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《Antegods》的设计完善:区域控制

发布时间:2017-02-04 15:12:50 Tags:,,,,

作者:Peter de Jong

我们正致力于完善石器朋克行动游戏《Antegods》,你们可以通过定期更新的博文了解我们的设计,图像和代码等开发过程。

而今天,游戏设计师Wytze将通过分享团队的努力去解决游戏中的最大问题之一并以“本地区域”形式添加一些策略深度到游戏中。

CaptureNativeCamp(from gamasutra)

CaptureNativeCamp(from gamasutra)

区域控制

几周前我们开始致力于区域控制,这是完成我们将《Antegods》变成一款更具深度策略游戏目标的重要元素之一。

我们花了很长一段时间让玩家能够控制一个关卡:即获取炮塔。你将通过传递能量给炮塔去占领它,然后炮塔将被激活并能够朝敌人射击。一旦获取了炮塔,它便属于玩家所处团队,如果禁用炮塔便意味着永久摧毁它。

这里存在两个大问题:

这一机制中不存在灵活性;玩家不能重新获取关卡的控制权。这便导致游戏玩法变得非常乏味。玩家不能去摧毁炮塔,否则他们便失去了获取炮塔的动力。这便导致摧毁炮塔变成一种让人受挫的行动。因为这些问题我们便为关卡控制创造了一个更加详细的机制:区域控制。

基本机制

每个关卡都拥有一些本地区域。这些区域包含了一个中心区域控制点和一些炮塔。

当团队传递给区域控制点足够的能量,他们便能获取炮塔,这时候控制点将凝结,所有炮塔便会被激活。

如果摧毁了这些炮塔,那么所有被激活的炮塔便会失去功效(游戏邦注:相比之前摧毁炮塔更加简单了)。一分钟后炮塔的控制面将被再次完全激活。

如果其它团队摧毁了区域控制点,他们便能够中立你所获取的区域。当一个区域被中立后,其它团队便可以再次去获取它。

游戏测试

在游戏测试期间我设置了两个待完成的机制目标。

团队必须做出有关消费能力,时间和努力去获取一个区域的策略决定,这将影响到比赛的过程。

玩家将通过有趣且具有决定性的对抗去获取并中立区域。

在不同的原型中执行具有实验性的机制后,我们开始进行游戏测试。我们总共经历了5个测试阶段,在每个阶段后我都会分析出现的问题并思考解决方法。以下便是我们在游戏测试过程中所遇到的3大主要问题以及我们的解决方法。

问题:太多区域和炮塔

问题:最初我们拥有太多区域(9个)和炮塔(27个)。这对游戏具有负面影响。首先,战斗会因为炮塔而变得更加混乱。这会导致玩家在战斗中受挫,因为死亡与杀戮变得更加随机且缺少满足感。

这意味着存在太多竞争点。游戏中设置9个区域意味着玩家还可以在额外的9个对抗点中战斗。这会大大削弱冲突,如此玩家便不会花太多时间于有趣的战斗中。

解决方法:这个问题较容易解决:现在游戏变成最多只有6个区域。有些区域只拥有2个炮塔而不是3个。减少区域和炮塔的数量能够避免玩家在关卡中受挫并避免战斗的混乱。

这同样也能减少战争点的数量,让团队间的战斗变得更加有趣。

问题:能量失衡

问题:区域控制是第一个游戏机制,所以在比赛中能量会逐渐流失。从理论上来看,只要区域被中立或被占领,无数能量便会被注入此处。在之前版本中占领炮塔只需要10个能量,所以我们便将获取区域的能量数值提升到20。其中的差异非常显著,特别是在游戏开始处,即Titan需要花很长时间才能完成升级。

解决方法:在某种程度上我们可以使用之前的问题去解决这一问题:拥有较少的区域意味着占领所有区域所需要的能量也较少,这便能让Titan更快完成升级。

第二种解决方法则是,在比赛一开始自动获取离团队开始位置最近的区域。这意味着团队不需要花费能量和时间便能够在全新比赛开始时保障Titan的安全,并让早前的冲突变得更加有趣。

