作者：Mike Birkhead

优秀的战斗设计师应该理解设计的深度和广度的意义和重要性。简单地说：深度就是知道如何，广度就是知道为什么。但这是什么意思？

如何执行那个动作？为什么我要使用那个动作？为了做这个动作我要怎么测量？如何测量？为什么要测量？

优秀的战斗设计师都知道如何制作以及为什么制作某个动作，但对于那些不太理解战斗游戏世界的设计师来说，可能有些困难。游戏设计中最令我感兴趣的是，寻找表达信息的新方式——无论是图形上的，数学上的还是视觉上的。所以在本文中，我尽了自己最大的努力来解释深度和广度的意思和含义。

深度——关于“如何”的知识

在优秀的战斗游戏中，战斗系统是毫无深度的。这听起来太荒唐了，但是听着：你必须知道，深度的意义不等同于大量动作、战术战术、操作或甚至击杀。深度与这些东西无关。深度是用来衡量你的玩家学习如何做某事——包括新系统、新攻击方式等必须耗费的时间。这是一个重要的区别，因为许多动作都可以被当作相同的“如何”。以《街头霸王》为例，当你学习如何执行Ryu的招式Fireball和Dragon Punch，你也是在学习Sagat的招式Tiger Shot、Tiger Uppercut的Tiger Knee。如何出这些招的知识是一样的。另外，每个动作有3个版本（轻、中和重），所以在这里，你共学习了15种不同的动作，但却只需要你懂两种动作输入——这真是完美的“深广比”（游戏邦注：即深度和广度的比率）。

接着我们来说说深度图解。以下你可以看到大量可点击的带名称的按钮。它们罗列了玩家在《街头霸王》中必须学习的所有角色、机制和动作——也就是所谓的“如何”。点击一个项目就相当于表示“我知道如何操作该项”，这个项会告诉你你掌握各个角色的程度。你还可以点击你已经掌握的角色，它会显示你还差多少能能掌握其他角色。

depth vs breadth_depth(from adtdevblogaday)

这里有件有趣的事可以试一下：点击Ryu，再点击“All Roll Motions”,或点击“All Charge Motions”。注意，点击Ryu之后，你就正在学习许多其他角色了。这就是“毫无深度”的意思。这不是指游戏不需要技术，而是指你的技术（执行）和知识适用于所有这些项目。

这是件好事。优秀的格斗游戏是关于解读、预感和抵抗对手；理解在何时何地使用正确的动作；惩罚应该有合适的节奏和时间。这些就是优秀的格斗游戏的核心。所有系统和动作的存在都是为了促进你和对手之间的心灵较量。

depth v sbreadth_depth_blazblue(from altdevblogaday)

深度不是按钮的数量，或按钮映射角色的方式，而是并且总是玩家操作游戏必须学习的“如何”的数量。对于《玫瑰十字》和《铁拳》，4个按钮恰好对应角色的四肢，这比《街头霸王》的6个按钮更加直观。《铁拳》使用长连续技、换位和其他角色专属的“如何”，意味着它有更大的深度，且这种深度，无论好坏，都使游戏更加难上手。

执行是优秀的格斗游戏所必不可少的，是的，但它不应该成为障碍。长连续技确实增加了游戏对玩家提出的技术要求，但它们是否让玩法更紧凑了呢？使精神较量更好了呢？未必。它们只是创造了不必要的深度。你得到了有深度的心理游戏了吗？有些情况下是，但我们在这里要寻找的是“为什么”。为什么我应该使用这个动作而不是那个动作。我要在哪里使用这个动作？你不希望你的玩家问你如何，你希望他们问你为什么。因为这才叫作心灵较量——它存在于“为什么”之中。

广度——关于“为什么”的知识

什么叫“有广度”？有选项，而且是大量选项，不必总是回答为什么有这些选项。广度意味着在一个系统中，每个动作都是不创造平等的，但奇怪的动作自有它的目的。我花了很长时间玩《街头霸王4》，试图（失败了）掌握Dhalsim，主要是因为它是一个能说明问为什么的乐趣的例子。因为他的四肢能伸长，所以他有许多奇怪的招式，当你看到那些招式时，你会忍不住疑问到底要怎么使用，但这正是使这个角色有趣的原因。有人可能会想，“为什么我要使用这个招式？”但对于某些情况却是最好的选择。有些招式比另一些更管用，如果减少Dhalsim的一个招式，可能会使其他招式更好用，但我不能想像那样游戏会变成什么样子。

