Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
signifiers. Tell the player something with the effect detailing that you add to a prop.
Don’t just use an effect to use an effect. You must use effects sparingly so that you
don’t diminish performance.
You have to learn to manage how often, and in what ways, you add effects to props.
In the end, again, it’s all a matter of balance. If you use the same effect on every prop, it
quickly loses any impact it might have otherwise had. You have to learn to use prop
effects to highlight and emphasize. Every prop is not deserving of emphasis. Setting
some props out ahead of others by giving them special qualities helps to keep your
universe diversified, and will definitely help to reduce visual boredom.
A UDIO
It has almost been a tradition in game development to ignore audio until the very last
minute, and then cripple the chances that audio can make an important contribution to a
game by providing audio developers with nearly nonexistent resources. The importance
of audio in games has been vastly underappreciated for far too long. However, thankfully,
this handling of audio is changing for good. Game audio has reached a new era.
Audio will have to continue to evolve if game publishers and developers want to deliver
competitive game entertainment content. The change toward supporting audio fully and
completely can’t happen quickly enough for me. Audio is not merely an “add-on”
tacked to the end of a project; it is a critical aspect of delivering exciting game content.
Some of the design tools mentioned previously allow you to attach audio events to
models or to place sounds in a scene. Some go further, letting you tune the “range”
within which the audio event is perceptible to your hero character, for instance. This
setting determines from how far away your hero character (or player’s avatar) can
“hear” a given audio event.
Game audio is sometimes used as a clue element. I’ve found that an audio clue works
best when used together with another kind of visual clue (such as bloody tracks).
Knowing that you’re near a waterfall because you can hear it, for example, helps to
keep a player oriented.
Next to visuals, audio is your best ally in transferring mood in support of gameplay.
The following are some types of audio that you can use to support gameplay:
� Audio that scores cinematics (movie snippets), segues, and level transitions
� Ambient or environmental effects audio
� Special effects audio
� Music to accent dramatic points in the game
� Character dialogue
� Interface audio