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Game Insight首席执行官谈论Guns of Boom的制作过程

发布时间:2017-10-23 09:24:29 Tags:,

原文作者:Matt Suckley 译者:Megan Shieh

Game Insight的FPS(第一人称射击类)手游《Guns of Boom》于2017年5月在各大应用商店正式上线。

该作创造了一个强势的开局,两周内下载量达到了500万次,两月内累积超过1000万次。

为此,我们访问了Game Insight首席执行官Anatoly Ropotov。

PocketGamer.biz:《Guns of Boom》的灵感来源是什么呢?该作是从什么时候开始研发的?

Anatoly Ropotov:都说最好的游戏来自于那些为自己制作游戏的人,这可能是老生常谈了,但的确是事实。我曾是《雷神之锤》的高端玩家;也曾花费无数的时间沉浸在《军团要塞2》的世界里。

制作团队的每个人都是FPS的粉丝,不论是《反恐精英》、《光晕》、《现代战争》,还是《彩虹六号维加斯》,我们都爱不释手。对了,还有最近一次的灵感来源《守望先锋》。

我们想要创造出一款可以在自己的办公室里一起玩的游戏,在开发游戏的过程中偶尔抽出点时间来爆几个头,放松一下。

即便此前有许多人作出过尝试,但市面上还没有出现过成功的FPS手游,于是我们决定要用最赞的FPS手游来填满这块空缺,结果我们真的做到了!

其他的FPS手游有什么缺点?《Guns of Boom》是如何克服这些问题的?

当我们决定要制作《Guns of Boom》的时候,市场上就已经存在其他的射击类手游了。但是它们要么忽略了重要的平台功能和特色,要么控制过于复杂,要么就超负荷。

有些游戏会直接把玩家扔进一张巨大的地图里,而这些地图的规模对于手游的会话长度而言往往太过笨重。其他的游戏则无法正确地抓住游戏的动态和节奏,有的节奏太快、太hardcore;有的则太慢,太无聊。

这还不包括技术方面的问题,例如差劲的优化、网络代码问题,甚至应用程序的大小。

Guns of Boom(from pocketgamer.biz)

Guns of Boom(from pocketgamer.biz)

核心问题就是,开发者们太急于把PC和主机的体验移植到移动设备上,而忽略了最重要的点——适当地调整游戏体验,让玩家们在移动设备上玩FPS的时候感觉尽可能地自然。

除了避开这些陷阱之外,我们还借鉴了《光晕》此前在客厅主机上取得的突破性进展:从玩家的体验出发,让他们忘掉手中设备的玻璃触摸屏,尽情地投入到游戏中。

这一方案为FPS的粉丝们提供了一个无缝、真实的体验。

《Guns of Boom》的控制方案是如何定下来的?

我们从非常简单的控制模型开始测试,它不包含可以在现代PC /游戏机射击类游戏中看到的额外机制,比如跳跃、蹲伏、窥探或跑酷。

这种做法可以把UI保持在最小值,给玩家呈现更大的用户界面。

同时,我们尝试添加了瞄准辅助(Aim assist)和自动开火(auto–fire)。事实证明一击即中,把对手瞬间爆头的场景最有满足感。

另外,玩家们可以通过接近和轻击‘近战攻击按钮’来攻击敌人,但比起这些,我们更希望玩家能够参与射击技能的训练(例如:远程瞄准)。

制作团队投入了大量的时间和精力来优化核心机制,进行内部测试。在公司内部,我们会突然宣布联赛开始,然后每个人都必须放下手中的事情来参与联赛。

从这些测试中收集到的所有反馈都很实用,还没开始beta,设计师就已经改进了控制。

《Guns of Boom》的总开发时间有多长?

你这样问,搞得好像我们已经收工了一样…我们仍在非常积极地研发新的模式和特性/功能。

由于《Guns of Boom》是从PC版起步的,所以你可能会觉得它的开发过程多少有些突破传统。

我们首先把游戏放到PC平台上进行疯狂地优化,实施了上百次的内部测试和联赛,直到体验极佳的时候,我们再把它移植到移动平台上。

两年间,我们对游戏进行了多次的迭代和定时优化。

美术设计的灵感来源于哪里?