我现在可以告诉你，任何使用这个句子“所有动作都必须同样有用”的人，并不理解他们正在要求什么。首先，这个要求真的不可能达到。其次，更重要的是，即使有可能，为什么你希望那样？这样还有意思吗？如果所有动作都是同样有效的，那么解决方案都是一样的，如果解决方案都是一样的，那么游戏就没有意义了。什么意思？你需要不确定性，你需要“为什么”。

为了让大家理解什么是广度，我制作了另一个图解——这次是一个饼图。它罗列了Ryu在不攻击状态下可以执行的所有可能的动作。点击任意项，你可以看到它可以关连的所有动作。选项的关连性体现了深度，而选项的数量体现了广度。

depth vs breadth_breadth_ryumoves(from altdevblogaday)

我应该讨论两个有趣的术语：关连和取消。上图体现的是取消而不是关连。首先，为了理解关连和取消之间的区别，你必须理解组成一个动作的框架。也就是说，关连是当用一个动作命中你的对手以后，你可以接着使出第二个动作，因为第二个动作的启动时间短于对手的恢复时间。

而取消是指，当输出你的第一个动作以后，你正要迅速输出第二个动作（通常是在启动帧内），然后快要击中时（或通常当你开始你的恢复帧时），游戏取消了你的第一个动作，而直接执行第二个动作。看出差别了吗？关连意味着你必须完成第一个动作，而取消意味着你改变了第一个动作的属性，转而执行另一个完全不同的动作。在讨论深度和广度时，这是一个重要的区别！你看，大多数时候，特别是在像《铁拳》这样的游戏中，某些动作只能由取消才完成。这意味着需要“如何”的知识——深度。

这种差异可以这么表达：你正在看人玩格斗游戏，这个人执行了一个漂亮的攻击招式。你说：“很酷啊，你怎么做到的？”你得到的回答很非常不同于关连和取消。

关连：当你完成crouching MP后，你可以执行crouching HK——太了不起了！

取消：你按下左拳、左踢、右拳、右踢——呃，让我先记下来……

甚至只是阅读说明，也让我不学习了。

我的意思是取消很糟吗？在我设计的所有游戏里，都不能少了它。你忘记动作冒险游戏了。

格斗游戏vs动作冒险游戏

说到深度和广度，动作冒险游戏完全是格斗游戏的对立面。优秀的动作冒险游戏没有广度，但有深度，这就是它与格斗游戏的区别；但也是大多数动作冒险游戏的战斗系统都很糟糕的原因。设计动作冒险游戏的人喜欢格斗游戏。我的意思是，这类人还在设计动作冒险游戏？所以不出意料，他们设计出来的游戏都太雷同了。然而，与游戏设计中的大多东西一样，不同的类型需要不同的设计理念。你如何设计《GT赛车》中的赛车应该不同于你如何设计《黑道圣徒》中的赛车——当然，在这两款游戏中，你都开车，但你希望开车的感觉是不一样的。

在动作冒险游戏中，你的角色需要的只是能把任务以最好的方式完成的动作。当你的玩家问：“为什么要有这个动作？”答案总是：“因为可以完成大事。”他不需要跟别人进行什么精神较量，也没有人应该跟他进行精神较量，所以没有问“为什么”的理由，也就无所谓有没有广度了。

看看Kratos的广度图解，再把它与Ryu的图解对比一下，你就知道这个理念上的差别了。注意，与Ryu的对比，你能体验到的深度是多少？与Ryu不同，Kratos充分利用取消（而不是关连）给自己增加深度。

depth vs breadth_breadth_kratos moves(from altdevblogaday)

对于格斗游戏的爱好者，深度和广度的概念是相当直观的——甚至比本文所说的还要明显。但是，理解有深度和广度的意义与执行能体现其原则的战斗系统是大大不同的。我喜欢格斗游戏（尽管我不并擅长），我也喜欢动作冒险游戏。尽管我两种游戏都爱，但直到我看到二者的结构，我才意识到它们之间完全相反的属性。你必须对你的系统提出问题：为什么我们要给玩家这个动作，如果没有这个动作会怎么样。太经常了，特别是对于动作冒险游戏，我们努力向格斗游戏靠拢，却并不理解这么做意味着什么。我希望本文提出的深度和广度概念能对设计战斗系统有所帮助。（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）

Depth vs Breadth: Tips From A Combat Designer

by Mike Birkhead

Being a good combat designer requires understanding the meaning and significance of both depth and breadth in your designs. To put it simply: depth is the Knowledge of How, and breadth is the Knowledge of Why. But what does this mean?

