|
Analytical Perspectives in Game Design
|
|
Probably one of the most perplexing issues with writing a game is the management of time. There are several time issues that need management. They lead to quite different and solutions and any solution will compromise the game play. The underlying world has a clock, that like in the real world marches on relentlessly and at it's own rate. Within this world events can be scheduled to occur by any number of means of triggering. I have called this game time. The player characters will have their own clocks. These can be determined by player actions. There are major conundrums when players do actions that take a similar number of moves, but the moves require a different amount of time to pass. For instance, a player who catches a train that will take 3 hours game time to reach it's destination, does not really want to wait for 3 hours while another player explores a run-down building. This leads into the issue of player time. Players will want to be active the whole time they are playing, but this is real time and is not associated with game time. The only workable solution seems to be the following: Synchronise real time and game time by saying that game time will automatically increment in set increments of real time. Allow this synchronisation to be overridden (by speeding up game time) if all the players decide to wait. Make moves take a preordained amount of real time, rather than game time. This means that a 3 day walk in would occur nearly instantaneously. |
21/11/99
|
|
See also: [Role
Playing Games] [Game Engine] |