游戏邦注：本文作者是Freeverse工作室游戏设计师和程序设计师Justin Ficarrotta，他在文中回顾了《Top Gun》（壮志凌云）这款iPhone游戏的开发过程，并指出开发电影授权游戏时必须多考虑粉丝的想法，尽量不要让游戏过于脱离电影情节。

当派拉蒙授权Freeverse开发《Top Gun》和《Days of Thunder》这两部电影的同名游戏时，我们团队深受鼓舞，因为大家都很看好这两部片子，认定它们很适合开发好玩而出色的游戏。《Top Gun》的人气尤其旺盛，所以我认为很有必要与各位分享它的开发经历。

背景介绍

我是Freeverse的设计师和程序员Justin Ficarrotta，开发过动作类及沉重风格的电子游戏，比如Freeverse发行的《Kill Monty》，我独立开发的《Kill Dr. Coté》、《Laserface Jones vs. Doomsday Odious》，这两款游戏都曾经获得uDevGames年度大奖提名。

Freeverse在90年代初是一家Mac游戏/软件公司，现在业务已经延伸到Xbox Live Arcade和iPhone平台。

我们开发的《Moto Chaser》和《Flick Fishing》都曾经进入苹果App Store付费应用前十强，我们目前推出20款以上的iPhone游戏。自我推销到此为止，我们开始进入正题吧。

关于《Top Gun》

《Top Gun》是一款以80年代经典电影《壮志凌云》为题材的iPhone游戏，人物角色就是电影中的Iceman和Maverick。不过在游戏中，Iceman和Maverick已经变身成为Top Gun军事学院的教官了，游戏故事主要围绕他们带领新兵的情形而展开。

它的玩法设置和《After Burner》或《Space Harrier》非常相似，会以第三人称的视角追踪玩家的喷射机，玩家可以在3D世界中自由驾驶飞行。飞行过程中还可以移动十字光标，追踪敌机并向其开火。游戏还为玩家配备了伏尔甘枪，可以直接向十字光标瞄准的物体射击。

游戏界面会出现一个“危险区域”的信息提示，让玩家警惕敌人导弹、飞行障碍物和地面防空系统等。

《Top Gun》项目简介：

开发周期：4个月

开发团队成员：一名制片人，两名程序中，一名2D美术设计师，一名3D美术设计师，一名音效设计师，QA小组

运行平台：苹果iPhone/iPod Touch

成功经验

1.争取到了主题歌《Danger Zone》的使用权

这一点很重要，我可不是在开玩笑。

派拉蒙批准甚至还帮我们拷贝了《Danger Zone》这首歌（游戏邦注：它是《壮志凌云》的主题曲），虽然这一点看起来很肤浅，但不得不承认这首歌甚至直接关系到《Top Gun》能不能获得用户的认可。只要去瞧瞧每一款《Top Gun》游戏的用户评论，就会发现几乎所有人都认为游戏不能没有这首歌。甚至还有人直言没有这首歌，就是游戏的最大败笔。

在游戏开发过程中，我把这首歌加进去了，因为觉得实在没有理由不这么做。但后面又有消息传来，我们可能没有这首歌的使用权，所以不得不大费周张地把歌曲删除了，那时我真是觉得又沮丧又心痛。我并不喜欢已获得授权的其他歌曲，因为那些歌根本就不是《Danger Zone》。

当我们正和派拉蒙协商这首歌重录版本的使用权时，大家已经冒着失败的风险将歌曲加了进去，等到制片人Bruce得到消息称派拉蒙已经批准的时候，整个团队都乐坏了，如果你的飞行员名字就叫“Danger Zone”那么游戏播放的曲子当然只能是《Danger Zone》。

2.使用原来的开发引擎

当我们同时接过《Days of Thunder》和《Top Gun》这两个项目时，我就提前做好决定，要最大限度地重复利用原来创建的代码。我们之前开发《Moto Chaser》和《Big Bang Sudoku》等iPhone游戏时，已经在开发引擎中保存了大部分的应用架构。

