tailieunhanh - Game Design: Theory & Practice- P6

Game Design: Theory & Practice- P6: My earliest recollection of playing a computer game was when I stumbled upon a half-height Space Invaders at a tiny Mexican restaurant in my hometown. I was perhaps six, and Space Invaders was certainly the most marvelous thing I had ever seen, at least next to LegoLand. | 128 sB Chapter 7 The Elements of Gameplay entirely if they figure out how to rob a particular townsperson. From there the player is able to move freely about the next five islands picking which ones he wants to explore and which he prefers to just pass through. Indeed all that is required for the player to reach the seventh island and the end-game is for the player to successfully navigate each island killing the monsters that get in his way. Of course killing those creatures is made significantly easier if the player receives the rewards for completing the quests. But if the player so chooses he can skip the entire middle of the game. Of course few players have done this preferring instead to explore the different quests and situations they encounter there. Nearly every single one of these quests has multiple ways for the player to solve it with his actions having a direct impact on how each of the island s mini-stories resolves. Finally the game itself has multiple endings for the player to explore endings which suit the different overall goals the player may have survival revenge or a sort of justice and harmony. Though the game had a very definite story I am happy to say that I doubt very much that any two players ever experienced it in exactly the same way. Non-linearity is an extremely powerful tool to use in designing a game and the descriptions above of the types of non-linearity a designer can employ may seem obvious to the reader. What is astonishing then is how many games fail to provide any substantial non-linearity for the player instead insisting that the player play through the game on a single line from point A to point B. One reason for this is that creating all of these non-linear elements can be quite time consuming. Consider that between point A and B we have the aforementioned challenges X Y and Z but the player only has to overcome one of these challenges in order to progress say challenge X. The player can then continue playing through to the