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阐述电子游戏设计流程及注意事项

发布时间:2011-09-06 22:45:32 Tags:,,,

我们经常被问到的问题是:“你要如何提出自己的电子游戏想法?它是否可行?”

我们很快便会得出答案:这完全是不可能的。你需要首先进入该行业,这样你的想法才会受到别人的重视。更不用说电子游戏工作室可能因为采用你的提案而面临的诸多法律问题,这也是为何多数游戏公司不阅读提案的原因。

所以,如果你有个绝妙的电子游戏想法,最好的选择是将其自行设计成为电子游戏。先开发出个低预算的演示版本游戏。

最迫切的问题在于,要想设计一款游戏的话,你应该对游戏开发过程有哪些了解?你需要了解所有的基本步骤,才能够自行设计游戏。

在进入游戏设计领域时,你需要对游戏设计、编程和美术都有一定的理解。在与设计团队其他成员交流时,设计师需要这些技能。

game design(from animationarena)

game design(from animationarena)

要开发你的游戏设计技能,你可能需要研究战争游戏、桌游和角色扮演游戏。可以首先研究来自Wizards of the Coast的角色扮演游戏。此外,你还应该了解桌游,比如《万智牌:旅法师对决》。再看看Avalon Hill的战争游戏或即时模拟游戏,如《魔兽争霸》或《星际争霸》等。

探索完这些游戏之后,你应该就会萌生有关新游戏系统机制的想法。研究这些游戏之后,你还会知道是哪些元素让游戏变得好玩。你了解这些流行游戏,知道它们是如何吸引玩家的。你还可以询问其他人喜欢哪些游戏,看看你的品味是否能为其他人所接受。

当你与专业人士或者资深玩家谈论游戏时,确保能够切中要害,处理以下关键问题:

角色——正如早期所提过的那样,每款优秀的游戏都需要有趣的角色,即便游戏是第一人称视角(游戏邦注:此前被称为“化身类”游戏)。

原创性——优秀的游戏不应当是其他游戏的复制品,即便是现有巨作的续作也不能出现这种情况。如果你的游戏使用的是与其他游戏类似的引擎,那就应该有着独特的关卡、艺术设计、复杂性和角色。

可玩性——让游戏可玩并且平衡游戏的难度。早期的失败很容易让玩家感到气馁,或许就不会再继续玩下去。一开始设置较为简单的关卡,让玩家慢慢学习游戏的界面和游戏概念。

重玩性——游戏不应当让玩家在通关一次后便失去兴趣。游戏中应该有某种程度的自由度和相互作用以维持玩家不断玩游戏的兴趣,让游戏不断保持新鲜感。

用户界面——无论你的游戏使用的是鼠标、键盘、控制器还是操纵杆,应该尽量让界面变得易于使用。

一旦你了解了行业、题材以及铸造优秀游戏的秘密,即便这个习得过程可能持续数年之久,你最终便会融入整个游戏设计进程。

game design(from animationareana)

game design(from animationareana)

接下来我们要阐述这篇文章第二部分的内容,更深入地探究游戏开发的情况。

在游戏开发过程中,设计师应当关注两个层面的内容:美术层面和技术层面。因为设计师并不希望自己的作品在技术层面落于下风,所以还要把部分精力花在这个方面。

游戏必须拥有定义清晰的目标,这个目标确立了游戏给玩家带来的愿景、情感和挑战。目标的重要性只有在游戏设计过程末期才明显地体现出来。因为容量有限,所以游戏设计师无法包容所有的内容,这时就必须有所取舍。某些游戏功能会被采纳,而某些游戏功能将被舍弃。如果目标明确的话,会使得这种困难的抉择更加简单。

决定了目标和题材之后,下一步便是将自己沉浸在主题中。阅读所有有关游戏题材和主题的内容。假如你在制作的是战争游戏,你最好能够同西点军校的教官聊聊。

一旦你接受了足够的信息并且做足准备,拥有了经过完善调查编撰而成的设计文件,你现在就可以真正步入设计阶段。在设计阶段,你的主要目标是勾画出游戏结构的轮廓。游戏结构就是定义玩家在游戏过程中必须克服的障碍之间的内在架构。