任何附加代码和级别都要针对两款游戏的不同要求而设计，但在《Top Gun》开发过程中我们却很占优势，因为许多游戏逻辑级别、灵活可重复使用的代码元素都是现成的。所以我只用了不到一周的时间，就快速创建了喷射机飞行并射落其他战机的游戏原型。

你还在设计手头上的游戏时，就已经知道下一款游戏的模样，而且两款游戏的代码都不全，就已经现出了清晰的轮廓，这种现象却实比较罕见。但我们却具备了这种优势，快速把《Top Gun》的主要元素拼凑为一体，然后将主要的时间和精力用于完善游戏设置，优化引擎，添加养眼的点缀功能等。

这两款游戏的共同点在于，它们都涉及到了物体加速和空间固定曲线。《Days of Thunder》是在轨道上运行，《Top Gun》中的动作主要围绕空中曲线来完成。所以我为《Days of Thunder》创建了一个解析svg曲线的系统，我们对《Top Gun》采用的是同一个解析器，用它解析了第二条针对高空环境的曲线。后来再结合我们自己的关卡编辑器，就可以极其迅速地创建关卡。

3.保留原电影的幽默元素

虽然《壮志凌云》仍然不失为一部杰出的动作电影，但不得不承认，它真的很土气。但我们整个团队都达成了一致意见，要承认并保留这种土气。派拉蒙也很同意我们的做法，他们甚至给我们传话，要让我们使用80年代的那种落伍的语言和腔调。

在每个游戏博客上，有个一成不变的用户问题就是“这款游戏有没有沙滩排球这种迷你游戏？”有，当然。 如果你进入了“排球”游戏界面，就会发现长期绷紧神经的Maverick和Iceman终于彻底解脱了。

不过有99%的玩家永远都不会注意到这个额外功能，我们从游戏论坛和博客也看到，仅有一小撮用户惊喜地发现“没错，真的有排球”。

4.首先敲定游戏设置机制

这一点虽然显而易见，但Freeverse和派拉蒙的主要目标是让游戏玩法更加有趣。我在上文中已经提到，创建《Top Gun》的原型只用了不到一周的时间，我省下了大把的时间去优化游戏控制系统，战斗系统，好让它更好玩更有意思。

这样我就可以尝试移动喷射机的多种不同功能，测试导弹速度，重载速度、追踪速度、敌方开火频率等许多需要检测的内容。

这种做法有双重的好处：首先，提前锁定一个好玩的游戏机制，可以为设计关卡、敌人和障碍物打下基础。我曾经开发过一些没有预先锁定核心机制的游戏，这类游戏并不好玩，而且功能叠加之下的基础也很薄弱。

不过也有一些风险，那就是回头去看的时候发现设计了很多没有意义的关卡和障碍物，或者发现根本无法再对游戏机制进行修改，因为重新设计其他的游戏元素需要花费更多时间，这样你就不得不退而求其次，采用二流的游戏设置。但庆幸的是，《Top Gun》提前设置了游戏机制，我们往其中添加关卡和敌人等元素的过程很顺利。

第二种好处就是：当游戏的开发周期是四个月（有时候甚至是12个月）时，团队成员的士气就非常重要。一般时候，大家如果说想开发游戏，言下之意就是指想开发“杰出”的游戏。作为杰出游戏开发团队的成员，可以极大地鼓舞人气，反过来又将对他们的工作产生积极的作用。

一个有趣的游戏机制应该不是指“它很费钱”或者“我每天晚上都为它守到10点，就是因为战斗太激烈了”，而应从QA和测试者的角度来看：如果游戏真的有趣，大家就会想玩，测试者则会多方面入手，帮助优化游戏，找出你可能永远也看不到的漏洞。

5.绑定一个知名品牌，市场竞争相对较小

这个看法可能也很表面，如果你要立足于某个品牌开发游戏，那么这个品牌必须是叫得响亮的名字。另外，如果你想获得更多曝光率，最好立足于一个没有大量同类产品相互厮杀的市场。

当我们开始设计《Top Gun》和《Days of Thunder》的时候，我对前者的情况已经是了如指掌，但却还没看过《Days of Thunder》，所以只好当作速成培训，去看了这部电影。

