Triptych Chapter 2 Soundtrack

In case you have missed it, here's the soundtrack of the second chapter of Triptych - available on Soundcloud.

The reading list of a beginning game developer (like me)

Starting developing my own game taught me that having background in 3D and programming is not enough for being a good game developer. So I started doing my research, reading some literature. Here's some good stuff I found. Mind you, I'm not affiliated with the writers and publishers and not advertising anything.

THE ART OF GAME DESIGN: A BOOK OF LENSES

by Jesse Schell

The Art of Game Design focuses on designing a good game - not necessarily a computer game, and it answers a lot of questions a game designer might have. It's about making decisions that will define your game - about the story, rules, look and feel, etc.

As you may have noticed, in Triptych diary 1 I was discussing how the weapon system choice would affect the overall gameplay and the level design, instead of going with a "this system is enjoyable/easy/popular" rationale. Schell's book complements my approach and adds the author's experience - a thing that I lack - to my own decision-making.

What's best about this book is its structure, with each "lens" centered around a specific question you need to answer during the design process.

ELEMENTAL MAGIC: VOL. 1 THE ART OF SPECIAL EFFECTS ANIMATION

ELEMENTAL MAGIC: VOL. 2 THE TECHNIQUE OF SPECIAL EFFECTS ANIMATION

by Joseph Gilland

Elemental Magic is one of the best finds I had; guess the VFX guys of Unreal Infiltrator Demo recommended it. As the title suggests, the books deal with designing believable VFX both in classic and 3D animation.

Designing VFX for video games is all about trickery. Device performance, HDD space, all this is pretty limited. You can't have full-scale particle simulations, say, for raindrops or explosions. So you have to rely on good design decisions to make your VFX believable and have an impact.

Mastering Unreal Technology, Vol. 1: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

Mastering Unreal Technology, Vol. 2: The Art of Level Design

by Zak Parrish and Jason Busby

I needed a book on level design, and the Mastering Unreal Technology series proved to be a good starting point. While focused on the older Unreal Engine 3 (Triptych is based on Unreal Engine 4), the fact that I started my game on UDK and migrated to UE4 when it went free helps migrate the ideas of the book to the newer engine. It will take a bit of thinking as some stuff is done differently on UE4 (e.g. BSP geometry is now used only for blocking out the level, and not for the final result), but nothing really hard about it, especially if you have worked with multiple engines and understand the general principles.

THE HOWS AND WHYS OF LEVEL DESIGN

by Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong

Another one on level design. A bit on the author - Hourences has been pretty good about tutorials and tips on game design, the design process of their Solus Project is pretty well documented. His outlook on creating a video game might differ deeply from mine, but his understanding of it is profound, and the book is a welcome addition to my game design library. The book is an easy read, and the ideas discussed in it actually work.

I recommend other beginning game designers, once they have gained intermediate level of working with the game engine of their choice, to take a look at his tutorials - and why not, the books.

There's a lot more to add to this list (the GPU Gems series, etc.) - but let's not overburden it for now. I might revisit it later, given I have a free moment or two - the making of Triptych takes a lot of time itself.

Have a nice day.

Triptych diary 1

MUSINGS ON WEAPON DESIGN FOR AN FPS GAME

PART I. WEAPON SYSTEM CHOICE

Triptych is a narrative-driven FPS game, inspired by Half Life, Bioshock series, as well as classic shooters like Quake 2 and Heretic.

Being an FPS game, I realize having a good plot and visuals will not be enough to make the game good. The shooting part itself should be enjoyable. So I started my research on what makes a good shooter.

I used my own experience as a gamer, feedback from fellow gamers, reviews by critics like TotalBiscuit and several GDC talks and publications for the sake of this research, as well as other choices.

Remember, that everything I write in this diary is work in progress and a subject to change based on the feedback.

When making a weapon design choice, one should take into consideration how the choice will affect the overall gameplay. Old school games would not limit the amount of weapons carried; and would provide a balanced amount of ammo scattered across the level for each carried weapon. This would limit weapon variety and and reward exploration - especially when some more valuable ammo caches were hidden in "secret locations". This would also force the player to value each shot fired as the eventual amount of ammo was fairly limited. This was even more important for survival horror games like Silent Hill 2.

The new school of game design went for a different choice - limiting the amount of weapons carried (2 in Bioshock Infinite, 4 in FarCry 3, etc.), yet provide more variety. Ammo is often provided in the form of "refills" - the amount of ammo allowed to carry is limited, but "refill points" are present. This allows to control the pacing of the game between "checkpoints" and stops the game from becoming "unbeatable" if the player made poor decisions. This also affected the save system - the "save whenever you want to" system was replaced by an "automatically save at checkpoints" system.

While I understand how the new school system allows the gaming experience be more controlled and a more "softcore", active experience - one which many gamers would find more satisfying, I feel like it takes too much control away from the gamer.

Still, I wanted the weapon variety. So I decided to have 8 "weapon slots", each representing a class. The player would have one weapon of each class -

• [1] Melee
• [2] Pistol
• [3] Shotgun
• [4] Assault Rifle
• [5] Sniper Rifle
• [6] Rocket Launcher
• [7] Explosives
• [8] Superweapon

Still, even this system provides us with a choice. I decided not to go with the "tiered weapon" system, where progressing through the game provides you with better weapons of the class. I'd rather have the player make gameplay choices based on the weapon they choose to wield - say, having a .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda revolver vs .44 Magnum Desert Eagle pistol in the Pistol slot, having both weapons different damage, recoil, spread, clip size, reload speed and other characteristics would allow the player to adjust their gameplay according to the weapon they choose to wield, not the weapon the game provides for them.

I haven't decided yet whether to include ammo variations - standard, hollow-point, incediary and armor-piercing - I need more feedback and testing to see if it would work in the context of my game.

This choice of weapon system allows me to go with a more maze-like level design for Triptych as opposed to the modern school of linear corridor-based level design. The player would be forced to explore the level, find secret locations and hoard ammo to be able to progress through the game.

This would also mean that if the player makes poor choices, they might be faced with a situation when they are unable to progress because they lack the firepower needed. Tough luck, eh?