Tài liệu Game Development Production P2 pdf

B.C.
China where Emperor Shun sup
-
posedly used the game to train his son
for assuming leadership of the state.
Chess has a rich history throughout the
Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and
through to modern times as the most
celebrated game of strategic thinking.
Longer histories of games are
available; the point I am making here is
that games have held an intimate role
in our intellectual growth from the ear
-
liest ages. We modern game makers are
carrying on an honorable, historic role.
Game Genres Satisfy Different Appetites
Electronic games are usually
described by their genre—strat
-
egy, adventure, role-playing,
action, and simulation. These
genres are a direct reflection of
the source material for the game.
Military and sports simulations;
gambling, parlor, and puzzle
games; storytelling; toys; and
children’s games comprise some
of the major branches of influ-
ence for the creation of
electronic games.

Modern computer games
have a rich history; some of the
earliest games (1970s) were text
adventure games such as Adven
-
ture, crude arcade games like
Pong, and a little later, multi
-
player games such as NetTrek.
These early games explored sto
-
rytelling, strategy, tactics, and
the player’s hand-eye coordina
-
tion. The sophistication of these
games was, of course, limited by
technology—a limit that is con
-
stantly being pushed back.
Gambling, Puzzle, and Parlor
Gambling, Puzzle, and Parlor
Games
Games evolved from elegant board
games full of culture to a wide variety
of wagering games involving dice or
cards. Games like Parcheesi and Scrab
-
ble took solid form during the 1800s
and early 1900s. Parcheesi is the father
of board games and requires the players

8
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
Background and influences on modern game genres
TEAMFLY

Team-Fly
®

to navigate their tokens around the
board like Monopoly and Candy Land.
These games themselves have been
directly ported as electronic games, but
it is the fast-paced puzzle games like
Tetris that have developed new ground
in this genre.
As I type these words, over
110,000 people are playing straightfor
-
ward conversions of the classic card and
board games online at Microsoft MSN
Gaming Zone (
/>).
These games have entertained families
and friends throughout the ages and
teach deduction, probability, and social
skills. The folks at Silver Creek
Entertainment (

)
have taken the concept of spades and
hearts and have crafted the finest ver
-
sions of these games, complete with a
rich set of features for social interaction
including chat, ratings, and blasting
your opponents with fireballs.
One of the coolest parlors (in my
opinion) happening right now is the

Internet Chess Club (
ss
-
club.com
) with over 1,000 players
currently connected and 26 Grand Mas
-
ters and International Masters playing
online. The ICC boasts an impressive
chat system, automated tournaments,
over 30 flavors of chess, anytime con-
trol, and impressive library and game
examination features. Automated chess
courses are broadcast throughout the
day, and many titled players turn their
mastery into cash by teaching chess
using the shekel—the unit of currency
on the ICC. It is an exciting place
where you have the choice of watching
GMs and IMs or playing in tourna-
ments around the clock. Instead of
dusty annotated chess columns in the
newspaper, try some three-minute blitz
action with the best players in the
world.
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
9
A partial listing of games and gamers on Microsoft’s
Gaming Zone
A dwarf and a fireball from Silver Creek Entertainment’s

Hardwood Spades
Military and Sports SimulationsMilitary and Sports Simulations
Games have long been providing simu-
lations of real-life experiences that
many of us do not get to experience in
daily life. There are simulations for
white-water kayaking, racing minivans
at night on the streets of Tokyo, fantas-
tic-looking detailed professional football
simulations, skateboarding simulators,
star fighter sims; in short, any sport,
military action, or transportation
method is a good candidate for an elec
-
tronic simulation.
Flight simulators have been the
staple of computer simulations since
the early ’80s. Microsoft enjoys the #1
spot with Microsoft Flight Simulator,
which they release new versions of
every even-numbered year—the latest
being FS 2002 (
/>games/fs2002
). Microsoft Flight Simulator
has a huge following including hun
-
dreds of virtual airlines and air traffic
controllers, and half a dozen or so
books are available for Flight Simulator.
Austin Meyer of Laminar Research

is the author of the most realistic and
user-extensible flight simulator, X-
Plane (
http:// www.x-plane.com
). Aside from
the obligatory features of
impressive 3D plane graph
-
ics, great looking scenery,
and a realistic flight model,
the truly impressive features
of X-Plane involve its
expandability. Hundreds of
planes and other features
created by devoted fans are
available for X-Plane, includ
-
ing real-time weather that is
downloaded to your computer
while flying! The author put
his time into creating the first
simulation of what it would
be like to fly on Mars: real
flight with the gravity, air density, and
inertia models of flight on Mars.
Through the ’70s and ’80s Avalon
Hill produced a vast array of detailed
military board games that covered all
aspects of war making from the Bronze
Age to the Jet Age. Avalon Hill’s crown