没看过这两部电影的人很可能更容易理解《Top Gun》的概念——谁让这部电影这么出名呢，它的主题曲已经是远近闻名了。而且市场上也已经有了大量的《Top Gun》游戏，到处都有这部电影的海报以及主题歌的宣传。

不过《Top Gun》仍然比《Days of Thunder》更占优势，因为市场上已经有太多的赛车类游戏了。我们在开发《Days of Thunder》的过程中，可能每周都会看到又一款新赛车游戏登场。但《Top Gun》就不一样了，我们不需要担心它的定位，因为当时的App Store根本就还没有这类游戏。

失败教训

1.没有采用电影中的同款战机

《壮志凌云》是一部80年代的标志性电影，它的战机自然也是80年代的风格。电影中的所有学员驾驶的都是这种型号的飞机，但我们开发游戏的时候并不选择的是更现代化的飞机，这个决定真是大错特错。

没错，这款游戏的故事背景比电影要晚好几年，而且电影中的战机也早就从美国部队退役了，但对玩家来说，这些事实并不重要。

我们最终决定采用新飞机的原因是，它的3D模型看起来效果更好。而且当我们知道旧飞机已经退居二线的时候，我们就通过了这一决定。

但用户才不在乎这中事实，他们就想开电影中的飞机。回想这一点，我不得不承认，为了让游戏看起来更像是巨作，我们在游戏中尽量避开了许多真实元素，但涉及到飞机时我们就希望更理性一点，不采用电影中已经落伍的机型，因为新战机看起来更酷。可实际上，我们应该做的是服务电影粉丝，不能让游戏与电影过度脱节。

我们的游戏其实是有这种旧机型的的，Iceman和Maverick出任务的时候坐的就是这种飞机，但它更像是复古装饰，并不是游戏的主流战斗机。

最重要的是，我们并没有满足玩家的愿望，用户最大的意见就是游戏没有提供电影中的战斗机。

2.游戏结尾吊人胃口

我们犯的另一宗错误就在于游戏的结局，在我看来，这一点又可以分成两个失误。首先就是游戏在高潮部分戛然而止，收尾方式过于草率。

这款游戏原来共有16个关卡，但我们将它浓缩到10个关卡时并没有将故事情节也同步缩短，所以决定让结尾留有余地，好为将来开发继集版本做铺垫。所以这款游戏的结尾仍然处于空战状态，尽管它的游戏玩法、难易程度设置都很完善，可故事情节却是有有始无终。

还有一个失误就是收尾速度过快，缺乏过渡。当用户完成最后一个任务时，游戏马上就切入“未完待续”的界面，然后一转眼又回到了游戏开始界面。其实我自己就很不喜欢这种结局，它让我回想起小时候玩《Rampage》的时候，闯过重重关卡最后却只看到“祝贺你”这句话的失落感。

出现这种情况的原因是，当时我们已经没有多少时间去完善这部分内容，所以才会如此草草收场。

3.未明确指出它并非漫游空战

除了没有采用电影中的战机，用户的另一个最大意见就是《Top Gun》不是3D漫游空战游戏，而是轨道运行游戏。但我们设计这款游戏的时候，从来没打算把它定位为全漫游的3D游戏。

我也曾经玩过这类游戏，但还是觉得《After Burner》和《Space Harrier》这种游戏更刺激更有吸引力，所以我设计《Top Gun》时也采用了同样的模式。在我看来，空中激战游戏的进程更慢，而且很注重策略，甚至有点无趣，我还是比较喜欢像《After Burner》这类有快感，紧张和混乱的战斗场景。

当然并非人人都会同意我的观点，大家只要随心所欲，选择自己喜欢的游戏就行。但问题就在于，不少玩家乍一看《Top Gun》，就认定它是自由漫游作品，然后就立即掏钱买下，结果却大失所望。

他们的失望也并非没有原因，因为你在App Store中所能使用的市场营销工具，就只有游戏名称、图标和一些视频截图，光凭这点信息当然很难向玩家表达完整的游戏内容。不过也TouchArcade等博客上也有些用户评论替我们解了围，他们认为《Top Gun》虽然是轨道运行游戏，但游戏体验并不差。但这些评论的影响力毕竟有限，仍然有不少玩家纠结于这个问题。

