Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

uilding up a script system yet. However, if your team is confident about the
high-concept gameplay ideas, it’s time to consider your scripting requirements.
Every genre has its own basic and unique requirements, and your own gameplay
ideas will shape the needs as well. You’ll probably want to start with a detailed list
that describes exactly what kinds of parameters you would like to control. Sports
games are always challenging and script-intensive. The tools behind them also go
through rapid rounds of revisions. Let’s take a look how you might begin the process
of building up a scripting tool for a baseball game.
You might begin by breaking a baseball game up into field performance roles or
field behaviors, and then building tool functionality around these categories. We
start with five categories: General, Pitching, Fielding, Hitting, and Catching. What
elements, under each of these categories, would we want to control for gameplay
purposes? A breakdown begins to evolve, and you have a starting point for building
your scripting tool.
General
C H A P T E R 6
The general category becomes our home or all-purpose category. This category can
be expanded to include all of our general-purpose scripting and game control elements
and might include
� Crowd reactions Setting triggers for crowd audio and animation cues.
� Play-by-play camera details Setting up camera routines. How will the
camera follow each action from multiple views? Many games allow for
user-configured game views, but these must be determined and crafted
for the player.
� Drama points or game highlights Setting up camera and playback details
for homeruns, great catches, or clutch situations.
� Instant replay tuning Configuring how plays are memory-cached and
held for playback at the player’s request.
� Prop control Defining prop behaviors like mascot activities or overhead
blimp passes.
� AI controllers for each position type In player vs. CPU modes, configuring
“best” actions for CPU players to take against human opponents.
� Weather conditions Without a dynamic weather system, you must set up
weather look and feel issues (for example, the wind’s effect on ball carry
and the amount of friction light rain adds to the ballpark grass).
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Scripting Action Events