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开发者聊如何高效地设计独立游戏角色

发布时间:2017-04-19 15:42:15 Tags:,,

本文原作者:Dushan Chaciej

The Shamaness是我现在游戏项目的一个人物——她是基于我之前的人物Kheera设计而来的。

Early sketches(from gamasutra.com)

Early sketches(from gamasutra.com)

Kheera就是致命的Shamaness。她可以作为团队支持或者也可以走独行刺客之路,就看你更喜欢玩哪种风格了。她是《术士2:放逐》(我们现在的开发项目)的前作——《术士与暗影》中的出现的人物之一。

羽毛、图腾和匕首。这几个词是我用来形容她的最确切的三个词。

在术士系列游戏的第一部分内容中,每个角色的武器库中都只有四个技能(每个都能提升等级,最高升到5级)。在续作中我们将减少角色,但每个角色将有更好的定制选项——技能树。而这也为人物的设计过程带来了一系列前所未有的问题。

Kheera对新手来说是一个比较难上手的角色,因为她是唯一一个拥有不止四个技能的角色。她有七个技能,最有趣的一个技能是变换形态——在攻击形态和防卫形态之间转换。然后每个形态有各自的三个技能。

第一种形态,你可以至于你的队友、发出辅助图腾以及发射魔法导弹,导弹会在穿过同盟和图腾印记的时候有增益效果。另外一种形态,你可以扔匕首、毒敌人以及远程沉默爆炸。

Kheera’s abilities in Warlocks vs Shadows

Kheera’s abilities in Warlocks vs Shadows

所以当我坐下认真思考Shamaness的技能设定时,我首先想到的就是我们得把她的标志性行动保留下来——形态转换。不行,去它的保留,我们要展开!于是我想出了技能树,它包含了三种形态转换技能,并将其标记为“绝招”,这就基本意味着你只能选其中的一种。

Kheera’s abilities in Warlocks vs Shadows

Kheera’s abilities in Warlocks vs Shadows

而每种都代表了不同的游戏风格——有防卫型、进攻型和辅助型。接着每种形态转换技能都能升三级,每个技能在转换形态的技能设定中都只有一个对应技能槽。所以当你转换成不同形态的时候,你就无法再使用你之前的技能了,只能用你现在选的人物形态的新技能,以及一个可以转换成原来形态的形态转换技能。这也就是说,现在玩家实际上要控制的有三个角色。而这些加起来大概要额外多30多帧的逐帧动画。

由于我们已经对动画制作已经有一个非常紧张的里程碑计划了,所以我决定重新想个法子。我们在续作中将只有五个人物,所以我们要尽我们所能选出最好的角色阵容,让玩家有尽可能多种的操作风格。我最后决定Kheera将成为游戏中的最强辅助型角色,就跟她在前作中一样。当然了,那并不意味着其他角色就完全没有辅助功能了——我已经为不同的术士计划好了,他们在团队中同样也会有多种辅助效果。

support-oriented character(from gamasutra.com)

support-oriented character(from gamasutra.com)

我们将注意力投注到她的其他技能上——印图腾、辅助增益、治疗。Kheera可以印出两种不同的图腾——愤怒图腾和抵抗图腾。第一种是对她和她附近的队友有进攻上的增益效果——增加攻击力和增加速度。同时它还能炮轰敌人。第二种是可以帮助队友再生一定范围的HP(生命),以及增益他们的铠甲效果和魔法抵抗。你可以通过对各种技能的加点来提升你的图腾效果,比如可以通过图腾炮弹来产生吸血增益或者对敌人施加减速效果。

她还是有两种“终极”技能来选择(至少目前为止)。第一个技能名叫救赎——该技能可以为自己和自己的队友回复大量血条以及可以提升指定技能等级的buff。另一个技能是群控辅助符咒。这两种技能群效果不仅作用于队友,对Kheera自身也有效——所以在单人模式下也是很好用的。不过Kheera还有很多技能在团队中的效果会明显。

最终Kheera保留了匕首投掷、用毒以及回队友血的技能,而人物动作则无需作出改变(更重要的是不需要添加非常多形态转换的动画帧)。

support-oriented character(from gamasutra.com)

support-oriented character(from gamasutra.com)