-
ing achievement is perhaps the most
detailed board game ever created:
Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). ASL is
also the most detailed squad-level mili
-
tary board game simulation ever
10
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
Various windows of the Blitz interface to the Internet Chess Club
A screen shot collage from X-Plane
developed. Countless modules expand
the game and the rules to take into
account the differences of individual
operations in World War II. There are
zillions of rules (and errata!) for every
-
thing from ammo types to night combat
rules. Military buffs have been playing
war games for hundreds of years, but
the developments that led to ASL car
-
ried forward into electronic gaming.
Currently there is a rage going on
about WWII squad games such as
Microsoft’s Close Combat and Cor
-
nered Rat’s World War II: Online. The
most hardcore of them all is Combat
Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin by Bat

-
tlefront.com.
My company, Taldren, was founded
on the success of our team’s Starfleet
Command game, which is a 3D real-
time interpretation of the rule set of
Star Fleet Battles from Amarillo
Design Bureau. Star Fleet Battles is a
detailed simulation of starship naval
combat based on the Star Trek televi
-
sion show and was created by Steven
Cole. The board game translated well
into a real-time 3D strategy game in
part because the pen and paper board
game itself broke the turns of the game
into 32 “impulses” of partial turns to
achieve a serviceable form of real-time
simulation. The game itself
was usually played as a sce-
nario re-enacting a
“historical” battle between
star empires of the Star
Trek universe. The game
was so detailed in its
mechanics a simple
cruiser-on-cruiser skirmish
could take two to fours
hours to resolve, and a fleet
action such as a base

assault was a project for
the entire weekend and a bucket of caf
-
feine. We developed the Starfleet
Command series that draws upon this
rich heritage and delivers a compelling
career in one of eight star empires or
pirate cartels. As the players get caught
up in epic struggles between the star
empires, they earn prestige points for
successful completion of their missions,
which can be used to repair their ships,
buy supplies, and upgrade to heavier
class starships. This electronic game
blends a television show telling the
story of exploring the galaxy with the
detail of a war game.
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
11
A screen shot from the real-time weather display for X-Plane
Virtual airlines from X-Plane
Car racing has been a staple of
games from the days of Monaco GP
and Pole Position in the arcade to the
state-of-the-art Gran Turismo 3 by
Sony. Gran Turismo 3 features hun
-
dreds of hours of gameplay, the most
realistic driving physics model, and
graphics so compelling you can feel the

sunlight filtered through the pine trees.
Electronic Arts, the largest soft
-
ware company in the games business,
sells about $3 billion in games a year.
Electronic Arts is both publisher and
developer of countless games dating
back to the early ’80s. EA has done
very well across all platforms and all
genres; however, it is the simulation of
sports—professional sports—that is
EA’s cash cow. Madden NFL Football
(

) has been pub-
lished for years and has been released
on every major platform including the
PC, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, N64,
Game Boy Color, GameCube, and Xbox.
Role-Playing Games
Role-Playing Games
No discussion of game making could be
complete without discussing storytell
-
ing. Sitting around a fire and spinning a
tale is one of the oldest forms of enter
-
tainment. Shamans acted out roles as
gods, animals, and warriors to explain
our world, teach us history, and to fuel

our imaginations after the sun went
down. With the advent of writing,
authors could now tell stories across
time—longer, deeper stories than a sin
-
gle dry throat could repeat. J.R.R.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy: Here
we drank wine with nearly immortal
elves, fought epic battles with orcs, and
saved the world from ultimate evil
through careful use of a ring. Science
fiction and fantasy exploded in the
second half of the twentieth century to
become the dominant market of fiction.
Reading a novel is wonderful, but
would it not be better to slay the
dragon yourself and take the loot home
to your castle? In the early ’70s, Gary
Gygax created Dungeons and Dragons
and showed us how to slay the dragon.
Dungeons and Dragons was very spe
-
cial because you did not compete
against the other players; rather you
acted or role-played a character in a fan
-
tasy world. You wrote a backstory for
your elven ranger, what motivated him,
why he must slay the orcs of the Fell
Lands. You then joined up with the

characters of your friends and role-
played through an adventure run by
your Dungeon Master, or referee.
Dungeons and Dragons has been
played by virtually everyone in the
game industry, and it is a keystone of
the role-playing game genre. Text
adventures such as Zork and graphic
adventures such as the King’s Quest
series gave us choices for how the
story would turn out. As capabilities
expanded, breakthrough games such as
Bard’s Tale, written by the infant Inter
-
play and published by Electronic Arts,
were later followed up by important
games like the Ultima and Wizardry
series. Role-playing games took a brief
slumber in the early ’80s when first-
person shooters dominated the PC
market, and the format of the computer
RPG remained fairly stale in the early
’90s. Starting around 1997 role-playing
games made a big comeback in the
form of three hugely important games:
Baldur’s Gate developed by BioWare,
Diablo developed by Blizzard, and
Ultima Online developed by Origin.
Baldur’s Gate brought us a gorgeous
game with intuitive controls and