现在回想起来，解决这个问题的最好办法可能是推出更多游戏片段，甚至是一个简装版本。如果我们提供了一个预告片或者一个免费关卡，可能大家就更容易知道《Top Gun》并非自由漫游戏作品，如果玩家真的不喜欢这种类型的游戏，也就不至于白花冤枉钱了。另外，假如我们当时推出了更多片段或者一个免费版本，也许就会有更多人发现这款游戏其实也很好玩，甚至也会想买来玩玩看。

4.关卡设计失误

首先，没有根据故事情节设计游戏机制。

这一点主要表现在导弹供应和敌机设计上。导弹追踪系统是完全可定制的代码，可发射的导弹数量、追踪速度、重载速度、子弹速度和火力都是可定制的东西，但我们却汉有对它们进行升级和调整。

这种设置原本可以让玩家随着游戏发展，更高效地击落许多敌机，而且我们也添加了多种类型的飞机和敌人，但我们的失误就在于，一次性让所有的飞机、敌人种类的第一个关卡中出场，而不是让这些内容在新的关卡中逐步展现。

其次，关卡设计师分头行动，工作内容出现脱节。

因为我们时间紧凑，关卡设计又是要求富有“趣味性”的一环，所以关卡设计任务就分别落到了我和另外两名设计师的头上。虽然大家分工明确有助于提高效率，但却对关卡设计的连贯性造成了很不利的影响。

由于关卡设计出自三个人之手，所以同一款游戏中就呈三种不同风格的关卡，它们在难度上甚至是个性上都出现了明显的分化。比如说，我比较重视游戏的挑战性，所以我设计的关卡就比其他二人更困难，有些游戏任务可能只需要几分钟就能完成，但我却认为应该让玩家失败一两次才有挑战性。这样就造成了一种前后矛盾的结果，即我前面设置的任务居然比其他人设计的下一个关卡更困难。

还有一个例子就是任务中的人物注解，我们当中有人遵从了电影中的内容，而且没有明确指出敌机的来源（游戏邦注：在一些任务中玩家也确实看不到这些内容），但是在其他一些任务中，飞行员却把敌人称为共产党或者俄罗斯人（我自己则坚持认为电影中的敌人并不是俄罗斯人，而是北朝鲜人）。

5.没有足够的时间进行游戏测试

我们的日程安排太紧凑，以至于关卡设计完工时就已经到了游戏上线日期。虽然我们确实测试了所有的关卡，但大部分时间只是测试了关卡的稳定性，看它们是否能有效运行，却没有考虑这些关卡究竟是否太困难、太容易或者太无趣等关键问题，结果就造成了一些游戏设置上的问题：

游戏时间过于短暂

要解决这个问题，可以增加更多关卡（我们当时没有功夫这么做）或者开启新功能等设置元素，但我们却走上了岔道，只是单纯地增加了玩家在同一时间需要对付的战机数量。

比如说，你在上一关需要击落10架战机，但闯到这一关时则需要击落30架。虽然闯关的时间确实是延长了，但却让这种空中激战变得更乏味，要知道凭我自己的耐性就只受得了20架战机。所以我提出要对这种设置进行调整的时候，已经只剩下最后几天时间了。

敌人的困难程度失衡

有些敌人或者目标并不是那么好对付，它们暴露的时间太短，或者说长期游离于玩家的射程之外，这就给玩家完成任务又增加了一层阻力。举例说，在第三个任务中，你得同时除掉10艘散落潜伏在一些小岛四周的炮舰，但问题是你只看得到一小部分的炮舰，它们的出现转瞬即逝，如果你错失良机就只能重头开始了。

最大的问题是，负责测试游戏趣味性元素的人正好是我，我十分清楚哪艘炮舰会在哪个水域出现，所以能轻而易举地将它们在水下一举歼灭，然后就依此判断这个关卡设计是有效的，可以测试下一关了。

与此类似的是巨型轰炸机，它和小型战机的情况一样，在机翼和机尾上都有一些软胁可以让玩家攻击，但这些部位很多时候都不在玩家射程范围内，导致玩家就只能等轰炸机飞到更合适的距离时再瞄准目标开火。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Postmortem: Freeverse’s Top Gun For iPhone

[Freeverse designer and programmer Justin Ficarrotta recounts what went right and what went wrong with the development of the iPhone game Top Gun -- particularly focusing on how fans should always be in mind when working on a licensed game.]