总结

那么从以上所有内容中我们能学到什么呢?——不要把把的设计固定死而畏惧对它做出部分的改动。特别是当你需要很多的资源来修改打磨角色的时候——尽量把事情做小些,把更多的经历花在打磨人物上,这比起无光泽且完成度低的大型劣质游戏要好得多。归根结底,如果你想靠对游戏的激情/兴趣来谋生的话,你得把它看成一桩生意——当在为你的项目、资金、人力和时间做出下一个里程碑计划时,你得认真考虑到如何规划手头有限的资源。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Kheera is a deadly Shamaness. She can serve well as a support in a group or go the solo assassin way, whatever play style you prefer. This is one of the characters that were featured in the prequel of Warlocks 2: God Slayers (our current project) – Warlocks vs Shadows.

Feathers, tattoos and daggers. These are the words I’d use if I had to describe her in… right, three words.

In the first installment of Warlocks series every character had only four skills (each with a boosted form when upgraded up to 5th level) in its arsenal. In the sequel we are going with fewer character but each one with much better customization options – skill trees. And this brings an entirely different set of problems to the designing process of characters.

Kheera was one of the harder characters to pick up for a new player, that’s because she’s actually the only one that didn’t have only four skills. She had seven of them, the most interesting one allows her to change forms, between offensive and defensive. And then there are three skills for each form.

In the first form you heal your teammates, spawn supporting totems and shoot magic missiles that boost when passing through an ally or your totem. In the other one you throw daggers, poison your enemies and teleport in silencing blasts.

So when the time came that I sat down to design the Shamaness’s skill set, the first idea that popped into my mind was that we have to keep her iconic move – shape shifting. Screw just keeping it, let’s expand on it! So I came up with a skill tree including three shape-shifting skills tagged as “ultimates”, which meant basically that you can only have one of those in your selection.

Each one would stand for a different play style, defensive, aggressive or supporting. Then each of those shape-shifting skills would have three additional upgrades, each one corresponding to one slot in that shifted form’s skill set. So when you transformed into a different form you’d disable your ordinary abilities and have three new ones based on the shape you picked and one to go back to your original form. That would mean animating additional 3 creatures controllable by the players. And that adds up to roughly ~30 additional frame-by-frame animations!

We already had a really tight milestone plan when it comes to animations so I decided to rethink that approach. We will have only five characters in the sequel so we have to choose the best cast of characters we can, giving players as many viable play-styles as possible. I decided that Kheera will be the most support-oriented character in the game, as she was in the previous Warlocks installment. Of course that doesn’t mean that other characters won’t have any supporting abilities – I already have a different Warlock planned out that should also be viable as a support in co-op.

And so instead of stance-switching we focused on her other skills – spawning totems, buffs and heals. Kheera can spawn two different totems – Totem of Wrath and Totem of Resistance. The first one buffs her and her nearby allies in an offensive way, by increasing attack and casting speed. It also fires projectiles at enemies. The second totem regenerates HP of allies in its range and buffs their armor and magic resistance. You can further customize the totems by spending learning points on various upgrades, like life steal buff or adding slow to projectiles fired by the Totem of Wrath.

She also has (as of now) two “ultimate” skills to choose from. The first one is called Salvation, it instantly restores a chunk of hers and her allies’ health along with a buff that you can customize with skill upgrades. The other one is a crowd-control supporting spell. Both of those benefit not only the party members but also Kheera herself – so they’re not unusable in single player mode. Though there are many other skills in her set that might be better for single play.

In the end Kheera still throws daggers, poisons her enemies and heals her team-mates, but does it without needing to change stances (and more importantly without the need for animating countless alternate forms).

Conclusion

What is there to learn from all of this? Don’t be afraid to change the parts of your design that you think are set in stone. Especially when they require a lot of resources to polish up – it’s better to make something smaller and more polished than a lackluster and unfinished giant abomination of a game. After all if you want to make a living out of your passion / hobby, you have to treat it like a business – there are limited resources you have to take into consideration when planning out the next milestones for your project, money, people and time.(source:gamasutra.com  )


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