灵感来源于《军队要塞》和《守望先锋》,我们的目标是创造出一款既hardcore,又能让休闲玩家享受的游戏,于是我们完美地融合了卡通和轻松的场景。

另一个原因是画面优化。为移动设备开发游戏时,画面优化特别重要。因为市面上的移动设备类型十分广泛,所以我们想要建立一个大家都能享受的游戏(不仅仅是高端设备)。

此外,卡通的外观意味着我们不一定得加入逼真的武器性能,因此我们可以进行天马行空的创意头脑风暴,从而为打斗增添乐趣和活力。

测试发行的过程中,你学到了什么?作为学习结果,你作出了哪些重大的改变?

在beta初期,我们真正关注的是核心玩法。工作室投入了大量的时间来测试核心玩法,直到看到玩家们定期回到游戏,并开始谈论游戏的时候,我们才把焦点转移到了游戏的元层面(meta layer of gameplay)。

在这段时间里,我们对枪支和装备的获取及升级方式进行了多次改进;将目光专注于游戏的功能和特性,并仔细聆听玩家的反馈;除了控制之外,我们还成功地为多种设备提高了游戏的稳定性。

在手机设备上实现一张地图,8个玩家的即时PVP体验,这在技术上有多困难?

难得可怕!原因很简单:玩家们玩惯了PC和主机上的FPS,所以他们会期望在移动设备上得到相同的体验,但是手机设备的硬件和连接条件又不可能一直很稳定。所以在技术方面我们真的没有妥协的余地。

多年的努力使得我们的服务器可以处理和补偿高延迟的情况。而且在安排比赛的时候,服务器会合理地搭配玩家,以此来避免高延迟的状况发生。

客户端方面,对类型如此广泛的智能手机进行优化,本身就是一项壮举。

此外,当延迟可能成为一个问题的时候,游戏会变得更加稳固。调整了游戏的节奏后,角色的移动速度变得相对较慢。再者,与其他同类游戏相比,要想在《Guns of Boom》里碾压敌人,需要更多的火力。

再加上许多其他的小功能/特性,即使互联网连接薄弱,也能产生极佳的体验。事实上,我们会在服务器上跟踪比赛,所以即使玩家遇到了滞后的情况,我们也能准确地计算他们的火力/射击,并预测结果,以确保一切尽可能地顺利。

换句话说,游戏在3G网络上可以完美地发挥。

研发过程中,遇到过的最大挑战是什么?

优化控制。正如之前提到的,移动平台上鲜少有容易上手的PVP射击游戏,而这就是《Guns of Boom》脱颖而出的原因。

这是一条漫长的道路,我们做了大量的内部游戏测试,去掉了几十个选项;直到最终找到了自动射击,瞄准辅助等神奇配方,才实现了真正直观并且容易上手的控制。

因此,本作的控制非常容易驾驭,即便是从来没有玩过第一人称射击类游戏的人,也能游刃有余。

话虽如此 ,但我们却从未想过停止优化。例如,在最新的更新中,只需双击屏幕上的任何地方,就可以切换武器和重装子弹。单单是这么一个微小的功能,就提高了玩法的速度和体验。

对目前的反响满意吗?

玩家的反应超出了所有人的预料。我们收到的不仅仅是玩家的评论,更包括赤果果的数字。

距离全球发布还不到两个月,《Guns of Boom》就拥有超过1000万的玩家,而且还在持续上涨。已经有10万个玩家在油管上上传了视频,并且,游戏在所有商店中的评分都非常高。这是一个开发者能得到的最好鼓励。

俗话说,顾客就是上帝,而这就是我们对待玩家的态度。

《Guns of Boom》的未来规划是什么?

我们把《Guns of Boom》看作是一个电子竞技游戏,目前也在针对这个点研发新的功能/特性。

我们正在努力试图将《Guns of Boom》发展成为最好的第一人称射击游戏,也准备在电子竞技的舞台上大放异彩。更重要的是,玩家可以期待在手游和FPS类型游戏上从未出现过的功能。

我们一直都在倾听玩家的反馈,并酌情改进游戏的现有部分,比如武器和设备。

其次,我们也正在积极地研发一些其他的功能来满足最苛刻的玩家:值得期待的新地图,令人影响深刻的武器,大量的定制服务(如:面具),还有角色和武器的皮肤。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Game Insight’s first-person mobile shooter Guns of Boom exploded onto the app stores in May 2017.

It’s made a quick start to life, shooting past five million downloads in two weeks, and by two months it had already racked up over 10 million.

It’s already proving a success, but it appears there’s a lot more to come from the game with ambitions to develop its eSports potential.

