FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
. Game Features
Action games provide a good field in which to study many features also found in other genres because the simplicity of action games means that the issues aren't obscured by other considerations. Action games tend to set simple, obvious goals and offer clear, direct ways to reach them (although the goals may be difficult to achieve).
Although 2D action games are no longer the state of the art technically, if you are a student, you will probably be asked to build a simple 2D action game as your first project. This is a great place to start, providing you with practice using—and a way to demonstrate your grasp of—the fundamentals of game design. You can easily build small 2D action games with very little programming by using the free Game Maker tool from YoYo Games. Download it at www. yoyogames. com.
Level progression in action games tends to be linear. Once the player completes all levels, she has won the whole game. (There are exceptions; in Spyro the Dragon, the player has a choice of levels at any given time. Completing some levels unlocks others not previously available.) Within a level, progress may be linear (the player can go only forward or back) or nonlinear (the player has some freedom to choose her own path). Occasionally a linear level includes a hidden shortcut that, when discovered, allows the player to jump ahead, bypassing many obstacles and dangers.
Designers often group action game levels by theme. All the levels in a themed set have a similar appearance and a similar set of enemies or obstacles to overcome. A set of themed levels usually ends in an encounter with a big boss, who must be defeated. In some cases, the player must acquire powerups or gain skills while completing tasks in the levels to defeat that set's big boss and progress to the next set of levels.
Each level presents the player with a variety of challenges, and failure to surmount them eventually causes the player to lose the game—whether it's dancing well in a dance game or shooting things in a shooter. However, in most such games, the sequence of the challenges in a given level remains the same from one play session to the next. Except for the occasional wildcard enemy (described later in this chapter), the player can be confident that if a given region contains certain challenges the first time it's played, the same region will contain exactly the same challenges the next time. Thus, players eventually finish action games by learning what tasks lie ahead and how to accomplish them through repeated attempts.
As a designer, you will find that levels are easier to balance when they contain fixed, rather than randomized, challenges. However, this approach makes the game repetitious, and that makes the game unattractive to two groups: those who don't like repetitive play and those who don't have a lot of leisure time. To avoid alienating those groups, include a save-and-reload feature so the player can restart the game in the middle whenever he loses. Alternatively, use checkpoints, as described in the next section.
Level design is discussed in more detail in Chapter 12, "General Principles of Level Design."
As Chapter 12 explained, the most important level design principle for action games is variety of pacing. Game developers often waste a lot of time and money rebuilding game levels because something just doesn't feel right—the pacing is wrong.
In two valuable Gamasutra articles, "Gameplay Fundamentals Revisited: Harnessed Pacing and Intensity" and "Gameplay Fundamentals Revisited, Part 2: Building a Pacing Structure," Mike Lopez argues that to avoid poor pacing, you should plan the pacing of your entire game in advance, during the pre-production phase of development (Lopez, 2008a and 2008b). (Note that this is not the same as the concept stage of game design. Pre-production takes place during the early part of the elaboration stage.) He recommends a nine-step process to create an intensity and pacing plan for your game, summarized briefly here:
1. Brainstorm. Think of locations for your levels, exciting moments of action associated with those locations (such as "the building collapses"), and generic moments of excitement that are independent of location (such as suddenly facing a powerful enemy). At this point you're not deciding on the sequence of these events, just
thinking of the kinds of events you'd like to have. Remember, this applies to the entire game, not just a single level.
2. Set priorities. Decide which of the ideas generated by brainstorming are most important.
3. Create a story framework. Don't write the entire story; just create a high-level outline that interweaves plot elements with the actions you have planned so they work together.
4. Rate and sequence key events. Give each planned event a numeric intensity rating (say, from 1-10). Using these ratings, construct a sequence of events that builds toward rising moments of intensity throughout each level, and throughout the game generally. The intensity at the beginning of a level should be somewhat lower than the intensity at the end of the previous level.
