. If we were to say Black is a boy, and white is a girl, where on this gradient would our level fall? As with most things in life, true black and white values seldom occur. This should also be true when thinking about our environment’s gender. Even with the example of the Badlands in WoW, you’ll notice that curves do occur at the base of the sharp cliffs and ridges.

In order to develop the level’s environment into a unique and memorable experience, I not only declare the level to be a boy or girl, but how masculine or feminine the level is. This will help to conceptualize the defining elements and supporting features of the environment.

“What to wear, what to wear?”

The final item on my “environment as a character” list, is wardrobe. This includes textures and peripheral structures/items that characterize the level. With my concept level, it’s back-story indicates that it represents a glimpse of the old world. It is masculine because of the violent, upward thrusting, volcanic activity that has forced sharp vertical cliffs. The personality of the level can be summarized as one angry dude that is trying to calm down as it reflects on the world that was. So what would someone like this wear?

It is draped in rocky cliffs, dirt ground, and green forestry that is slowly taking it over as it calms down. It has long flows of lava that vent through it and flow over the edges, almost as a sash. It is accessorized with debris and relics from the world past.

I’m still answering this question and it will probably be adjusted as the game moves forward; however, because I’ve designed so much of the environment’s character already, I have a clear direction to move in.

Part 1 Summary

By personifying our level and its environment, we can create a clear vision for each level to be unique, interesting, and to get the most enjoyment possible out of our ideas.

In part 2 of this 3 part series on level design, We’ll be looking at the purpose of everything. Every respect of the level should have a reason to exist for the player. It often helps if the level is abstract in layout. For examples I’ll reference toys and play sets, and how their designs can help us get in the right mindset for level development.

I’ll see you all at my next article. Thanks for reading.(source:GAMASUTRA)


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