I can imagine how it’s supposed to be in my head, I get the feel down. I know what people will play in my mind. I write design details. I know specifics. But… I don’t know how enemies are supposed to act in response to the player, how to give the player breathing room but also make the enemies aggressive enough to pose a threat. I guess this question only applies to action games, though.
I just wonder how to write down or record enemy movement and attack patterns in a way that can be analyzed, tweaked without having to build something to see how it goes.
I’m wondering if this is even possible, but it should be dammit.
Define ‘action’. I really can’t tell what you’re trying to design. It sounds like you’re talking about cutscenes or something but I’m sure that’s not the case.
If you look at cavern kings beta compared to its current state. Its pretty incredible how much better it got over 4 months (or so). You take the core concept and just iterating refining, and tweaking and polishing.
I personally think action is more of an emergent thing in games… or at the least the best kind of action in games is emergent. Action is simply the player interacting within the rules of the game in a meaningful, exciting, and/or interesting way.
Maybe instead of trying to push for an “on-rails” version of your vision, you should open things up and make “rules” in your game that naturally lead to scenarios your looking for.
Some things might not be foreseeable until you’re half way done, its just the nature of it I believe.
I mean, when your character is fighting bad guys and the bad guys are supposed to be fighting back, but they have to behave a certain way in regards to what the player is doing… so we get that, we can say, “The enemy should take cover…” etc. But how do they move? What do they look like while they’re moving? There’s a gap between the idea and the in-game end result.
And just iteratively plugging stuff in to the code and hoping it feels right, that’s stupid, that takes too long for any game more complex than pac-man.
How do you think about planning the fights, the enemy patterns so they turn out right in the game? Everything can’t be just left up to chance or accidental discovery, or can it?
Just seems so inefficient and dumb. Basketball game developers don’t guess and iterate and hope and pray to the god of gaming that it will be fun on accident one day. Fps developers have a really good base to start on.
Maybe what I’m asking is genre specific, so it’s useless in a general context.
Iterative design isn’t done by taking any random idea you have and trying it out for the heck of it. Its meant as a way to actively tweak and add to your game to guide it towards the direction you want it to go, and in the process be able to tell if your ideas are actually fun.
This is the kind of thing that iterative design would be helpful for. Its not a random and mindless process. For example, if you are unsure how your enemies will move when taking cover, you could experiment within those boundaries to get a better understanding of how that kind of movement might work.
I think this kind of thing is very specific to each game. If you think of your game as a set of rules that must be followed by the player and enemies and a series of interactions that can take place between them, you may be able to get a general idea of how things could unfold and plan encounters accordingly.
“For example, if you are unsure how your enemies will move when taking cover, you could experiment within those boundaries to get a better understanding of how that kind of movement might work.”
I’m developing a cringe to this whole “being unsure” thing. I wasn’t sure about how the enemies should behave in my game, should they track the player, or idle, or whatever… I just didn’t know so I experimented for days.
I had an idea to just go look at a similar game and to my surprise, the enemies do very random things, they had patterns and sometimes they switched patterns. But most of it was just them appearing to be fighting, like the guys in the background in a kung fu movie… They were running back and forth, swinging at the air, nonsense. I never payed attention before because I was playing, not studying the damn thing. I just assumed because of how it felt the AI and patterns must be complex.
There’s some way to find a reference or understand what it should be like, this goes for every game.
This thread is born of my confusion, which has cleared up now.
I see what you’re saying about iterations, though. I know that will play an important part, but I don’t want it to be how I design my core game mechanics.
I understand this feeling. Its not about how enemies should behave, but more how you want them to behave. This is where the creative aspects come into play. If you have an idea (even an extremely-mind-numbingly-simple idea) of what you want the enemies to do, you should use that as the base for any of your experiments and avoid going in blind. So for example, if you know the player can throw grenades and you want your enemies to react to it, make them run in a straight line away from them. From there you could try more complicated things, like maybe the enemies only see grenades that are in their line of sight. Maybe instead of running away in a straight line they dive away, or try to pick up the grenade and throw it back. This all comes back to how you envision your game in the first place, and each iteration should be done to bring it closer to that initial idea.
This is the type of situation where emergent design can do wonders. The idea is to layer on very simple and straight forward rules and/or interactions that when functioning together bring out complexity (OR the illusion of complexity). If your familiar with the game Magic The Gathering, its a great example of emergent complexity. The general rules are very simple, play land cards to cast spells in order to bring your opponents life down to 0. The complexity comes from the tools (cards) the players have access to and the interaction between their opponents cards. You can think of your games mechanics in these terms.
It definitely shouldn’t be the primary way to design your game. You should use it as a way to better understand and execute your design. Things can get pretty crazy and overwhelming if you just start iterating without any direction or purpose… I’ve fallen down those rabbit holes before, lol.
What type of action game are you making?
An army type game, where characters have guns, like Metal Gear Solid?
Or a sword battling type game like Zelda?
I meant in general, how do you draw up plans for a complex interactive experience. I think you don’t, you just try to imagine it the best you can. Plan what you can and the rest is handled in development, the hard way.
Like others have stated above it really depends on the type of game you are making. Designing an action and or combat system for a different genres well differ greatly so really the question is too general to give a specific answer.
That said the general idea of how to design an action/combat system for most game’s could be laid out the same way. First off as with all aspects of game development you need to have a fairly clear idea of what you are going for. The great thing is there are many great systems to reference once you figure this part out. Why reinvent the wheel? For instance my current project is first person and the combat is primarily melee and trapping. For the melee I originally referenced other first person games that have solid melee. One of my all time favorite systems was the original dead island. It wasn’t as good as it could have been but the melee was outstanding. It was very dynamic and had a solid visceral feel to it while still being intuitive. So I watched countless videos and studied the system to get a very close idea of what I wanted. Using what I learned I developed responsive attacking with very little wind up. Solid location based collision detection. Player stamina drained by attacking. Depending on how close I am to the enemy the attacks may change etc.
Now to the enemies reactions. I already knew that having such quick responsive attacks my enemies would have to react the same way to present any sort of challenge. Should the enemy not even react to my attacks a la Skyrim? I think not. So I implemented animations for each enemy based on the hit location. I added some simple code to my AI so that when my enemies stamina were low or the attacks were on the short cool down they backup or play a quick strafe animation. When the enemy lands an attack it knocks the player back slightly. All helping to create fun immersive action. Of course it goes much deeper but that is beyond the scope of this post.
It sounds like you’re talking about cutscenes or something but I’m sure that’s not the case.
jk