tailieunhanh - Better Game Characters by Design- P11

Better Game Characters by Design- P11: The game industry is a powerful and driving force in the evolution of computer technology. As the capabilities of personal computers, peripheral hardware, and game consoles have grown, so has the demand for quality information about the algorithms, tools, and descriptions needed to take advantage of this new technology. To satisfy this demand and establish a new level of professional reference for the game developer, we created the Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology | CHAPTER ELEVEN EVALUATION Changes resulting from evaluation get narrower in scope as the development process unfolds. Based on diagram from Fullerton Swain and Hoffman 2004. This process helps gauge broad reactions to character concepts. It also provides the development team with a better-integrated picture of how characters will function even prior to having a working prototype. Because the best characters work both top-down in terms of surface qualities and bottom-up in terms of game-play dynamics this will help everyone get a feel for whether the characters work overall instead of just whether the visuals are appealing . This sort of testing is meant to be informal and conducted in service of the design not as a go or no go tool for publishers . It will work most efficiently if the design team is able to witness the test either by watching during or by looking at videos as a group later on rather than waiting for a written report from a testing service. These types of tests can be built into a preproduction schedule alongside internal design reviews. If your development house can cultivate a pool of test candidates from the target audience who can be quickly brought in for some informal 272 TAKING DESIGN TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH PREPRODUCTION EVALUATION interaction it is more likely that you will use this technique. These could be friends and relatives of coworkers so long as they fit the desired demographics. Building it into the process will help reduce unpleasant surprises later on and will keep the team from wandering too far down a character-concept path that looks exciting but does not resonate with players. Social Heuristics It helps to have guiding qualities by which to judge design iterations even before putting anything in front of players. The suggestions in Part IV can also be used to create heuristics during the design iteration process see Nielsen 1994 for empirical validation of the power of design heuristics to catch problems . Asking .