设计游戏结构的主要问题在于弄清楚如何将目标制作成可以执行的技术结构。游戏设计师必须从此前的环境中找出某些关键元素,然后围绕这些关键元素来构建游戏。最明显的例子便是战斗游戏和第一人称射击游戏。在战斗游戏中,武打技能和移动是关键元素。在射击类游戏中,火力和准确性是关键元素。

关键元素必须允许玩家能够表达自己,让玩家能够以他们想要或体验游戏玄妙之处所需要采取的做法来行动。在第一人称射击游戏中,玩家需要的就是能够完全控制自己的移动和武器。

一旦游戏结构完美执行并到位之后,游戏设计师手中就应该有了游戏的可运行模型。下个步骤便是评估整体设计,寻找那些常见的设计漏洞,否则它们可能会破坏整个游戏。

最重要的问题就是判断设计是否满足最初设定的目标。游戏是否像你预想的那样再现现实性?游戏是否比较独特?角色是否有趣?如果你的设计能够通关这些关键性的测试,那么就继续下去。

检查游戏的稳定性。游戏是否平衡(游戏邦注:是否过于简单或过于困难)?游戏中是否出现任何脱离控制的情况?如果是这样的话,应该重新细致地检查游戏结构,让游戏更加稳定。

而且,你应当纵观整个游戏,找出那些能够轻松打通游戏的捷径。不费吹灰之力就可以确保在游戏中获得胜利的玩家根本不会了解到游戏的所有精妙之处。更为糟糕的是,这些人可能很快就将你的游戏抛在一边。然后,这些人会告诉所有人如何快速地打通你的游戏,这样每个人也都会将你的游戏抛在一边!不久之后,你的玩家群体就会很快流失,你的游戏也就失去了市场!

game design(from animationarena)

game design(from animationarena)

一旦你察觉并修正所有潜在设计漏洞之后,就可以进入编程阶段。我不是个程序员,我所知道的多数优秀设计师也都不一定是顶级的程序员。因而,我们可以将设计交给顶级程序员和程序部门来与他们合作。就像你浏览游戏架构一样,优秀的程序员也将会寻找编程漏洞并且将它们解决。这原本就是他们的工作!

一旦编程完成之后,游戏就可以在PC系统上运行,开发就变成了重复玩游戏来寻找其中的弱点和故障。在游戏测试过程中,你可以雇佣一个或一组玩家在从各个角度体验游戏。这也是调试游戏设计的一个步骤。玩家测试这个过程可以得出用于润色和精致游戏设计的信息。这个过程通常会揭露处需要修改的设计和编程问题。

如果你最初的设计做得较好,那么在这个阶段就不会碰到过多的问题。游戏应该只需要某些改变和润色即可。对游戏的调整需要花费数周的时间。

设计师应当细心地选择测试玩家。你需要的是熟悉游戏并能够识别真正的游戏问题的玩家。理想状况下,测试玩家应当是游戏设计师。

在测试玩家玩一段时间游戏之后,安排与他们交谈。在交谈中,你应当准备一套所有测试玩家都要回答的问题。不要引导测试玩家给出答案,也不要因他们发现问题而感到恼怒!或许你应该鼓励玩家抱着怀疑的心态来指出游戏中的瑕疵,因为这只会让你的游戏变得更为出众。

测试玩家的意见很难以评估。有些似乎较为合理,但是那些需要对主要软件重新构建的意见显然不算是合理的。但是,听听这些意见并没有什么关系。我曾经听过一个原则:“毫不犹豫地抛弃90%的意见。剩下的10%是正确的,你应该花时间将其执行。”那么如何判断哪些意见是合理的,哪些是不合理的呢?这完全出于个人经验!