When we, at Freeverse, got the opportunity to create Top Gun and Days of Thunder for Paramount Digital Entertainment, we knew we had the right franchises to create something really fun and awesome. Top Gun has become especially popular, so this is a closer look into how the game came to be.

Background Information

My name is Justin Ficarrotta (or just “Fic”), game designer/programmer at Freeverse, Inc. in Brooklyn. My background is in action- and style-heavy arcade games, such as the Freeverse-published Kill Monty or my indie efforts Kill Dr. Coté (from which Kill Monty was born) and Laserface Jones vs. Doomsday Odious, which are both award-winning entries in the annual uDevGames contest.

Freeverse started off as a successful Mac game/software company in the early ’90s and has since branched out into Xbox Live Arcade (you can read our Marathon 2: Durandal postmortem) and, more recently, the iPhone.

Our games Moto Chaser and Flick Fishing both made Apple’s “Top 10 Paid Apps of All-Time” list (at #6 and #8, respectively) and our library of iPhone games has just broken 20 with the release of Skee-Ball.

But enough with the self-promotion. Let’s talk Top Gun.
About Top Gun

Top Gun is an iPhone game based on the classic 80′s movie starring Iceman and Maverick. Taking place years after the movie, the story revolves around a new set of recruits under the tutelage of Maverick and Iceman, who are now instructors at the Top Gun academy.

The gameplay is very similar to games such as After Burner or Space Harrier: a third person chase camera behind the player’s jet, which flies on rails through a 3D world and can steer freely within a set distance from the level path. Steering also moves a crosshair, which will lock on to enemy jets as it is scrubbed over them, and allow missiles to be fired. The player also has a vulcan gun, which does instant damage to anything under the crosshair, but it must be held over the jet as you fire.

Threats in the game came in the form of “Danger Zones” that would appear on screen, giving you about a second’s worth of warning before impact occurred in that area. Enemy missiles would create a Danger Zone, as well as obstructing scenery and ground-based anti-air fire.

What Went Right

1. Getting the rights to Danger Zone

No, really. I’m not kidding.

Paramount got us the rights to cover Danger Zone and even recorded a cover for us. And shallow as that may sound, this alone can be the difference between people giving Top Gun a look or not giving it a rat’s ass at all. I’m dead serious. Look up reviews of every Top Gun game ever made and every one of them mentions its lack of the song. Some reviews even list it as one of the overall “cons” at the summary of the review.

During development, just as a placeholder, I threw in the original version of the song, because it was a heinous crime not to. When word got back that we probably wouldn’t get the rights to the song and we finally caved and took it out, I was actually really crushed — heartbroken even. Not to say I didn’t like the stuff we licensed instead, but it suffered quite simply from the mere fact that it was not Danger Zone. Nothing quite lived up to revving up your engine while listening to the howling roar of the original soundtrack.

While Paramount negotiated for the license to use a re-recording of Danger Zone, we played things touch-and-go while heading into the twilight of our project — until our producer Bruce got word that Paramount had secured the rights and commissioned a cover. It was a glorious day at Freeverse. Not only was the song added, we shoved it into overdrive by adding an easter egg by which, if your pilot’s name was “Danger Zone”, the game played nothing BUT Danger Zone.

2. Engine Reuse

When we got the deal to create Days of Thunder and Top Gun, I made the decision early on to architect the code in such a way that it maximized code reuse. Much of the application architecture already existed in our iPhone engine that was used in Moto Chaser and Big Bang Sudoku.

Any additional code and classes would have to be designed to accommodate the requirements of two very different games. This paid off big for us in Top Gun, as many game logic classes were already in place, as well as a few flexible, reusable code elements. This allowed me to get a prototype with a jet flying and shooting down other jets in under a week.

