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开发者以Band of Defenders为例谈游戏的系统建造

发布时间:2017-07-03 09:23:26 Tags:,,

本文原作者: Jakub Dockal 译者游戏邦ciel chen

《Band of Defenders》并非一款常规现代化的可合作(coop)第一人称射击游戏(FPS)。也许在你击杀那些试图砍杀你并破坏你的保护目标(“基地”)的敌人之前,你都会觉得它是(coop FPS),然而在那之后,你就会发现自己有机会(如果你想胜利的话最好好好利用这个机会)围绕你的“基础”建立保护设施。而且同时我们可以确定的是——《Band of Defenders》始终是一款很棒的FPS游戏,而其中的“构建、建造”部分内容就是它出彩的地方。

Band of Defenders(from gamasutra.com)

Band of Defenders(from gamasutra.com)

平衡,它比想象中更重要!

多亏了这个古人想出的智慧之言——我们后来决定遵循与他们同样的路径。我们知道继《Killing Room之后的下一款游戏还会是一款FPS——因为Killing Room实在是太好玩了,它是集结了我们在开发第一款PC游戏中通过各种失败得来的许多经验研制而成的游戏。但是我们也想要创作一款独特的、能混合各种我们所爱的游戏流行元素的游戏——其中最突出的一个元素就是通过建造基地来抵御成群结队的敌军以及玩家之间的联合攻击。就像《杀戮空间》,以及《又一个僵尸塔防(Yet Another Zombie Defense)》、《幽闭圣地》和《七日杀》这些游戏都含这类流行游戏元素。对此,我们得确保我们所构建的建造系统玩起来会很有活力与乐趣。

我们提到这些游戏不只因为它们给我们灵感,而且也因为它们是我们开发道路上的阻碍和绊脚石——我们都知道《幽闭圣地》(对我们来说)塔防元素太重了,我们都了解《杀戮空间2》有点太血腥而且人物发展并没有如我们所望地铺展开来,我们都明白《又一个僵尸塔防》只有好创意,而我们的执行会做得更好,我们也都觉得《七日杀》有点过度复杂化,太费时了(对于速战速决的多人游戏来说)。

建造与升级

通过建造以及升级有用的设备会带来愉悦感。我们在塔防游戏、策略游戏和生存游戏中都享受这种愉悦感。基地就是家园,你要改变游戏里的世界来企及你的需求。而且因为《Band of Defenders》是关于防御设施的游戏,所以要建筑路障和炮塔是非常容易的事。

路障

路障会阻碍敌人向你的基地、炮塔以及你控制的角色的进军。我们想让玩家建立一些颜值高效果好的防御工事——事实上这并不容易,而且可以说是目前开发中最困难的一部分,那么要构建每个路障有多复杂呢?我们刚开始的一两次并没有把焦点放对地方,所以我们在构建这些路障时花了很多时间,不过对于最后的做出的结果我们总体还算是满意的,不过如果以后有时间的话还是希望再改进改进。

玩家会在基地附近预先选定的网格状位置进行构建(这样的水平设计比较容易)

玩家会建造出无缝连接型的小规模路障(最大规模只有1米x1米)——除了直线形还可以做成其他形状(X形、T形和L形)

升级(大部分)路障类型(只准备了五种发行用的具体路障类型)到更高的等级是连续性的——同一个基底的路障在升级时基底不变,只有部分会改变来体现升级。

在做过一些试验后,我们终于明白该做什么样的路障及其方式,因此在创建的每个路障身上不会耗太多时间。

炮塔

对于炮塔我们要解决的问题就不一样了。我们知道这些炮塔不一定要跟彼此接连,也不一定要跟路障连接——毕竟你也不想做围墙式炮塔吧。但是我们得考虑炮塔的要做成多大才合适,还要想想炮塔要怎么在网格建造规格内有限的空间里转动炮筒(每个炮塔和路障都只能呆在它们的1X1m宫格或者2mX2m宫格里,所以他们不会和其他结构发生碰撞)。而且要升级一个炮塔不是那么容易的——不是说随便在炮塔贴块铁皮就让能让它看起来更厉害像升级了一样。那么我们是如何解决这个问题的?

