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分析游戏关卡设计的戏剧化元素效果设计

发布时间:2014-09-17 16:38:31 Tags:,,,,

作者:Hamish Todd

有趣的体验并不只是关于“好事的发生”和“坏事的发生”;更准确的说应该是它们是关于戏剧。这是关卡设计师应该牢记的内容;关卡并不只是对抗/奖励/对抗/谜题/奖励/对抗/奖励。当然了,好事的发生和坏事的发生很重要,但是没人应该欺骗自己游戏只是基于这些事而提高给我们真正印象深刻的时刻。所以,让我们着眼于经典游戏中一个有趣的“戏剧”:

New Super Mario Bros(from-pcgames)

New Super Mario Bros(from-pcgames)

《超级玛丽兄弟3》4–6关卡

这一关切包含了一个虚构的,戏剧化且经典的“马里奥”的调整块。明确地说,这是对于不可战胜的星星升级高潮的颠覆。

我们将把关卡分成两部分。按照惯例,在像这样的马里奥关卡地图中,带有隐藏物件的组块或管道前面都设有一些看得见的事物。

mario(from gamasutra)

mario(from gamasutra)

所以你便开始了。你杀死一个库巴。你看到一个矩形组块。你尝试着撞击组块,即使你还只是小马里奥,因为你想要释放矩形内部的库巴。

其中的一个组块会创造出星星。你很容易获得它。这张图剩下的内容便成为你的饲料:你将通过跳跃获得金币,敲击矮胖的花,并在蓝色矩形上方遇到库巴。这是个直接,且让人满足的过程。

下面是关卡的另外一部分。看到第二个管道左边那三个位于虚幻组块中的金币了吗?只有当你用头撞击该区域时它们才会显现出来。这点很重要。

mario(from gamasutra)

mario(from gamasutra)

我们可以注意到在这一关卡中存在另外的星星。这个星星隐藏在经典的宫本茂机制中,即“我们如此设置从而让你会无意中遇到这一隐藏的事物并感觉良好。”

所以你将获得你的星星,感觉不错,杀死goomba,跳到左边的管道上,可能还会杀死管道中的植物。你会注意到库巴,并可能在你变得狂暴时将其杀死。你将跳下管道撞晕库巴。

你将跳到右边的管道上,该死,你撞到了隐藏的组块!往左走一步,跳到你刚刚创造的组块上—-该死!又有一个隐藏的组块!再向左走一步,跳跃—-该死!另外一个组块—-而现在你的星星已经用尽了,你的狂暴也结束了,你将很容易应对巨大的植物和库巴!你将同时感受到多种情感,你也有可能高声大笑。

这当然是经过精心设计的,我认为这种设置很棒—-这是以玩家为代价的有趣玩笑。这可能听起来有点疯狂,但看着:这是具有戏剧效果的,这是一种冒险,你将会记得它!它们在诱惑你使用库巴。它们在戏弄你使用从右边管道出现的巨大植物(现在你的需要谨慎地避开它)。它们使用了之前让人满足的狂暴状态去创造一种富有权利的感觉。

关卡设计师正关注于一些围绕着期待的微妙感受。这是一个伟大的机器,即最棒的马里奥游戏所装满的机器,它组成了我们所期待的高度创造性和欢乐精神的主要部分。这是使用隐藏组块的一种机智且不可预期的方式,这经常是关于帮助你爬得更高,或通过金币带给你惊喜。

不管是第一眼还是最后一眼,我们可能都不会认为这一关卡还有更多其它内容。我敢保证这完全是围绕着这一“玩笑”进行创造。如果关卡并未拥有这一玩笑—-三个隐藏的组块,一个库巴以及来自管道的两朵花,它便只是一个无聊的关卡。如果你曾经认为自己在早前的马里奥游戏中发现一大堆东西,请你再回去确认一遍!