12
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
mechanics and lavish production values
that brought the Dungeons and
Dragons world of the Forgotten Realms
to life. Diablo stunned the game indus
-
try with the simple and addictive game
-
play of the tight user interface and
online multiplayer dungeon hacking.
Ultima Online was the first commer
-
cially viable massively multiplayer
role-playing game. I spent probably 80
hours of my life there, mining virtual
iron ore to get ahead in a virtual econ
-
omy where I paid a real $10 a month for
the privilege of exploring my mining
fantasies.
Looking back to pen and paper
role-playing games and fantasy fiction, I
am excited to see the future of role-
playing games with the release of
Neverwinter Nights developed by
BioWare, where the tools of game mas
-
tering are part of the game. Scores of
players will participate together in

user-created adventures online. These
online role-playing games are fantastic
in scope compared to the multi-user
Dungeons available on Unix systems on
the Internet, but the story experience
is just as compelling. I look forward to
seeing the massively multiplayer vir
-
tual reality games as depicted in Tad
Williams’ Otherland fiction series,
where we become true avatars. Gas
Powered Games’ release of Dungeon
Siege, building on the groundbreaking
immediacy of Diablo, will be the slick-
est action/RPG today with breathtaking
3D graphics and strong online
multiplayer matchmaking that will sat-
isfy the dungeoneer in all of us.
Youth Making Games
You have to have the bug to make
games. The talent usually begins at a
young age. Like countless other game
developers who made goofy games on
early computers, I had a Commodore
Vic20 and C64 on which I created text
adventure games and crude bitmap
graphic maze adventures. In fourth
grade I produced a fairly elaborate
board game series that involved adven
-

turing through a hostile, medieval
fantasy world with various characters
very similar to the Talisman board
game. In eighth grade my friend Elliott
Einbinder and I created a wireframe,
first-person maze game; you used the
keyboard to navigate through the maze.
A most embarrassing flaw was in our
maze game: We could not figure out
how to prevent the player from cheat
-
ing and walking through the walls! We
kept asking our computer science
teacher how we could query the video
display to find out if we drew a wall. We
had no concept of a world model and a
display model!
On Money
In this whole discussion I have not
talked about the money to be made in
making games. Game making is both an
art and a science. If you are honest with
yourself, your team, the customer, and
to the game, you will make a great
game. In all art forms, excellence is
always truth.
Honesty, truth, and clarity are all
interrelated, and they are important not
because of moral standards; they are
important because only with the

Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
13
ruthless pursuit of a clean, tight game
can you hope to make a great game.
The rest of this book will focus on
how to get maximum value for your
development dollars with outsourcing,
how to decide which features to cut,
and how to track your tasks; all these
activities are heavily involved with
money. That being said, look deeper
and understand that I am helping you
realize the true goals for your game
project and to reach these goals as effi
-
ciently as possible.
Great games sell just fine, and the
money will come naturally enough;
focus on making a great game.
Why Make Games?
You should make games because you
love to. Making a game should be a
great source of creative release for you.
You love to see people enthralled by
your game, playing it over and over,
totally immersed in the world and the
challenges you have crafted for their
enjoyment. You should make games if
there is something fun you can visual
-

ize in your mind, something fun you
would like to experience, and you want
to share that experience with others.
14
Chapter 2: Why Make Games?
Chapter 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What Makes Game
Development Hard?
The Importance of Planning
What does it take to make great games?
Brilliantly optimized graphics code?
Stunning sound effects, clever artificial
intelligence routines, lush artwork, or
simply irresistible gameplay? Well, you
need all of that of course, with game-
play one of the most important factors.
However, behind the scenes you are
going to need a trail guide and a map to
get there.
You might be working alone on a
great mod to a commercial game, or
you might be working with an artist on
a cool online card game, or you might
be the director of development at
Blizzard. The size of your project or
your role does not matter; you still
need a plan to create your game.
Why must you have a plan? With
the smallest of projects the plan will
likely be to get a prototype of the game

going as soon as possible and then just
iterating and playing with the game
until it is done. This method works well
if the game you are making is a hobby
project, or your company is funded by a
seemingly unlimited supply of someone
else’s money and you are not holding
yourself financially accountable.
Very Few Titles Are Profitable
Many people do not realize how few
games are profitable. In 2001 over
3,000 games were released for the PC
platform; it is likely only 100 or so of
those titles turned a profit, and of those
only the top 50 made significant money
for the developers and publishers.
In 2000 an established developer in
North America would likely receive
between $1 million and $3 million in
advances paid out over 12 to 36 months
for the development of a game. The
typical publisher will spend between
$250,000 and $1.5 million in marketing
Chapter 3: What Makes Game Development Hard?
15
The darkened boxes represent the number of
successful games published each year.