FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Gameplay Modes
Because CRPGs try to duplicate (within limits) the flexibility of tabletop role-playing games, they offer more kinds of activities than any other genre. Among these activities are exploration, tactical combat, stealth operations, conversation, buying and selling, and inventory management.
CRPGs typically use four major gameplay modes and a variable number of minor ones. The major modes are exploration and combat, conversation, trade, and inventory management. The minor modes are character creation (only used at the beginning of the game), character upgrade screens, and skill tree management. The next four sections describe the major modes briefly.
In older computer games, exploration was often a gameplay mode separate from combat, and the two modes had different camera models. Modern games combine them into a single mode. Traditional party-based RPGs often use an isometric perspective so the player can see the whole party. Figure 15.3 is from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, which illustrates this isometric perspective.
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Notice the complexity of the user interface, with buttons along three sides of the screen as well as a scrolling text window at the bottom.
If the game has only one character, first - or third-person perspectives are common; see the section "Camera Model" later in this chapter.
The actions available in the exploration and combat mode include selecting one or more characters in the party, setting a formation in which they will move together, designating a location for them to walk or run to, designating NPCs for them to attack or to talk to, picking up objects, and exercising special skills such as casting magic spells or searching for traps. The buttons to the lower right in Figure 15.3 are for setting a formation.
Conversation modes often use the same perspective on the game world as the exploration and combat mode but replace the exploration - and combat-related user interface features with a dialog-display mechanism. Occasionally, they switch the perspective to a close-up view of the other character in the conversation or display the character in a pop-up window.
CRPGs almost always manage conversations via the dialog tree mechanism that Chapter 7 describes. The player selects an NPC in the game world to speak to. A window opens, presenting a list of things that the avatar can say to the NPC. The player chooses one, and depending on what her choice is, the NPC replies, sometimes in text but often with an audio recording as well. Sometimes a scrolling window records the content of the conversation so that the player can go back and see what was said for as long as the conversation continues, or it may be recorded in a log or journal the player can bring up later. Asking the right questions or saying the right things elicits useful information from the NPC and sometimes gains experience points for the player as well.
Figure 15.4 shows the conversation mode in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. A portrait of the person being spoken to appears in a window at the bottom, along with some information about how he is reacting to the situation. Immediately above the portrait, superimposed on the game world, are two lines of text. These are lines of dialog from which the player may choose. Above them, the NPC's most recent speech appears adjacent to the character.
Conversations almost always take place between the avatar character and just one other person. Conversations with more than one person become complicated because the dialog window must indicate to whom each statement is addressed.
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Any buying or selling of items in the game takes place in a specialized trading mode. Most games in this genre have towns or settlements with friendly NPCs— blacksmiths, healers, and so on—who run businesses that offer to buy or sell goods and services. The interface is similar to the conversation mode interface, with a view of the shop, sometimes an image of the person the avatar bargains with, and often a list or a set of images of all the available items. The player can choose to buy an item or sell an item he already owns to get more money and can often bargain with the shopkeeper. Items purchased go directly into the avatar's inventory.
The inventory mode lets the player manage the objects that a given character is carrying around. Because CRPGs tend to include large numbers of objects, players need a system for keeping track of them and trading them among characters.
It's not realistic to simulate the actual packing of items into a backpack, and in any case, most games allow characters to carry more than would be credible if they were real people. Instead, a typical solution is to divide the character's carrying capacity into an array of boxes. Each box can carry one type of item. Large items take up several adjacent boxes. If an item is small enough, a single box can store
several of them, up to some maximum limit. Money, usually gold coins, will fit in a box with so many hundred coins per container. Figure 15.5 shows the inventory mode for Dungeon Siege II, which appears as a pop-up window over the main game world.
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Item weight may be a secondary constraint. No matter how many boxes the player has free, his character can carry only so many lead weights around. The BioWare games assess a penalty on a character's speed if he is carrying more than a certain weight, and above another threshold the character cannot move at all. Money is often exempt from the weight limit because having to store it whenever the player finds a big treasure hoard is annoying.
The player usually spends a disproportionate amount of time micromanaging the contents of the inventory, so inventory management becomes disproportionately important. Often, this task breaks a cardinal rule of human-computer interaction: Don't force the player to perform a menial task best handled by the computer. A simpler solution is to display a simple table of the items in the inventory, without requiring the player to organize them in space. A pair of indicators, one for the total weight of the inventory and one for the total volume, could tell the player how much room he has left and how much more weight he can carry.
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