How do I perform that move? Why should I use this move? How come I need meter to do this move? How do I build meter? Why should I build meter?

Combat designers, the good ones, all understand the hows and the whys of the moves they are creating, but for those not seeped in the world of fighting games their meaning can be a little obtuse. One of the things I love about game design is finding new ways – either graphically, mathematically or visually – to express information, and so I have tried my best in this post to express Depth and Breadth in an interactive way that showcases not only their meaning, but also their implication.

Depth – the Knowledge of How

Good fighting games have little depth to their combat system. (Say what?) This sounds like crazy talk, but listen: you must divorce yourself from the misconstrued and often synonymous meanings of depth like lots of moves, tactical , execution heavy, or even skill. Depth is none of these things. Depth is the measure of the number of times your player must learn How to do something; this includes every new system, but not, as I will show you, every new attack. This is an important distinction, as multiple moves can be mapped to the same “how”. In Street Fighter, for example, when you learn how to perform Ryu’s Fireball and Dragon Punch, you also learn how to perform Sagat’s Tiger Shot, Tiger Uppercut, and Tiger Knee. The knowledge of how to perform those moves is the same. What’s more, each move has 3 versions (a light, medium, and heavy), so here you have a total of 15 separate moves that only require knowledge of 2 move inputs – thats a fantastic depth to breadth ratio.

Which brings us to my depth diagram. Below you will see a lot of clickable buttons with names on them. They list every character, mechanic, and motion the player must learn in Street Fighter – the Hows. Clicking on a mechanic is like saying “I know how to do this”, and it will show you what progress you have made in mastering the various characters. You can also click on a character to indicate you have mastered that character, and it will then show you how far along you are in mastering the other characters.

For the interactive version, follow the link.

Some interesting things to try: clicking on Ryu, clicking on the “All Roll Motions”, or clicking on “All Charge Motions”. Notice that, after clicking on Ryu, you are well on your way to learning many of the other characters. That is what it means to have little depth. It is not that the game requires no skill, but that your skills (in execution) and knowledge are applicable across the entire cast.

This is a good thing. Great fighting games are about reading, anticipating, and countering your opponent; about understanding exactly where and when to use just the right move; and about spacing and timing it all just right for that clutch punish. That is the core of great fighting games. All of the systems and all of the moves exist to further the mind games you can play with your opponent (and they with you).

For the interactive version, follow the link.

It is not the number of buttons, or the way they are mapped to the characters that controls how “accessible” your fighting games is to others. It is, and always will be, the number of “hows” they must learn that controls accessibility. To the lamen, Tekken, with its 4 buttons mapped cleverly to the four limbs, is more accessible than Street Fighter’s 6 button control mapping, but they could not be more wrong. Tekken’s use of long combo strings, stance switching, and other character-specific “hows” means that it has MUCH greater depth to it, and this depth, for better or worse, makes it a much less accessible game.

Execution is a requisite part of good fighting games, yes, but it should not be the great barrier that it is for some games. Long button string combos certainly add great requirements of skill to a game, but do they make the gameplay tighter? The mind games better? Nope. All they do is create unnecessary depth. Do you get mind games with depth? Some, but what we are looking for here is the Whys. Why should I use this move over that move. Where do I use this move? You don’t want your players asking How, you want them asking Why, because that is where the mind games live. They live in the Why.

Breadth – the Knowledge of Why

What does it mean to have breadth? It means having options, lots of options, and not always being sure why you were given those options. It means a system where every move is NOT created equal, but finding that one time out of ten where a weird move finds its purpose. I spent a long time in Street Fighter 4 trying (and failing) to master Dhalsim, particularly because he exemplifies the fun of asking Why. Thanks to his stretchy limbs he has a lot of weird moves, and you cannot help but watch them and wonder where in the hell you would use them, but that’s what makes him fun. Take anti-air. Dhalsims Back + HK is a fantastic anti-air, one of the best really, and it works / punishes a great deal of jump ins. Now, one might look at his Back + MP, another anti-air, and think, “why the hell would I ever use this?” But for certain situations, especially when someone goes for a cross-up, it is the superior choice. One of these (b.HK) is arguably more useful than the other, and if Dhalsim had to have one less move in his arsenal, you could make a good case for cutting the other, but I can’t imagine the game without it.