I realize it’s not incredibly common to know what your next game is going to be while you are still designing your current game, and this did require both games to be mostly visualized before much code was laid down for either game, but having these benefits allowed us to piece together the main elements of Top Gun quickly and spend our time focusing on tweaking the gameplay, optimizing the engine, and adding some kick-ass eye candy.

One example of a similarity between the games is that they both involve vehicles speeding around some fixed curve in space. Days of Thunder takes place on a track, and the action in Top Gun is centered around a curve in the air. So for Days of Thunder I created a system that parses an .svg curve into a piecewise bezier spline, around which our track was procedurally generated.

Cool little system, and it effectively turned Adobe Illustrator into a level editor, but the beauty was when it came time to do Top Gun, we took that same parser, had it parse a second curve for height, and removed the track generation. This, combined with a phenomenal proprietary level editor, allowed us to create our levels exceedingly fast.

3. Keeping the cheese and the unintentional humor from the movie

While it is still an awesome action movie, let’s face it: Top Gun is cheesy as all get-out. Right out of the gate, the entire team was in agreement that we should both acknowledge and embrace the cheesiness. Paramount evidently agreed with us, too, when they gave us dialog to use that oozed with ’80s machismo and corny come-on lines.

indiePub Games

And in every gaming blog post, every review, every sneak peek, someone would invariably ask “But does it have a beach volleyball mini-game?” And I am incredibly proud to answer to each and every one of them:

“Yes. Yes it does.”

It’s tucked away as an easter egg, but if you enter “Volleyball” as your call sign, you will get to watch Maverick and Iceman settle their long-standing tensions once and for all. Goose’s gravestone makes a cameo appearance.

It’s such a tiny extra touch that 99 percent of the players will never see, but it got us on the gaming blogs again (a few dedicated a whole post to listing our hidden easter eggs and codes) and really, it just took a few people flipping out upon realizing that “yes, there is volleyball” to make the effort more than worth it.

4. Nailing the gameplay mechanic first

This might seem painfully obvious, but it was a major goal for Freeverse and Paramount to nail down fun gameplay before going gung-ho on content for Top Gun which why it is as fun as it is. As you read above, I had the Top Gun prototype going in about a week, and this allowed me tons of time to tweak every aspect of the controls and dogfighting to be as fun as possible.

I was able to try out several different functions for moving the jet relative to the accelerometer, and got to test a lot of values for missile speed, reload speed, lock-on speed, enemy firing rate, and tons more variables that all needed to click to get the game kicking ass.

The benefit to this is twofold. First, with regard to gameplay, having a wicked fun mechanic locked down early on allows you to use it as a foundation when designing levels, enemies and obstacles. I’ve worked on games where the mechanic hasn’t been locked down, and isn’t fun, and had these things built upon that flimsy foundation.

The problem arises when you try to then go back and change the mechanic after the fact. You run the risk of making a lot of the levels and obstacles worthless (for example, maybe it’s more fun if you jump twice as high and move twice as fast, but this makes all those pits you put in a level all way too small to present any challenge whatsoever.)

You also run the risk of not being able to change that mechanic at all, because of the time it would take to re-design the rest of the game around it, and you have to ship with sub-par gameplay. Thankfully, the mechanics of Top Gun clicked early on and we could feel good about making levels and enemies that complemented them.

Which brings me to the second benefit: When you are working on a game for four months (and sometimes as long as eight to 12) it does a lot for the morale of the team when the game kicks ass right out of the gate. When people say they want to develop games, what they really mean is, they want to develop AWESOME games. Being a part of an awesome game motivates and inspires the other people on your team, and they in turn produce better work.

A fun gameplay mechanic can be the difference between “eh, it pays the bills” and “I’m staying until 10 PM some nights because the game is going to be so freaking TIGHT.” This applies especially to QA and testers: when the game is fun and people actually WANT to play it and beat it, testers will experiment with more ways to best your game, and find bugs and loopholes you never knew existed.

5. Having an awesome brand and an uncrowded market

This might seem shallow, but if you’re going to make a game based on a brand, the brand should kick ass. And basic marketing says that if you want to be visible, you need to pick a market that doesn’t already have tons of products all fighting for the top spot.

