原作者：Jon Ingold 译者：Willow Wu

Heaven’s Vault是一款由inkle开发的考古冒险游戏，他们的产品还有《80天环游世界（80 Days）》以及《巫术！（Sorcery! ）》系列。

很明显，Heaven’s Vault是迄今为止我们做过的最复杂的游戏。实时、非线性、即时反馈的叙事方法，再加上全开放式的3D世界，这并不是随随便便就能做出来的。这也是目前为止我们制作过的最美的游戏，很大程度上要归功于游戏的环境设计。在之前的文章中已经跟你们小小透露了Maersi的森林之月。

80_Days(from gamasutra)

但游戏中还有沙漠考古区、杂草丛生的荒地，古代集市、城镇等等很多东西，我们必须在游戏可以发行前把这些东西都建好。

幸好，近期我们已经进入收尾阶段了。现在我们知道游戏会在哪里、以怎样的方式停止。意思就是我们知道哪一部分是真正重要的，哪些算是有趣的想法。我们知道哪些是伏笔，哪些是多余的。

所以，现在到了修剪的时候。既然明白了目标是什么，我们应该做的是诚实面对游戏，认识到哪些是必要的，哪些是可以抛弃的。

删减并不容易

删减是个很困难的工作，只有你做了才知道。所有东西看起来都好像是必不可少的，尤其是在这样一个前后关联十分密切的游戏中，要等到你把它拿掉的那一刻你才意识到这个东西只是虚有其表罢了。如果有什么东西不用怎么考虑就可以删了，那你应该早就已经就删了。

所以最适合删减的内容就是那些“有很多内容可以深究”的部分，因为这就意味直到项目接近尾声，你都还没把它完成。

删减需要成本

删减也是一项烧钱的工作：在过去的几天，我们把好几周的心血淘汰了，包括3D界面创建、文字内容、脚本、相机设计、测试……都抛弃了。我们希望在剔除没有价值的东西之后，留下来的内容是比原来更加吸引人的，但是我们也无法百分百保证。

但是不做删减的话，成本会更高。用到greybox的关卡花了好几周才敲定最终版本——要添加属性、确定颜色、加上光源，当然还需要另外的文字内容、脚本和其它适合的这个关卡的东西，让它变得更加有意思。一般来说我们不会去删减greybox之后的的内容，但对于删减的选择还是有一定自由的。（之前有一次我们删了一个已经做好的关卡的其中一节，然后把它单独做成了一个新关卡。）

直至在两周前，我们已经砍掉了整整两个关卡，把剩下来的东西混合到其它适合的场景中。如此一来这些场景的内容就变得更加丰富了，弥补了之前的空洞感。

删减需要找到焦点

在我们之前的游戏中从来没有出现过这样的状况——我们会删减台词、叙述文字，这很正常，但是砍掉整个城市、镇子？从来没有。我们只是将它们隐藏起来了。我们在制作《80天环游世界》的时候，收获了一个非常重要的建议就是“把所有东西都写下来”——如果你能想到什么东西，写下来，说不定我们会在别的地方用到。看看这张《80天环游世界》的原型图，这大概是开发进程中期的时候：

这距离最后版本大概还差40%，但《80天环游世界》是个让玩家自己决定焦点的游戏，对于玩家来说这就意味着挑战：他们要勇于坚持自己的想法，到那些别人未曾探索过的地方去冒险。游戏意在表达不随波逐流会让你的旅途变得更加珍贵。

这个方法用在Heaven’s Vault上的效果就是如此——一个内容丰富、相对完整的世界，同时还有棘手的限定问题，但是这个建议也只能把我们带到这里了。游戏制作虽然多少有遭受牵制，但也不完全是坏事。因为我们储备了大量的新想法，关于游戏时机、游戏概念以及游戏节奏。

