FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
The Construction Converter
Construction is a conversion activity that changes labor, money, and materials into buildings (or whatever the CMS constructs). Construction happens only when the player wants it to, so she controls the spending, and she can usually defer
construction until such time as she can afford it. Although it drains money, the player can see immediately what she gets in return, and in any case, it's an investment because the constructed object does something useful in the economy.
Switching into arcade mode skews the play toward lots of action and relatively few slow-paced game states, such as strikeouts or walks. Arcade mode makes the game more exciting at …
The Secret of Monkey Island, now nearly 20 years old, remains worth studying because it spawned a highly successful franchise. Although it is ostensibly set on a Caribbean island in …
In single-player games, the player competes against the computer, so the computer has to have enough artificial intelligence (AI) to be a good opponent; building the AI for a complex …
