     |
 |
 |
 | | | | |
 |
|||
 |
||||||
          |
 |
 |
||||
|
Congregate Creatures in Groups Around Resources A desert environment is full of barren sand… until you get to an oasis at which point there’s life everywhere: palm trees, lizards, grass, ferns, the works. That’s because unlike the rest of the desert, the oasis has a valuable resource, specifically water. I chose the oasis example because it’s the best way to visualize the next concept that should be used by video game world builders, which is this: generally, life tends to congregate around resources. Humans live near roads. Frogs live near flies. Whales live near plankton. Zombies are found near graveyards. It doesn’t really matter what animal we’re talking about. The point is that every creature a game designer can think up probably has a resource that it can use. Your job as a game designer is to place that creature near to that resource. I know it sounds simple, but it really goes a long way to conveying a believable game world. As much I hate to be the fanboy who keeps bringing up World of Warcraft, I must say this: WoW is probably the most consistent game out there for demonstrating the world building power of resource-oriented game population. Most creature types throughout the game are arrayed around specific resources, and resources can mean anything, including, but not limited to, farmsteads, mines, lumberyards, water sources, giant glowing power crystals, trade routes, and so on, and this idea probably comes from the game’s predecessor, Warcraft III (a real time strategy game that involved, to a large degree, the gathering of various resources). Regardless of the reasons for such deliberate placement of resources, the end result is that very few creatures in the world appear to be out of place. Humanoids stand near crates of supplies. Amphibious murlocks hunt near the shore. Heck, even the vultures flock around dragon corpses. Everything is territorial around resources! Another game that demonstrates this principal very well is Battlefield 2 (and probably Battlefield 1 as well, though I’ve never played it). The types of vehicles and stationary defenses that spawn around any given military base in the game are all dependent upon which army controls the base (i.e. Chinese, American or Iraqi). Although this game mechanic is fairly standard for capture-the-flag-style first person shooters, it’s worth mentioning here because it really helps convey the fact that these bases are resources that need to be controlled. “Why is the Iraqi sniper taking pot shots at me? Oh yeah, because I control the ground mounted missile launcher that he wants for his team.”
The game Out of This World (released in the early 1990s; don’t worry if you don’t remember it) is one of the first to star a dimensionally “shipwrecked” scientist who must struggle for survival. In the opening levels, the player realizes that he has arrived on the territorial fringes of a hostile alien empire. Throughout the rest of the game, the player moves in and out of various wilderness and urban areas in an attempt to survive. After running through a few levels, you have a clear sense of what kinds of creatures are lurking in each environment you pass through (sewers, caves, wilderness and cities) as well as an understanding of how each creature will attempt to eat/kill you. Not surprisingly, these creatures tend to organize themselves in groups around resources. The humanoid aliens populate military bases which house huge streams of energy (that you can use to recharge your stolen laser pistol) while the debris eating pit-mouth aliens lie in areas where debris (i.e. you the player) are likely to fall. This is especially effective because the game uses encounters with alien creatures relatively sparingly. By the last level you, the player, have a clear idea of what creatures you will find based on what resources are nearby. As the astute reader has by now realized, the principle of congregating creatures in groups around resources (the second point of this article) is very similar to the principle of making creatures appear to be part of their environment (the first point of this article). If fact, they are so similar that the author must concede that they are in fact the same idea, and the he merely changed the wording slightly and presented this idea twice to fully drive the point home. Creatures are part of their environments because their environment sustains them. Get it? Got it? Good. |
|||||||||||||||
Previous
|
|
|