Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

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A P P E N D I X D MAPPING OR LEVEL BUILDING Whether you’re working as a level designer building levels or maps, or working as a game designer on overall game detailing, you will be using a variety of software tools to build in functionality. The only way to get really familiar with building up game play using tools is to do it repeatedly—to go through the labors of build, test, refine, build, test, refine, ad nauseum. There are more tools available to players and developers than ever before. This is great for access, bad for mastery. I don’t know which tool you are using, want to use, or will be using. Yes, we want powerful game development tools, powerful editors with amazing flexibility, but ultimately part of the true power is in what you bring to the tool—your own gaming insights developed over countless thousands of hours of play. As a general piece of advice, try to know one FPS editing tool, one RTS/RPGoriented tool, along with one 3-D package. This helps you to cover your bases and create opportunities for yourself. A UDIO Depending on team configuration, your game team might be working with an audio director via your producer. As designers and producers, we want to make sure to maximize audio impact at every turn. It’s simply unacceptable to ignore audio detailing. It’s best to know how to edit basic sounds and create placeholder sounds and effects. Sometimes you might even come up with something useable! Take advantage of the excellent tools available from Sonic Foundry (www.sonicfoundry.com). Plan for audio early on. Push it closer to center stage in your design concerns. It’s easy to get lost in nothing but the visuals, but that is a mistake! Audio will do wonders in helping you transfer mood and emotion. T ESTING You’ll be testing right along with QA. You’ll try to make fixes before they become official bugs. You may not like the feedback coming from QA. Listen carefully— frustration is usually shared. If players are having a bad experience with your game, you’ll need to do some real-time problem solving to try to address the situation. It will create more work. This is the cost of refinement; the alternative is failing to get your game where it needs to be in order to succeed. Make sure that testing continues among your peers as well. 319 Quick Topic Summary for Designers
Building Game Worlds 320 U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N SUPPORT SOFTWARE Don’t forget to try out new software to help support the design and production process. The stand-bys for me are Word, FrontPage, Visio, Project, and PowerPoint. With industry trends moving toward middleware (www.renderware.com), there may soon be some forms of standardization in actual production software and tools. To date, this has not happened. Visio is a less popular application, but a great tool for setting up interface features and functionality, mapping screen flows for the game shell, and performing other charting tasks. TEAM FOCUS Always cross-check the game heartbeat with your plans and support your team’s efforts in the face of problems. Be a problem solver, and strive to help those around you to be better. Make sure you apply the same rules to yourself. Stay hungry for learning. Address sagging morale issues early on and don’t ignore team concerns!
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A BOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Meigs is a ga
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Brandon A. Nordin Scott Rogers Wend
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2 THE game design process begins by
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24 AFTER you’ve completed your pr
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54 FOR a game to be competitive the
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86 YOU now understand the developme
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Building Game Worlds 100 U L T I M
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108 UP to this point, we’ve cover
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130 Building Game Worlds 130 U L T
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136 SCRIPTING in games gives develo
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166 ONCE your game environment has
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Building Game Worlds 174 174 U L T
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188 A whole new avenue for games ha
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216 ANOTHER new content horizon for
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238 THERE is a wide and growing ran
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266 AT some point in your skills gr
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Page 317 and 318: 296 MANY types of software tools we
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Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

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