Analytical Perspectives in Game Design
Game Author's Perspective
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Capabilities

Capabilities represent the ability for a thing to be used to do something. For example a chair leg can have a capability to hit.

Categories

A category is a general description of a type of thing within the game world. As a game author, you will generally use categories, though you have the ability to extend them.

For example, a world author could have describes a table category as requiring 4 legs and a table top. The construction material of the table could be a characteristic. This would allow you to define that this particular the table was constructed of wood.

Characteristics

A characteristic is a description of a thing. All categories come with a default set of characteristics as defined by the world author. You can use the categories to create actual things in the game world. You can also adjust the characteristics to suit the game.

Commands

There are internal, generic commands that can be extended by any author to give the game a custom feel. Generally the world author will have created a suitable set of commands. You can extend these within the game.

Data files

The data files are what drives the game. This section describes the data file format in detail. There is general format to the data files and some layout methods you can use to make them easier to read.

Games

A game author is responsible for setting up a game. A game is built on a game world and consists of data files. These data files define the game.

User Interface

The user interface is built around a model of an overall window for the current game session. This allows the user to join multiple games (including the same game multiple times). For each game session there is a game window. This shows the world from the view of the player and provides several different perspectives of the game.

See the prototype screens.

Temporal Perspectives

As a game author you need to have a good understanding of the way that time is handled in the game.

Things

Every object in the game is a thing. Even thoughts. Things are defined by the categories but can then be detailed and extended on their own.

Worlds

In order to author a game, a world author must have already authored a game world. These worlds describe the basic interactions that a game must follow. In an analogy with role-playing, the world is defined by the game system, for example Traveller. The traveller modules are the games in this context.

22/11/99

See also: [Role Playing Games] [Game Engine]
© 1998, 1999 Brian Yap. These pages are available under the GNU licence.