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Simon Strange对巨型怪兽战斗游戏的5点设计建议

作者:Frank Cifaldi

游戏设计师Simon Strange喜欢制作融入庞大怪兽的战斗游戏。

他进行尝试的作品是雅达利的《Godzilla》系列(游戏邦注:《Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters》、《Godzilla: Save the Earth》和《Godzilla Unleashed》),同时他还赋予经典巨型怪物电子游戏《Rampage》现代色彩。

Godzilla from hebnews.cn

Godzilla from hebnews.cn

Strange最近通过Kickstarter活动给自己的新款原创巨型怪物战斗游戏《Kaiju Combat》募集资金。他的项目最终并没有获得融资,但他和Sunstone Games团队正在进行重组,计划10月再次进行尝试,设定更低的融资目标。

其间,我们有幸同Strange展开交谈,主要围绕他在制作巨型怪物战斗游戏过程中,在可行&不可行元素方面收获的经验。我们知道,目前制作巨型怪物战斗游戏的开发者不是很多,但其中有些宝贵经验可以供制作任何类型游戏的开发者借鉴。

1. 打扮成怪物的人类具有可行性

你也许会觉得,体验巨型怪物战斗游戏的玩家是想要控制巨型怪物这种角色的感觉,但就Strange的经验来说,情况并非如此。

相反,玩家希望自己控制的角色是打扮得像怪物的人类,因为这是他们所熟悉的东西。

物理学专业的Strange表示,“这对我来说非常沮丧。但我觉得这是因为在《Godzilla》电影中,有个人类穿着Godzilla套装,所以他让怪物体现出人类的速度、动作和反应。”

当Strange试图让怪兽的物理模型配合真实世界的怪兽动作模式时,测试者并不认同,他们觉得这过于缓慢和呆滞。他们心存不满的事实颇值得注意,但其中原理阐述就可以暂不考虑。

他表示,“我一直认为,意见非常重要,但用户对于其看法的论证基本都是废话。”

“当有人说,‘我不喜欢这一内容’时,这非常重要,你得相信他们的看法。但当有人说,‘我不喜欢这一内容是因为……’时,你完全可以忽略,因为他们通常没有了解具体进展情况所需要的数据信息。”

游戏的怪物最后被调整得更富有“人类”色彩,这更令玩家感到满意。

giant monsters large from gamasutra.com

giant monsters large from gamasutra.com

2. 一个反应,一个动作

Strange对于多数战斗游戏的最大抱怨在于,角色通常在被击中时反应迟钝,这促使他们无法予以反击。这显然是我们所谓“连击”的基础,在此玩家寻找方式继续袭击他们的对手,让他们无法进行报复。

Strange表示,“这是战斗游戏的根本事实。”这意味着,战斗游戏的最佳策略是,找到阻止对手进行任何操作的元素。

“进行连击意味着,我找到阻碍你进行游戏的元素。这令战斗游戏变得更糟糕。”

《Godzilla》3D游戏的过程式动画系统最终解决了这一问题(游戏邦注:例如,让怪兽的手臂自由进行攻击,而腿则受到袭击),但一个初期解决方案是,当受到较弱攻击时,不冻结怪兽。

但对于此机制的某个测试结果显示,玩家认为自己在被击中时无法进行移动。

Strange回忆称有位测试员曾这么告诉他,“‘这款游戏糟糕透了,他击中我,我无法进行任何操作。’我说,那你真的试过了吗?”

“他很确定,自己无法进行任何操作,他甚至连尝试摁下按键都没有。”

3. 减缓你无法控制的元素

玩家也许希望觉得,自己控制的是身着怪兽装的人类,但即使是这样,这些怪兽也还是需要有巨型怪兽的感觉,它们要体现出重量感。

这听起来有些矛盾,但经过反复试验后,Strange发现,这里的解决方案就是,让怪兽的自主行为富有人类感觉,且呈快速状态,同时减缓无意识动作速度。

他解释表示,“我们将反应变成怪兽规模。当你击中某人时,所有内容就会减缓,它们就会飞过城市上空,生成重击声音,粉碎置身它们之下的所有元素,这是个巨大的屏幕震动。”

“若你将失败设计得非常精彩,那它就不会那么讨人厌。”

4. 简化怪兽秘密装饰的操作方式

巨型怪兽通常有至少一个秘密武器。若你制作的是巨型怪物战斗游戏,那么不要将此秘密武器隐藏在复杂的特殊动作之后。

你甚至会像Strange那样,将那些操作设置成由一个按键完成。

“你不希望自己,扮演了Godzilla,却不知道如何使用他的原子炮火。怪兽需要显露出怪兽的关键特性。”

“他们玩游戏就是为了获得这些奇怪的不寻常工具。若操作无法立即被玩家理解,怪兽就不会让人觉得特别。”

5. 庞大怪兽需要庞大空间

不仅无意识动作会减缓怪兽行动速度:《Godzilla》游戏中的场景也能够做到这点。虽然怪兽有比人类更迅速的敏捷性,但周旋于充满障碍的空间能够减缓他们的速度,让他们变得更沉重。

游戏场景还会带来另一意想不到的益处——配合武器的运用。和简单阻碍或跳过攻击不同,玩家还可以躲避在建筑之后。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

5 tips for making fighting games with giant monsters

By Frank Cifaldi

Game designer Simon Strange loves making fighting games with giant monsters.