When we began initial design work for Top Gun and Days of Thunder, I was very familiar with Top Gun, but hadn’t even yet seen Days of Thunder. I had to go watch it as a crash-course.

And people who haven’t seen either movie are more likely to know what Top Gun is about — it’s a wicked strong brand. The Top Gun anthem is known far and wide. There are plenty of Top Gun games out there already, and many parts of the movie are iconic (Danger Zone, the “need for speed” line, among others).

Top Gun also had an advantage over Days of Thunder in the market because of the history of car racing games. While we were working on Days of Thunder, there would be a new racing game announced once a week without fail. With Top Gun we didn’t have to worry about positioning at all, simply because there were no games like it on the App Store at the time.

What Went Wrong

1. Not using the same model jet used in the movie

Top Gun is an iconic ’80s movie and features an iconic jet. All the trainees in the original movie fly this particular model aircraft. When we developed the game, we decided to not use the same jet from the movie, but instead, a more modern model that is currently in service. Big mistake.

Yes, the game takes place quite a few years after the events in the movie. Yes, the particular model jet used in the movie is now completely retired from the US Navy. But those facts shouldn’t have mattered.

I think the final decision to use the new aircraft was a result of that 3D model looking the best in-game. And when we learned it’s not even used by the Navy (haha whoops) we classed it as a prototype and just acknowledged that in the dialog.

But people didn’t care; they wanted the jet from the movie. And in retrospect I totally agree. We eschewed reality in every other aspect of this game in favor of awesomeness, but when it came to the jet we tried to rationalize not having the same jet as the movie. It’s retired, it’s old, the new one looks cooler, etc etc etc, but what we should have done was just continued the trend of fan service we had going.

The kicker is, we have the old jet in-game. Iceman and Maverick fly it in the missions they appear in. But it was in there as a throwback and not the main aircraft.

The bottom line is, we didn’t give players what they wanted, and not featuring the same jet as the movie was the most frequent complaint we got about the game after its release.

2. Ending on a cliffhanger

We also sinned big time when it comes to the ending of the game. In fact, in my opinion, we committed two separate sins. The first was ending the game on a cliffhanger. I think the story escalated tension and spun a few different arcs very well, but instead of reaching resolution, they all end at the end of their second act.

Originally, our story spanned 16 levels, and when we had to condense the game to 10 (due to time constraints) instead of condensing the story, we decided to leave it open for a possible sequel. Not sure I would have gone along with that again in retrospect, as the result is the end of the game has no story payoff. It still ends with a climactic battle with an enormous boss, so there is a gameplay/difficulty payoff, but the story remained unresolved.

Speaking of no payoff, the other sin we committed was having a quick ending sequence. After the final mission, the game simply cuts to a “To be continued” screen, then kicks back to title. This one still kills me, because I hate when games do this to me (I remember playing through over a hundred levels in Rampage for the NES as a kid only to get the word “Congratulations”. Total BS!)

We just did not have enough time to complete that portion. I had a whole credits sequence visualized too, set to Cheap Trick’s “Mighty Wings”. If only we had a little more time (not to mention the rights to the song).

3. Not making it perfectly clear we were not a dogfighting game

Not featuring the jet from the movie might have been the most frequent complaint, but the most vocal complaint was from people who hated the fact that the game isn’t a full roaming 3D dogfighting game but is, in fact, on rails.

At no point was the game ever intended to be free-roaming 3D. I’ve played a few games that do that, and frankly, I find games like After Burner and Space Harrier much more engaging and exciting, and that’s the path I took when designing Top Gun. Dogfighting in games tends to be much slower, strategic, and frankly boring. I much preferred the sense of speed, tension and chaos you get with a game like After Burner.

And yes, not all players will agree with me there, and that’s fine. Play what turns you on. The problem arose when those players saw Top Gun and assumed it was a free-roaming game, only to buy it and find themselves disappointed that it wasn’t.

And they were right to be disappointed — when your most visible tools for marketing yourself on the App Store are your title, icon, and first screenshot, it was tough to convey that to people. A few in-depth reviews on blogs like TouchArcade that explained to people that yes, the game is on rails, and no, that’s not a bad thing, helped mitigate the confusion somewhat, but obviously you can’t reach everyone.