I can tell you right now, that anyone who uses the phrase, “every move should be equally useful,” does not understand what they are asking for. First, that’s realistically impossible to achieve. Second, and more important, even if that was possible, why would you want that? Where would the fun be? If everything is equally useful, then everything   is equally and knowingly countered, and if everything is equally countered, the match is over the second someone presses a button. What’s the point? You need uncertainty, you need the Why.

To try and show you what breadth looks like, I created a different chart – this time it’s pie (everyone loves pie)! It lists, around the circle, all of the possible actions that Ryu can perform when standing idle. By clicking on any of the moves it will then show you all of the moves that can be chained with that move. How deeply (or widely as the case may be) you traverse in this showcases the depth, while the number of options available at each stage showcases the breadth.

For the interactive version, follow the link.

Some interesting terminology I should discuss: links vs cancels. This is showing cancels. It is not showing links. (What the hell is he talking about!) First, to understand the difference between links and cancels you must understand the frames that make up a move (of which, there, are, many, resources). With that said, a Link is when, after hitting your opponent with a move, you can Link a second move because its startup is less than your opponents recovery (you have what is called frame advantage).

A Cancel, on the other hand, is when, after inputing your first move, you input a second move quickly (usually during your startup frames), and then when you hit (or usually once you begin your recovery frames) the game cancels that first move and goes right into a second move. See the difference? A link means that you must complete the first move, while a cancel means you are altering the properties of the first move and going to a completely different second move. This is an important distinction when discussing depth vs breadth! You see, most times, especially in games like Tekken, certain moves can only be performed by canceling into them. That means that they require “how” knowledge – depth.

The difference can be expressed thusly: You are watching someone play a fighting game and they perform a cool looking attack. You turn to them an say, “that was cool, how did you do that?” The response you get is vastly different between links and cancels:

Link: Oh, after you land a crouching MP you can do a crouching HK – oh cool!

Cancel: Oh, you press, Left Punch, Left Kick, Right Punch, Left Punch, Right Kick – Uh, let me write that down…

Even reading it makes me not want to learn it.

Am I saying that cancels are bad? No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that cancels create depth. They create barriers of execution, and you should be careful. Still, even Street Fighter has cancels (lots of normals can cancel into specials, supers, or ultras), but their cancels have a finality to them. They are not very deep.

Ok, you say, depth is bad and breadth is good. Forever more I shall strive to live up to this ideal in everything I design! Ehhh… not so fast buddy. You forgot about action adventure games.

Fighting vs Action Adventure Games

When it comes to depth and breadth, action adventure games are the complete antithesis of fighting games. (Is this guy for real?!) Good ones have little breadth, but they have depth, and while this is just one part of what sets them apart from fighting games, it is one of the primary reasons most action adventure combat is so bad. People that design action adventure combat love fighting games. I mean, why else would you be doing this job? So it is no surprise that they design them to be so similar. However, like most things in game design, different genres require different design philosophies. How you design cars in Gran Turismo is not how you design cars in Saints Row – sure, in both games you drive a car, but you really don’t want them feeling the same.

Your character in an action adventure game requires only the moves that get the job done in the coolest way possible. When your player asks the question, “Why do I have this move?” the answer is always, always, “So that I can accomplish great things.” He has no one to play mind games with, and no one should be playing mind games with him, so there is no REASON to be asking “why”. There is no need for breadth.

You can see this difference in philosophy by looking at a breadth diagram for Kratos, and contrasting it with the one for Ryu. Notice how deeply in the tree you can traverse in comparison to the one for Ryu. Kratos, unlike Ryu, makes great use of Cancels (not links!) to give him depth.

For the interactive version, follow the link.

For the fighting game enthusiast, the concepts of depth and breadth are fairly intuitive – obvious, even, and more than likely this post was boring. But look: understanding what it means to have depth or breadth is a lot different than implementing combat systems that exemplify their principles. I love fighters (despite the fact that I’m pretty bad at them), and I love action adventure games. Despite a love of both, it wasn’t until I got to see their construction first hand that I realized their complete antithetical nature. You must ask the questions that are imperative to your systems: why are we giving the player this move, and can we imagine the game without it. Too often, especially with action adventure games, we strive to throw in the kitchen sink of combat (“more is better lol”) without understanding what that means. I hope these visualizations were helpful. Now, get out there and design the next killer combat system.(source:altdevblogaday)