我们将给予炮塔更多的空间——他们会占据4个方格(2mX2m),这样他们的炮筒就有转动的空间了(这会带来另一个问题——一些炮塔占据的空间太多以至于我们得用轮胎水桶来填充这个空间好让玩家知道敌人是不能通过这个空间的)

升级后的炮塔整个模型会发生变化

我们的图像设计师尝试重复利用炮塔的各部分图像来组成其他更高等级的炮塔,所以在创造新型炮塔时并没有花费太多的时间。

要知道进步的空间是永无止境的,我们也希望尽可能地在结构上做到进一步多样化。因此在游戏里我们还想在路障/炮塔上增加随机性物件——让每个路障都可以在预设的位置上添物件(比如金属棒、海报、石头……),这样,这些混凝土路障搭建成的围墙看上去就不会那么单调,却仍可保持路障墙的整体感,其微小的瑕疵却让人感到倍感有趣了。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Band of Defenders isn’t regular modern coop FPS. It may look like one until you kill first wave of enemies trying to kill you and destroy object you are protecting („base“). But after that, you will have an opportunity (and you better use it if you want to win) to build protection around your „base“. And while we made sure that Band of Defenders is also a great first person shooter, it is this building part that makes it extraordinary

Balance, it’s so much bigger!

Thanks for the words of wisdom from a man who lived long time ago. We somehow decided to follow similar path. We knew that next game after Killing Room will be another FPS – it was just too tempting, using experience gained from many mistakes made during development of our first big PC game. But we also wanted to create game that will be special, mixing popular ideas from games we love – most notably building of a base, defending it against hordes of enemies and cooperation with other players. You know, something between Killing Floor, Yet another zombie defense, Sanctum and 7 days to die. For that, we had to make sure that our building system will be robust and fun to use.

We chose these game not only as our inspiration, but also as our boundaries and stepping stones – we knew that Sanctum is too much tower-defense (for us), we knew that Killing Floor (2) is a little bit too focused on gore and doesn’t provide character development in the way we wanted, we knew that Yet another zombie has only good idea but that we could execute it much better and we knew that 7 days to die is a little bit too complex and time-consuming (for purpose of fast multiplayer game).

Building and upgrading

It brings joy – building and upgrading useful stuff. We like it in tower defense games, strategies and also survival games. Your base is your home, you are changing in-game world to suit your needs. And because Band of Defenders is about defending, it was quite easy to make decision to build barricades and turrets.

Barricades

They serve as obstacles in the way of enemy movement towards your base, your turrets and your character. We wanted to let players create fortification that looks and works well. It wasn’t easy, actually it was the hardest part of development so far. Are we going to build on grid or free like in Fallout 4? Are we going to make seamless walls and if so, how big will be building blocks? Is it better to have monolithic appearance or some imperfections that repeat on each building block? We didn’t hit the nail on the head for the first time, or second time. It took a lot of time but we are quite happy with the result that can be even improved if we happen to have some spare time in the future.
Player will build on grid on predetermined places around his base (not only level design is easier that way)
Player will build small barricades (1x1m max) that seamlessly connect to each other – not only in line but also in various other shapes (X, T and L)

Upgrading (most) barricade types (concrete barricades are one of the 5 types planned for release) to higher level is continuous (see below) – barricades of the same type share one basis and only some parts change/upgrade

In the end, after few experiments, we knew what to do and how to do it and creating each barricade doesn’t take too much time.

Seamless barricade walls

Barricade upgrading

Turrets

With turrets we had to solve different problems. We knew that they don’t have to be connected to each other or to barricades – you don’t want to make wall of turrets. But we had to figure out how big should turret be, how should it rotate it’s barrel in the limited space given by building grid rules (each turret and barricade has to stay in its 1x1m or 2x2m space so they don’t collide with other structures). Also it isn’t so easy to upgrade a turret – it isn’t necessary to just attach a new plate of steel on it to make it look better/upgraded. How did we solve it?

Turrets will have more space – they will occupy 4 grids (2x2m) so their barrel has a room to rotate (it brought other problems – some turrets had too much space around so we had to fill it with tires, barrels etc. to show player that enemies cannot go through that space)

Upgrading will change whole model

Our graphic designer tries to re-use most of the parts in more upgrade levels of turret type so it doesn’t take too much time to create each turret

Upgrading burst turrets – first 3 levels of 9 (this type is one of 7 turret types planned for release)

There is always room to improve and we know that bigger variability in structures would be great. So one of the things that we want to add to the game are random objects on barricades/turrets. Each barricade could be built with object (for example iron rod, poster, stone,…) on one of the predefined positions so wall of concrete barricades wouldn’t be so monolithic but it would still feel as one wall, just with few imperfections that make it more interesting.(source:gamasutra.com  )


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