He cut his teeth on Atari’s Godzilla series (Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla: Save the Earth and Godzilla Unleashed) and has also worked on a modern take on the classic giant monster video game IP Rampage.

Strange recently sought funding for a new, original giant monster fighting game, Kaiju Combat, through a Kickstarter campaign. His project ultimately did not get funded, but he and his team at Sunstone Games are regrouping and plan to try again, for a little less money, in October.

In the meantime, we thought we’d talk to Strange about what he’s learned about what works — and doesn’t work — when making a fighting game starring giant monsters. We understand that not very many of you out there are currently working on giant monster fighting games yourselves but, as always, there are pearls of wisdom here that should apply to game designers working on just about any kind of game.

1. Humans in giant monster suits

You might think that people playing giant monster fighting games want to control characters who actually feel like giant monsters, but in Strange’s experience, that’s not the case.

Instead, players — whether they realize it or not — want their characters to control like humans dressed as monsters, since that’s just what they know.

“It’s been really frustrating to me,” Strange, a former physics major, tells us. “But I think it’s because in Godzilla movies…you have a human wearing a Godzilla suit, so you have the speed and moves and reactions of a human.”

Playtesters didn’t like it when Strange tried to make monster physics adhere to the way a real monster would move in the real world, saying that they felt too slow and sluggish. The fact that they were complaining was important to note, though not so much their rationale.

“I’m a big believer in the fact that opinions are really important, but people’s justifications for why they hold opinions are basically crap,” he says.

“When someone says ‘I don’t like this,’ that’s really important and you have to believe them. But when someone says ‘I don’t like this because-,’ you can often kind of ignore their ‘because,’ because they often don’t have the data to understand what’s going on.”

The monsters in that game were changed to feel much more “human,” and were more satisfying for it.

2. For every reaction, an action

One of Strange’s biggest gripes with most fighting games is that avatars traditionally play a reaction frame when getting hit, leaving them incapable of fighting back. This is, of course, the basis for what we call “combos,” where players find a way to continue hitting their opponent while leaving them unable to retaliate.

“That’s kind of a fundamental truth in fighting games,” says Strange. “That means the best strategy in fighting games is to find something that prevents your opponent from doing anything.

“A combo means, I found something that makes you unable to play. This makes fighting games kind of suck.”

A procedural animation system in his 3D Godzilla games eventually solved this (leaving, for example, a monster’s arms free to attack while his legs got hit), but one early solution was to simply not freeze his monsters when hit with a weaker attack.

One playtest with this system, however, showed that players have come to expect that they can’t move when getting hit. It’s become the language of fighting games.

“‘This game sucks, he hits me and I can’t do anything.’” Strange recalls a playtester telling him. “And I said well, did you try?

“He was so certain that he couldn’t do anything, he didn’t even try to push a button.”

3. Slow down the parts you don’t control

Players may want to feel like they’re controlling humans in monster suits, but their monsters also need to feel like, well, giant monsters. They need to have a lot of weight.

These may seem contradictory, but after a lot of trial and error, Strange found that the solution was to keep the voluntary actions human-like and fast, and to slow down the involuntary actions.

“We made the reactions monster-sized,” he explains. “When you hit somebody … everything slows down and they go soaring across the city, hit with this enormous thud, crush everything beneath them, and there’s a huge screen shake.”

“If you can make losing look awesome, it’s a lot less annoying.”

4. Make your monster’s gimmick easy to use

Giant monsters usually have at least one cool gimmick. If you’re making a giant monster fighting game, don’t hide that gimmick behind a complicated special move.

You might even, like Strange, just make those moves accessible with one button.

“You don’t want to play as Godzilla and not know how to use his atomic fire,” Strange says. “Monsters needs to have key monster attributes out on the surface.”

“They come to the game for those weird, unusual tools. A monster doesn’t feel special if that move is not immediately accessible.”

5. Big monsters need big environments

Not only do involuntary movements help to slow monsters down: the environments in the Godzilla games do, too. Even though the monsters have faster human agility, navigating around environmental obstacles helped to slow them down and keep them feeling weighed down.

The environments also gave the games another unexpected bonus: weapons play. Instead of simply blocking or jumping over an attack, players could take cover behind, say, a building.(Source:gamasutra


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