我们随时可以把这些还没用到的设计投入使用，再加以适当的修剪，我们一定能把这个游戏打造成优秀之作。

我们有备用选项——如果游戏中的某个东西是重复的，我们可以替换成新的。

我们可以控制游戏节奏——如果觉得哪个章节的节奏过快，我们可以加入新内容。

我们的每一次删减对游戏来说都是一次真正的大进步，不断提升游戏的完整度。如果有一天我们砍掉了一整个关卡，可以说这就是最有效率的一天了。（但是如果我们的AI也这么认为，那就有大麻烦了。）

所以删减并不是个容易的任务，但是至关重要。我想我们还是做得挺出色的吧，你一定会爱上这份不为人所见的工作。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Heaven’s Vault is an archaeolgical adventure game being made by inkle, the creators of 80 Days and the Sorcery! series.

It’s no secret that Heaven’s Vault is our most complex game to date. Real-time, non-linear, always-reacting storytelling in a fully explorable 3D world isn’t something you just stumble on. It’s also our most beautiful game yet; and a huge part of that are the environments. We’ve shared a little peek of the forest moon of Maersi already…

… but there are desert digs, overgrown palaces, ancient covered markets, towns, cities… there’s a lot of stuff. And somehow we have to build it all before we can release the game.

Luckily, we recently wrote the ending. We now know exactly how and where the game will stop. That means we know which bits of the middle really matter, and which just seemed like interesting ideas at the time. We know which bits are foreshadowing, and which bits are fluff.

So now’s the time to cut. Now that we’re know where we’re trying to get, now’s the time to be honest about which diversions work, and which don’t.

Cutting isn’t easy

Cutting is hard, right up until you do it. Everything, especially in a game this tightly bound, seems like it absolutely needs to be there – until you take it away, and realise it only had the appearance of real content. If something was easy to cut, after all, you would have already done it.

So the best things to cut are the sections which “have great potential” – because having great potential, at a late stage in the project, means you’ve failed to execute.

Cutting isn’t cheap

Cutting is also expensive: in the last few days we’ve thrown away weeks worth of work, in greyboxing, writing, scripting, camera design, play-testing… The hope is all of that work has been distilled down somehow and that’s what left is richer and juicier than it would otherwise have been, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

But not cutting is even more expensive. Greybox levels take weeks to finalise – to fill with props and colour, to light, and of course there’s additional writing, scripting, and all the other things that take a decent level and make it great. As a rule we try not to cut anything that’s past the greybox stage – there’s always freedom in what you cut and how. (We have in one instance cut a section of an existing level and used it to make a new level.)

So far in the last two weeks we’ve cut two entire levels, mixing what content we can around the other sites. Those places have got richer, and the need to pad out the weaker location has gone away.

Cutting is about finding focus

With our previous games we never needed to cut like this – we cut lines and words, sure, but whole cities, whole towns – never. We just hid them instead. The key advice in creating 80 Days was “Always write everything”: if you can think of something, write it; we’ll need it somewhere. For instance, take a look at this screenshot of the 80 Days content prototype, from about halfway through development:

That’s about 60% of the final game – but then 80 Days is a game that actively defies focus; that challenges the player to accept their will always be something that goes unseen. It’s a game about how the path unfollowed makes the path you’re on more precious.

For Heaven’s Vault the “always write everything” approach has gotten us this far – to a well-developed world, and a terrifying scope problem – but it’ll take us no further. But a scope problem is an opportunity in diguise. It means we’ve bought ourselves a huge stockpile of raw ideas, of moments, concepts and beats.

We’ve got a huge old pile of veg to turn into stock here: with the right cuts, we can make this game nothing-but-good.

We’ve got options – if something in the game is repetitive, we can swap out an instance of it for something fresh.

We’ve got control over pacing – if we want to slow a section down, we’ve got content we can bring in to do that.

And every cut we make is real, measurable progress: it increases the percentage of the game that’s complete. A day when we cut a level is our most productive day. (Although when our AI overlords start applying this kind of logic, we’re all in big trouble.)

So cutting is hard, but vital; and we think we’ve made some brilliant cuts. You’re going to love the bits you don’t get to see. （source:gamasutra.com ）