如果你在极其乐观的某一天与我进行交谈,我会告诉你这一关卡是一个关于贪心与虐待的故事。这是无需讲任何话或打断玩家代理而进行传达的故事。我发现游戏开发者继续尝试着通过过场动画在我们身上强加这种故事真的很让人郁闷,特别是当某些再自然不过的内容出现在最流行的游戏中时。

《半条命2:第二章》:让玩家难过的简短案例研究

在《半条命2:第二章》中,我们看到一个不是很详细但却非常独特的“玩笑”,就像《马里奥》中的关卡一样—-利用错误引导和“玩家的期待”去设计能让玩家感到惊讶的玩笑。

关于关卡设计中的玩家以及“让玩家难过”我还有许多话要说—-我会鼓励你们去看看Bennet Foddy(游戏邦注:创造了《QWOP》并致力于《VVVVVV》)的演讲。我认为自己看过的最有趣的关卡设计玩笑是来自独立益智游戏《Engare》。为了让玩家感到难过,我们应该在此画出一条界线:需要注意的是在关于《超级玛丽兄弟3》和《半条命2:第二章》的例子中,玩家是笑柄,但他们并不会受到玩笑的伤害,就像在银河文本冒险游戏中有名且可恶的玩笑那样。

在保证事物足够自然的前提下拓宽我们的情感范围

我想要通过这点指出一些比“玩笑关卡”更重要的内容。我们想要从玩家身上引出许多情感;脆弱性,挫折,成就感,以及快乐都是—-而游戏能让我们反复拥有这些感受。从我们的《马里奥》例子中,我们也许能够添加“内疚”(因为你并未努力获取goomba)以及“自贬”(当这种情况连续发生3次时)。但比起其它媒体所控制的情感,这还差得远。

人们经常会说拓宽游戏情感范围的关键在于“机制”,的确,比起完善过场动画等内容,它总是更加有效。但我们应该看看“机制”以外的内容!在《旅程》中,我们的角色会在接近尾声时速度变慢,这便是传达精疲力尽与绝望的机制方法。这是一个好主意,然而它却是直接且不自然的(尽管剩下的旅程很棒!)。当我们看到一些像“浪漫机制”的执行时,我们便清楚发生了什么,这对于我们来说都是可预知的内容。

“戏剧”必须能够从游戏引擎中自然地呈现出来—-机制必须保持一致性。我们需要通过关卡设计去创造更加有趣的可能性。我们的《超级玛丽兄弟3》的戏剧让人觉得真实,且具有影响力。还有另外一个例子便是《传送门》中的Companion Cube关卡。第三个例子则是在《半条命》中逃离你所遭遇的第一只大白鲨的吞噬。还有就是你在《超级食肉男孩》中经历关卡的过程。让我们创造更多这样的内容吧!

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转功,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Level design “dramas”, or: “what does Super Mario Bros. 3 level 4-6 have in common with and Half Life 2 episode 2?”

by Hamish Todd

Interesting experiences are not just about “good things happenning” and “bad things happenning”; it is better to say that they are about dramas. This is something level designers would do well to bear in mind; levels don’t just have to be fight/reward/fight/puzzle/reward/fight/reward. Good things happenning and bad things happenning are important of course; but nobody should kid themselves that a game can give us truly memorable moments purely based on these things. So, let’s look at an interesting “drama” in a classic game:

Super Mario Bros. 3 level 4-6

This level contains a setpiece that is imaginitive, dramatic, and classically “Mario”. Specifically, it is a subversion of the invincibility-star powerup orgasm.

We’ll go through the level in two halves. By convention, in Mario level maps like this, blocks or pipes with things hidden in them have those things placed visually in front of them.

So you start out. You kill a koopa. You see this rectangle-made-of-blocks. You have a go at bumping the blocks, even if you’re small mario, because you’d like to pop off the koopa inside the rectangle.

A star comes out of one of the blocks! And it’s easy for you to get it – “FUCK YES!” you say, and start rampaging. The rest of this picture is pure fodder for you: you get the coins in one jump, knock out the wonderfully chunky big-flower, get the koopa on top of the blue rectangle. It’s straightforward, delicious, gratification.

Now, below is the second half of the level. See those three coins in dotty-outline blocks to the left of the second pipe? Those are the kinds of blocks that are invisible until you hit the spot with your head. This is important.

Notice that there’s another star in this level, which is very generous (perhaps suspiciously so). It’s a star “hidden” in a classic Miyamoto “we set it up so you would find stumble into this hidden thing and feel great about yourself”. You can read about that in “Breaking the Law of Miyamoto”, available here – but I want to talk about a different aspect of this.

So you get your star, feel awesome, kill the goomba, jump on top of the left pipe, probably killing the plant inside the pipe. You notice the koopa, and decide that while you’re on your rampage you might as well kill it. You drop off the pipe and knock off the koopa.