The best solution in retrospect for this is tricky — perhaps releasing more footage, or even a lite version. A trailer or even one level for free could have shown people that the game is not free-roaming, and if you really didn’t want it if it wasn’t, well, we could have saved you a few bucks. And with more footage or a free version, these people could have seen that it is still very fun anyway, and at least could have bought it when it was an informed decision.

4. Mistakes in level design

We made a few mistakes in level design that I will list for you here.

Not progressing the game mechanic or obstacles along with the story.

Two examples of this are your missile supply and enemy jets. The missile lock-on system is actually very customizable in code: the number of missiles you can fire at once, the speed at which they lock on, the speed at which they reload, and your bullet speed and power are all customizable, but at no point did we allow for it to be upgraded or changed.

This would have been a great place to allow the player to progress over the course of the game, allowing them to kill enemy jets with greater efficiency. Similarly, we added a few different types of jets towards the end of the project, to add variety to the enemies.

But instead of introducing these jets over the course of the game, they appear from the first level on. So instead of having new enemy types and new abilities be rewards that are unlocked over all the levels, we blew them all on the first level.

Having three separate level designers each working independently on their own subset of levels.

Because we were short on time, and because making the levels was the “fun” part, the level design was split up to myself and two other guys. While this allowed the levels to be completed much faster, it resulted in a less consistent level progression.

There are three noticeably different styles of levels present in the game. These styles include level difficulty, cutscenes, and even the personalities of the characters expressed through mid-flight banter.

For example, I tend to value challenge more than most people, and my levels are noticeably harder. With a mission that lasts only a few minutes, I think it’s perfectly okay to have a mission that players will fail once or twice. The result is that you might find a particular mission that I did to be much harder than the next few missions after, which were done by others.

Another example is when the characters reference the enemy during the mission. Some of us followed suit with the movie and never explicitly mentioned the origin of the enemy jets (which is why you never see it in some missions, and the cutscenes) but in other missions the pilots will call them commies or drop Russian references. (Even though I still maintain the enemies in the movie were not Russian at all, but North Korean — but oh well.)

5. Leaving no extra time for testing

We scheduled the project in such a way that we were making levels right up until the deadline. While we did make sure to test all the levels upon completion, we spent the vast majority of time testing the stability of the levels, and simply whether or not they worked. Whether or not a part of the level was too easy, too difficult, or too boring — these were all things that received less focus than they deserved, and we ended up shipping with a few annoying gameplay issues:

At the end of the project, the issue of “hours of gameplay” was raised.

To address this, instead of adding more levels (which we had no time to do) or adding more gameplay elements, such as leveling up or unlockables (again, no time) we instead simply raised the number of jets that you needed to kill in each dogfighting segment.

Where originally you would have to kill 10 jets in a dogfight to continue, you had to kill 30. While it added a few minutes onto each level, it also killed the pacing of levels and made the dogfighting sections more tedious, as the limit of even my patience is about 20 jets. When I say it was changed at the end of the project, I mean in the last few days.

Enemy difficulty balance was off.

A few enemies and targets don’t make themselves vulnerable for very long, or stay out of targeting range for absurdly long periods of time. One example of this is seen in the gunboats in the third mission. In Mission 3, you have to take out 10 gunboats scattered around a few islands jutting out of the water. The problem is that a few of them are only visible and therefore targetable for a moment. If you miss it, you have to make another pass at the island.

The larger problem is that the person that tested the fun factor of this level was me. I knew exactly where the boats where, blasted them all out of the water, confirmed the level worked, and moved on to the next level.

Similarly, the huge bomber boss jet, which uses the same movement patterns as the small jets, has a few targetable points on the wings and tail that are off-screen for large stretches of time. The result of this is the player has to wait until the bomber swerves far enough to the other direction before you try to target those points.
Project Overview

Development time: 4 months

Development team: Producer, two programmers, one 2D artist, one 3D artist, one audio designer, our crack-QA squad, office cat

Platform: Apple iPhone/iPod Touch （source:gamasutra）