We caught up with Game Insight CEO Anatoly Ropotov to find out more about the hit title, how it has made FPS fun on mobile and what its plans are for the future.

PocketGamer.biz: Game Insight hasn’t traditionally been known as an FPS developer. What inspired Guns of Boom, and when did you begin working on it?

Anatoly Ropotov: It’s probably a cliché to say that the best games come from folks that are making games for themselves, but that’s really the truth. I was a competitive Quake player, and have spent countless hours addicted to Team Fortress 2.

We’re all fans of the genre here, whether that’s the good old days playing Counter-Strike, Halo, or Modern Warfare, to more recent experiences like team terrorist hunts on Rainbow Six Vegas, or our latest inspiration, Overwatch.

We wanted to create a game that we could play together in our offices – to take a break from making games and just shoot some faces.

As it turned out, there was a huge demand since no one had been able to fit all the pieces together right on mobile. We wanted to fill that void with the best FPS on mobile, and you can download and play the result of that right now.

Where do you feel mobile shooters have historically failed and how did you aim to address these issues with Guns of Boom?

When we set out to make Guns of Boom there were other mobile shooters out there, but often they didn’t take into account important platform features and characteristics, or the controls were too complex and overloaded.

Some of these games dropped players into maps that were way too big and unwieldy for short mobile sessions. Others just couldn’t get the dynamics and pacing of the gameplay right – either too fast and hardcore, or too slow and, well, boring.

That’s not even getting into the technical issues such as poor optimisation, problems with netcode and even the size of the apps.

At its core, the problems boiled down to developers trying to rush the PC and console experience onto mobile while missing the most important point – organically adapting that experience so it actually feels natural on mobile devices.

In addition to sidestepping those pitfalls, we took a cue from the breakthrough that Halo made at a time when FPS offerings on living room consoles still left players… skeptical.

The approach was to start from the player’s experience, make them forget about the strangely shaped chunk of plastic in their hands (or in our case, the glass touchscreen of their device), and let them precisely guide their character and connect directly to the action.

It turned out to be the perfect solution, providing a seamless and genuine experience for FPS fans on mobile.

How important was it for you to find a control scheme that worked for touchscreen shooting and how did you arrive at what we see today?

Development of the best control scheme wasn’t easy, but it ultimately laid the foundation for the core gameplay that struck a chord with players. It all started with finding that nugget of gameplay gold.

Luckily, we started with a very simple control model that didn’t have the extra mechanics like jumping, crouching, peeking or parkour cover mechanics that you see in modern PC/console shooters.

This has the added benefit of keeping the UI to a minimum, which means you have more of the screen to see what you’re shooting.

We found some success when we tried adding aim assist and auto-fire during development. Lining up a really clean shot at your opponent proved to be the main satisfaction point.

Also, spotting and training the right shot is really the primary skill that we wanted players to engage in, rather than tapping the target at the right time. Though you can still do a number on an enemy by getting up close and tapping that melee attack button.

All said, a tonne of time went into polishing that core mechanic so it would feel as natural as possible on a touchscreen. We spent a bunch of time in internal testing, as well as company-wide sessions where we’d announce a tournament and everyone would stop what they were doing to play.

Collecting all the feedback from those tests really helped the designers dial in the controls and get the game out of the player’s way before we even went to beta. The end result is what you’re seeing today.

How big was the team on Guns of Boom and how long was the total development time?

That makes it sound like we’re done with it! We’re still very actively developing new modes and features, and we have quite a large team working on the game. You might say Guns of Boom had an unorthodox development process though, since it started with a PC version.

We believe that played a huge role in the game’s success, since we polished the hell out the game on PC first. And by that I mean hundreds of internal play tests and tournaments across all of our offices. That’s a lot of players and playtime.

Once it started to feel and play great, we transferred what we’d achieved to mobile platforms.

After many iterations, qualitative reworks and sleepless nights over two years of development,Guns of Boom became what we see now – and nothing speaks to its success better than the feedback we’re getting from our players.

What inspired the game’s bright and colourful aesthetic? Was it always your intention to avoid the grim and militaristic look?

Inspired by Team Fortress and Overwatch, we wanted to create a game that both hardcore and casual players would enjoy, so we settled on a perfect blend of a cartoonish and light-hearted setting balanced with a militaristic style.

Another reason behind our choice was graphics optimisation. It plays a huge role when you are creating a game for a wide range of mobile devices so that all of our players – not only the owners of top devices – could enjoy the game.