5. Rate and sequence plot points. Do the same thing with the major plot points in your story framework that you did with the key events: determine their intensity and figure out where they fit in best. Include periods of reduced intensity between moments of high excitement; Lopez recommends using devices such as narration or dialog for these periods.
6. Set the time between high-intensity events. Space the high-intensity events so that they occur at reasonable intervals and don't last too long. This is one of the most intricate and uncertain aspects of level design. You cannot estimate this precisely because players don't all play at the same rate. Be sure to playtest your game with both skilled and unskilled players.
7. Evaluate the trends. Step back from your plan and examine the whole thing, looking for any gaps or anomalies, such as an exciting moment that is much less exciting than the one that preceded it, which might feel like an anticlimax. (This is not the same as a lull or relaxation period.)
8. Begin constructing levels. The level designers can now begin building the levels according to the pacing plan.
9. Review and iterate. Test and adjust what you've built to be sure you are achieving your pacing goals.
Lopez intends his approach primarily for use in action games to reproduce the kind of roller coaster ride that people experience watching TV shows such as 24 or Prison Break. This method, while clearly not suited to all genres, is valuable not only for action games, but for many hybrid genres such as action-adventures and action-oriented role-playing games, and it works for games of different sizes. You can construct a classic side-scrolling action game like Sonic the Hedgehog using this process just as effectively as you can a modern first-person shooter. Look up Lopez's original articles for a more in-depth discussion, complete with examples.
Some action games allow the player to explicitly save and resume the game at any time, which allows them to recover from failure, but many do not. Older games required the player to start again from the beginning of the current level or even the beginning of the entire game. This is now considered poor design. In many modern games, the avatar's new incarnation appears in the same location at which it died, or if that is impossible (for example, if Mario falls into water), then the new avatar appears in the last safe location it occupied before it died (for example, the last platform that Mario occupied before he fell into the water). The state of the level remains unchanged—the avatar just appears, and play resumes. Apart from the loss of a life and perhaps the loss of the avatar's possessions, the player is not punished for letting the avatar die.
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Avatars may also reappear at a checkpoint. Checkpoints mark the positions on a level at which a player's avatar may appear in its next incarnation if it should die in that level. As the player progresses through a level, he passes through one or more checkpoints along the way, usually marked by some visual indicator that changes to inform the player it has been passed. In Sonic the Hedgehog, for example, streetlamps mark the checkpoints, turning from white to red when the avatar passes them (see Figure 13.6). If the avatar dies, the level is reset to the condition it was in when the player last successfully passed a checkpoint, and the avatar reappears at the checkpoint location.
LEVEL EXITS, LEVEL WARPS, AND TELEPORTERS
Many action games that require the player to explore the layout of each level designate a particular location as the normal transition point to the next level—the level exit or dungeon exit. A level exit may be guarded by enemies, be well hidden, or both. Finding and passing through the level exit is usually the primary goal of the level.
Game designers often provide more than one exit from a level: the standard exit, which takes the player to the next level, and one or more special exits that jump the player ahead several levels or take the player to an otherwise secret level. These are known as level warps. Level warps are usually hidden or particularly difficult to reach, and the reward is proportional to the level of sacrifice required to get to them.
Games from Stargate to Luigi's Mansion and the Super Mario series use level warps. If you provide a hidden exit, you may want to give the player a subtle clue. For example, in Super Mario World, the world overview map shows levels with secret exits as flashing red dots, rather than flashing yellow dots. The red dots are a signal to the player (without telling him explicitly) that the level contains a secret exit.
A teleporter is a transition point that causes the player's avatar to jump someplace else within the same level. These points may be marked by a sign or object that tells the player he has found a teleporter, or they may be unmarked, giving the player no warning that he is about to be teleported and no explanation for why he is suddenly somewhere else. Teleporters often become available at the end of a long period of exploration, so the player can simply jump back to a previous location (such as a home base or camp) without having to walk all the way back.