设计循环的最后阶段是游戏的润色。润色阶段也是游戏测试的最后阶段。作为设计师,你必须从头到尾跟踪整个项目。在这漫长的设计之路结束之际,设计师已经在游戏上花了很长的时间,对游戏的新鲜感也已经褪去。测试玩家和发行商都喜欢游戏,并且马上就希望能够得到游戏,但是设计师却因为厌烦而有些讨厌。你应该收起这些情绪,不断地测试和润色游戏,为游戏再添光彩。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

How to design your own video game

A question we get asked a lot is “How do you pitch your own video game idea? Is it possible to do so?”

The quick answer is…no. It’s not possible. Not from the outside. You need to work your way into the industry first before your ideas will be taken seriously. Not to mention all the potential legal ramifications that a video game studio could face if they even hear your pitch and are al-ready developing something similar they could be faced with lawsuits, that’s why most game companies don’t even read pitches.

So if you have a great idea for a video game your best option is to design your own video game. Have a low budget demo of your game developed first.

So, the more urgent question is what do you have to know about the game development process in order to design a game? You need to know all of the basic steps before you can even think about throwing your own game out there.

As you move into production on a game, you need to combine at least some understanding in game design, programming and art. A designer needs these skills while communicating with other members of the design team.

To develop your game design skills, you may wish to examine the operations of war games, board games and role-playing games. Start with role-playing games from Wizards of the Coast or White Wolf. In addition, you should know the card game, MAGIC: THE GATHERING. Take a look at Avalon Hill’s war games or real-time simulations like WARCRAFT or STAR-CRAFT or RISK.

After exploring these games, you should have some ideas for your new games system mechanics. After studying these games, you will also know intuitively what makes a game enjoyable. You’ll know the popular games and how they work. It’s the same path a film student takes while studying the classics, or an aspiring novelist follows before tackling his or her own masterpiece. You can also ask others what games they like to determine if your tastes are on target.

When discussing other games with fellow professionals and experienced players, make sure you hit all the key points and get whatever insights they have to offer.

Tackle the following key is-sues:

Characters – As mentioned earlier, every good game needs interesting characters, even if that character is the player’s first person perspective (once called an Avatar). Human involvement and identification, even if seemingly invisible, makes a game more involving for a player. We’ll get more into character in subsequent chapters.

Originality – A good game will not be a carbon copy of another game, even if it’s a sequel to a pre-existing hit. Even if your game uses a similar engine as another, it should set itself apart in levels, art design, complexity and character.

Playability – Make the game possible to play and well balanced between ease and difficulty. Players are easily discouraged by early failures, and may not want to play again. Start with easy levels that allow the player to learn the interface and game concepts at a comfortable pace.

Re-playability – The game shouldn’t lose the players interest after one play. There should be a degree of randomness and interactivity to retain the player’s interest in repeat play and make the game seem consistently new.

User Interface – Whether your game requires a mouse, keyboard, controller or joystick, try to make the interface so easy to use and adapt to that it more or less becomes invisible.

Once you know your industry, your genre and the secrets of what makes a good game, even if this process takes years to learn instinctively, you will eventually move into the game design procedures.

Now, as we move into part two of this examination, we’ll take a more indepth look at the pros-pects of game development….

During the process of developing the game, a designer must keep his or her two feet in two dif-ferent realms; the artistic world and the technical world. Just as a designer doesn’t want his or her vision to come up short of what the latest technology can produce, it’s also a minor tragedy to burn that precious creative energy on some grand vision that can’t possibly be realized with even the most advanced game engine.

A game must have a clearly defined goal, most often stated on how it will effect the player. The goal must establish the visions, emotions and challenges it will produce in the player. The im-portance of a goal does not become obvious until later in the game design process. Everything that the game designer wants to do requires limited memory. Thus, the designer must make trade-offs. Some game features can be included, and some must be rejected. If the goal is clear, that can help make such difficult decisions easier.

With a goal and genre in mind, the next step is to immerse you in the topic. Read everything you can on the genre and subject matter of the game. If you are making a war game, you had better be able to match wits with a West Point cadet! If you are designing a flight simulator, you’d best be able to take the controls of a jet liner if the pilot gets food poisoning!