You jump up onto the right pi- fuck, you hit an invisible block! Take a step to the left, jump up onto the block you just created- FUCK THE SECOND! Another invisible block! Another step left, jump- FUCK! SHIT! Another block – and now the star’s run out and your rampage is over, with a large plant and a koopa that would have been so easy to get! You feel several emotions at the same time, and you might well laugh out loud.

This is engineered of course, and I think it’s beautiful – a funny joke at the player’s expense. It may sound maddenning, but look: it’s dramatic, it’s an adventure, you’ll remember it! They tempted you in using that koopa. They teased you using that large plant coming out of the right pipe (which you now have to delicately avoid). They set up a feeling of entitlement using that previous, satisfying rampage.

The level designers are paying attention to subtle feelings here, all revolving around anticipation. It’s a great little machine; it’s a machine of the kind that the best Mario games are full of, and forms a major part of the highly creative and joyous spirit we expect from them. It’s a clever, unexpected way to use invisible blocks, which are usually about letting you climb a bit higher, or pleasantly surprising you with a coin.

At first, and last, glance, we might not think there’s much going on in this level. I’m pretty sure it was composed entirely around this “joke” (there’s an unrelated beanstalk and some later koopas that I’ve not mentioned, but I suspect this was just stuff to avoid making it feel bare). If the level didn’t have this joke -the three invisible blocks, above a koopa, between two flower-spouting pipes- it would be a boring level, just a “jumble of stuff”. If you ever think you’ve found a jumble of stuff in an early mario game, always take another look!

If you talk to me on an optimistic day, I’ll tell you that this level is a story about greed and sadism. It is definitel some kind of story – and one that’s told without any words or interruptions to the player’s agency. I find it funny extremely sad to see game developers continuing to try to impose stories on us with cutscenes, when something as natural as this appeared in what is supposed to be the most pop-culturally-huge games there has ever been.

Half Life 2 Episode 2: a short case study in griefing the player

Here we see a less-elaborate but mechanically-unique “joke” told in Half Life 2 Episode 2, which like Mario’s level-design joke makes use of misdirection and “player eagerness” to put a barnacle tongue in a place that allows it to surprise the player.

There’s much to be said about jokes in level design and “griefing the player” – I’d encourage you to watch this lecture by Bennet Foddy, who made QWOP and worked on VVVVVV. I think the funniest level-design-joke that I have ever seen was in the soon-to-be-released indie puzzle game Engare. There’s a line we can and should draw here for player-griefing though: note that in our examples from Super Mario Bros. 3 and HL2E2, the player is the butt of a joke, but they are not hugely disadvantaged by the joke, as they are in certain famous and detestable jokes in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game.

Broadening our emotional spectrum without things feeling unnatural

I want to indicate something bigger than “jokey levels” with this though. There any be many emotions that we may have ambitions to elicit from players; empowerment, vulnerability, frustration, achievement, and felicity are the major ones of course – games make us feel those over and over. From our Mario example we can perhaps add “guilt” (because you didn’t have to go for that goomba) and “self-deprecation” (because, absurdly, it happened three times in a row). But this is quite limited in comparison with the emotions other media manage.

People often say the key to broadening the emotional spectrum of games lies in “mechanics” – and to be sure that’s more likely to work than improving cutscenes or whatever. But we should perhaps look beyond “mechanics” even! In Journey, our characters get slower towards the end, a mechanical way of communicating exhaustion and hopelessness. It’s a well-meaning idea, yet it is transparent and unnatural (though the rest of Journey is good!). When we see something like a “romance mechanic” implemented, it’s clear what is going on, as there is something “cordoned-off”, and probably predictable, about what it presents to us.

“Dramas” must emerge naturally from game engines – the mechanics must remain consistent. Level design is what we can use to make our most interesting possibilities into certainties. Our Super Mario Bros. 3 drama feels real, impactful, when it happens to you. Another example, though you may be bored of hearing it, is the Companion Cube level in Portal. A third: being hoisted out of the jaws of the first shark you encounter in Half Life – but you’re hoisted out by a ceiling-dwelling barnacle. One more is the thought process you go through in this level of Super Meat Boy. Let’s have more things like this!(source:gamasutra)

 


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