Also, by taking a step away from realism in the game’s look, players are not expecting realistic weapon behaviour. This allows us more leeway to be creative and bold in our ideas. The result is an added degree of explosive fun and dynamism to the fights.

What did you learn from the soft launch period and what were the biggest changes you enacted as a result?

At the beginning of the beta, we really focused on that core gameplay. That’s what we were testing for quite some time, and as soon as we saw players were coming back regularly and talking about the game, we were confident about switching focus to the meta layer of gameplay.

We actually changed how players get and upgrade their guns and equipment radically several times during this period.

Asides from the controls, we were able to optimise and improve the game’s stability for a wide variety of devices. Working on gameplay features and carefully listening to our players feedback allowed us to build a strong foundation to confidently set our course for development after release.

How technically difficult is it to give eight players a real-time PvP experience on a single map on mobile?

Iit was tremendously difficult for one simple reason: while players’ expectations for online shooters are set high from the crisp experience on other PC and console, you can’t count on the hardware or the connectivity to be rock solid on mobile. We really had no room or intention to compromise on the technical side of things.

For our servers, years of work went into making a robust server that could handle and compensate for high-latency situations. And, very importantly, we designed them to avoid those situations whenever possible by putting the right players together during matchmaking.

On the client, optimising for such a wide range of smartphones – not just Android flagships and iPhones – was a feat in and of itself and deserves an article of its own.

Also, the gameplay was designed in such a way that it would be more robust when latency could otherwise become an issue. After tuning the pace of the game, the movement of the characters turned out to be relatively slow. Plus it takes quite a bit more fire to bring down an enemy as compared to other shooters.

Those points, combined with a host of other finely tuned micro-features, yielded an excellent experience even over a weak internet connection. In fact, even if a player experiences lag we can accurately calculate their fire and predict the outcome to make sure everything plays out as smoothly as possible because we follow the match on our server.

In other words, you can expect the game to play perfectly on 3G, which is crucial for a game that’s literally designed to be played on the go.

What was the biggest challenge you faced during the game’s development?

The biggest challenge we tackled resulted in one of the best features of the game: tuning the controls. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve not seen any easy-to-play PVP shooters on mobile and this is what really makesGuns of Boom stand out

It was a long road with all our internal play testing and dozens of discarded options until we finally found that magic recipe of auto-fire, aim assist and all the other micro-features that made the controls really intuitive and accessible.

The result is a game with controls that are easy to master – even for a player who has no experience with first-person shooters.

That being said, it’s not like we feel “we’ve arrived” and we’re done making improvements, either. In our latest update, for example, we added weapon switching and reloading just by double tapping anywhere on the screen. This micro-feature alone adds a new level of speed and skill to play.

How do you reflect on the game’s launch? Are you happy with the reception thus far?

The reaction from players has exceeded all of our expectations. The feedback we’ve received, not only in written form but also in numbers, has blown us away.

In just two months since the worldwide launch,Guns of Boom has more than 10 million players and continues to grow. We’ve seen more than 100,000 videos uploaded on YouTube and high ratings in all the stores. This is the best motivation that a developer can possibly receive and our team keeps working harder each day.

Players are our everything and we want to treat them accordingly.

What’s next for Guns of Boom?

We see Guns of Boom as a strong eSports title and we are working on new features that reflect this, allowing you to play with friends and your clan in a totally new way.

Right now we are building a whole new environment around the game with all the necessary elements of a competitive first-person shooter, ready to rock the eSports stage. What’s more, players can expect unique and never-before-seen features both on mobile and the FPS genre at large.

Active development in all directions never stops. We are always listening to our players and improving all the existing parts of the game, such as weapons and equipment, in order to keep everything well-balanced.

Secondly, to satisfy even the most demanding players, lots of new stuff is being developed: new maps in unexpected settings, impressive new weapons and tons of customisations like masks, and full body and weapon skins.

We are even experimenting with several new team-based gameplay modes. You’ll hear more about that soon.

We’ve seen tons of player-submitted videos and we want to give back by making all those great videos accessible directly from inside the game in a new version of the VideoHub. It’s a great opportunity for all of the creators in our community.

There’s much more happening right now, and we can’t wait to share it with everyone. I recommend following us on Facebook and joining the live discussion with devs in our Discord chats. (Source: www.pocketgamer.biz


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