问题:冲突破坏战斗

问题:区域控制点和炮塔中的冲突会多次引起问题的出现。最初,区域控制点会阻碍Totems和投射物,即意味着玩家将通过不断绕着结构行进去避开冲突。如果玩家正在射击敌人但却遭到盟军和中立炮塔的阻隔,他们将会非常受挫。最后,炮塔将剥夺许多Titan的自由行动。当你在操控Titan时,你将不得不绕路去通过区域,而这便是非常让人受挫的行动。

解决方法:为了完全改变区域控制点和炮塔中的冲突,首先Totems,Titans和投射物需要全部通过中立炮塔,因为现在它们都在后方。

一旦区域控制点或炮塔被占领,它便会阻碍所有的Totems移动,敌人的投射物便会攻击它,但友好的投射物则能够穿越它。

最后,如果Titan移动了一个盟军炮塔,它便会暂时失效并移到后方,从而留给Titan更多自由移动的空间。

结论

让玩家能够中立并控制关卡的某个部分能让比赛进程更加动态化。玩家将拥有更多自由去选择要去哪里并放置自己的Titan。在测试期间我们发现关卡几乎被一支团队所占领了,但之后另一支团队通过慢慢占领区域而回到了比赛中。尽管占领了区域的团队在Titan控制方面拥有优势,但两支团队仍都具有获胜的机会。而在之前的机制中,失败的团队便不再有机会去赢得比赛。

除此之外,当玩家控制了Titan,并且只要他们能够谨慎对待炮塔,最终游戏将变得更加有趣。因为对于Titans来说区域是个安全港,所以团队可以在关卡中获得一个更棒的位置。当你发动攻击时,你可以中立并获取Titan附近的一个区域,如此你便不需要退回之前的关卡部分。同时,后卫也能够支援他们所控制的其它区域,或通过占领关卡另一面的其它区域去找到一个全新的安全港。

总之,对于这款游戏我们做出了来来回回的变动,并最终创造出我们想看到的动态化。最初的游戏测试因为大量的游戏玩法问题而显得非常复杂,但所幸我们能够解决这些问题并完善区域控制机制。这也为玩家创造了更深入的策略选择。我们很高兴看到这些的结果并非常期待将这样的机制呈现在全新玩家面前。

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

Antegods Design Update: Region control

by Peter de Jong

As we continue working hard to make our stonepunk arena action game Antegods a reality, you can stay up to date on our development process with regular blog posts from our design, art and code departments.

This time, Game Designer Wytze will share the team’s efforts to fix one of the game’s biggest issues and add some strategic depth to the game in the form of Native Regions.

Region Control

A couple weeks back we started working on Region Control, an important feature to accomplish our overarching goal of making Antegods a more deeply strategic game.

For a long time we’ve had a very basic way for players to gain control over a level: by capturing Turrets. You would deliver Energy to a Turret to capture it, which would then activate and fire at your enemies. Once captured a Turret irreversibly belongs to that team, and disabling them meant permanently destroying them.

There were two big issues with this:

There’s no flexibility in the mechanic; no way of regaining control over the level. This turned into very stale gameplay.
It had to be difficult to destroy Turrets, because otherwise there was no incentive for players to capture them at all. This made destroying them a frustrating activity.
These issues led us to create a more elaborate mechanic for level manipulation: Region Control.

The basic mechanics

Every level will have a number of Native Regions. These Regions consist of a central Region Control Point and several Turrets.

The Regions are captured when a team delivers enough Energy to the Region Control Point, at which point the control point solidifies and all turrets activate.

Activated turrets can be disabled by destroying them (they’re a lot easier to destroy than previously). After a minute they reactivate for their controlling faction with full health.

A captured region can be neutralized by the other team by destroying the Region Control Point. After neutralizing a region, it can be captured again by either team.

Playtesting

I set up two goals the mechanic had to accomplish during playtests to stay in the game.

Teams have to make strategic decisions to spend energy, time and effort in order to capture a region, which have a considerable impact on the course of the match.