Once you are as educated and prepared as possible, armed with a well-researched design docu-ment, you can now begin the actual design phase. Your primary goal in the design phase is to create the outlines of the game structure. The game structure is the internal architecture of rela-tionships that define the obstacles the player must overcome in the course of the game.

The central problem in designing the game structure is figuring out how to recreate the fantasy of the goal into a workable technological structure. The game designer must identify some key element from the topic environment and build the game around that key element. The most ob-vious examples are fighting games and first-person shooters. In a fighting game, martial arts skills and moves are the key element. In shooters, firepower and accuracy are essential.

The key element must allow the player to express himself, to do the things that he wants or needs to do to experience the fantasy of the game. In a first person shooter, the player needs complete control of his or her movement and weapons to live the fantasy fully.

Once the game structure is perfected, implemented and in place, a game designer should have working model of the game in hand. The next step is to evaluate the overall design for the most common design flaws that ruin otherwise effective games.

The most important issue is to decide if the design satisfies the original design goals, you created earlier in the process. Does your game recreate reality as you intended? Did you make your game unique? Are your characters interesting? If the design passes this crucial test, move on.

Examine the stability of the game. Is your game out of balance (too easy or too difficult)? Are there any circumstances in which the game gets out of control? If so, re-examine the structure carefully with an eye to structural changes that will stabilize the game.

Also, look through the game and probe the design for shortcuts to an easy win. A player who can find a way to guarantee victory with little effort on his part will not derive the full benefit of your game. Worse still, that player will toss your game aside early. Then, he or she will tell eve-ryone how to beat your game early, and everyone told will also toss your game aside! Soon, your player base will dry up and your game will lose its market!

Once you predicted and defeated any potential design disasters, you can move to programming phase. I am not a programmer. Most of the best designers I know are not necessarily top pro-grammers, either. Therefore, we would pass our designs on to a lead programmer and program-ming department. By working with them in a team environment, the high-tech guts of a game together. Good programmers will watch for programming bugs and solve them as you move through game construction. It’s what they do!

Once programming is complete and the game is up and running on a PC system, development becomes a question of playing the game repeatedly to find weaknesses and malfunctions. Play testing can employ one person or a team of players who approach the game from every angle to see where it breaks down. It’s the next step in de-bugging a game design. Play testing is a process that yields information used to polish and refine the game design. The process often re-veals design and programming problems that require correction.

If your initial design was well developed, it won’t face too many of these crises. The game should just need some tweaks and polishes. Tuning the game will take many weeks.

Since it is considered a key entry-level job in the game industry, designers need to choose play-testers carefully. You need play-testers who a familiarity with games, play-testers who can iden-tify genuine game problems. Ideally, the play-testers want be game designers.

Schedule interviews with the play-testers after they played the game for some time. Come to the interview prepared with a set of standard questions that you ask all play-testers. Don’t lead the play-tester’s answers and don’t get upset of they find problems! You may wish to encourage the play-tester to be negative and look too closely for flaws. It can only serve to make your game better.

Play-testers’ criticisms are difficult to evaluate. Some seem reasonable, but would require major software rebuilds that are simply not reasonable. But, it doesn’t cost you anything to listen! I once read this formula: “Do not hesitate to reject 90% of the suggestions made. The remaining 10% are right; waste no time implementing them.” How do you know the difference? That comes with experience!

The final stage of the design cycle is devoted to polishing the game. The polishing stage goes on along with the final stages of play testing. Oscar Wilde once suggested that “…a work of art is not completed. It is abandoned.” In other words, an artist can add paint to a canvas, or a writer can change a word here or there forever. The piece of art is actually only finished when the artist becomes so tired of working on it that he or she walks away.

That doesn’t work with games. As the designer, you must see the project through to the end. At the end of the long design road, the designer has been working on the game for a long time, and the luster of the new design wears off. The play-testers love it, the publisher loves it and wants it right now; but the designer hates it due to sheer boredom. Buck up and press forward. Go the distance. Use whatever other cliche you need! Keep testing the game, fine-tuning it, and adding tiny embellishments to it.

Simply exhaust yourself to make your as good as you can possibly imagine. (Source: Animation Arena)


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