Players have interesting and decisive fights trying to capture and neutralize regions.

After implementing the experimental mechanic into a separate prototype we started playtesting. We went through a total of 5 playtest sessions, after each of which I analyzed the problems that popped up and thought up with solutions. Below are three of the major problems we encountered over the course of these playtests, and how we solved them.

Problem: too many Regions and Turrets

Problem: We initially had too many regions (9) and turrets (27). This had a number of detrimental effects on the game. First off, battles become more chaotic and crowded due to all the turrets involved. This makes battles more frustrating, as dying and killing feels more random and less satisfactory.

It means there are too many points to contest. Having 9 regions in the game means that there’s an additional 9 possible contest points that people can fight over. This will dilute the conflict, so players will be spending less time in interesting fights.

Solution: This problem was simple to solve: there’s now a maximum of 6 regions. Some regions only have two turrets instead of three. The reduced number of regions and turrets makes it easier and less frustrating to get around the level and reduces the chaos in battles.

It also reduces the number of contest points, leading to conflicts that are more fun between the teams.

Problem: Energy out of balance

Problem: Region Control was the first mechanic where Energy is ‘drained’ from a match. Theoretically an infinite amount of Energy can be dumped into Regions as long as they’re being neutralized and recaptured. Whereas the Turrets only costed 10 Energy to capture in previous versions we increased the Regions to cost 20 Energy. The differences are very noticeable, especially at the start of the game, where it takes a long time for the Titan to get powered up at all.

Solution: This was partly solved with the previous problem: having fewer regions means that there is less energy required to capture all regions, which led to powering up the Titan faster.

The second solution was to automatically capture the region nearest to the team’s starting position at the start of a match. This means teams don’t have to spend Energy and time to keep their Titan safe when in a new match, thus leading to the more interesting conflicts earlier.

Problem: combat ruined by collision

Problem: Collision on Region Control Points and Turrets caused issues multiple times. Initially the Region Control Point blocked both Totems and projectiles, which meant players would be avoiding conflict by constantly circling the structure. It was also frustrating for players when they’re shooting at opponents their shots are blocked by allied and neutral Turrets. The Region Control Point and Turrets are large obstacles, so this happened very frequently. Finally, the Turrets took away a lot of freedom of movement from the Titan. When piloting the Titan you usually had to take large detours to get past regions, which was very frustrating.

Solution: To completely change how the collision on Region Control Points and Turrets worked. Firstly Totems, Titans and projectiles all pass through neutral Turrets, as they’re now positioned in the background.

Once a Region Control Point or Turret is captured it blocks all Totems’ movement and enemy projectiles hit it, but friendly projectiles shoot through it.

Finally, if the Titan moves over an allied Turret it temporarily deactivates and moves into the background, giving the Titan a lot more freedom of movement.

End results

Allowing players to neutralize and then gain control over parts of the level makes the progression of a match more dynamic. Players have more freedom in choosing where they want to gain ground and place their Titan. During testing we’ve seen the level being captured nearly entirely by one team, only to then see the other team crawling back into the match by slowly recapturing Regions. Although the capturing team had gained a head start in powering their Titan, both teams still had a good chance of winning. With the previous mechanics the losing team would’ve had no real chance of winning the match after a disadvantage like that.

Additionally the end-game, when players control their Titan, has become more interesting, as long as players are careful with regards to Turrets. Because the Regions are a great safe haven for Titans, it allows teams to back up to a better position in the level. When you’re attacking you can neutralize and capture a region nearby your Titan, so you don’t have to retreat through half the level. Meanwhile defenders can back up to other regions they control, or find a new safe haven by capturing Regions on the other side of the level.

Overall we’ve seen a lot of back-and-forth in games, which is exactly the dynamic we were aiming for. The initial playtests were very rough with a large amount of gameplay issues, but we were able to solve these and improve the Region Control mechanic. This has really deepened the strategic options for players in Antegods. We’re very happy with the results and are very excited to put this mechanic into the hands of new players!

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