Chapter 5. Character Development


Using well-defined characters in games has been with us since the earliest days of computer gaming and is becoming increasingly sophisticated as time goes on. The days of anonymous blobs of pixels, such as the gunfighters in the early arcade game Gunfight (shown in Figure 5.1), are far behind us. Originally, it was fairly difficult to get any real characterization into a monochrome 32-pixel-high figure, but with the increasing capabilities of game hardware, the question of characterization becomes increasingly important. Note that text games had no such problem with characterization (but the graphical aspects were not at all important); the main practical limits that affected this particular genre were the skills of the author/designer.

Figure 5.1. Gunfight.

graphics/05fig01.gif

In this chapter, we discuss the method used to design compelling and believable characters for your game. It's important to realize that not all games require characters to be anything more than simple stereotypes (consider, for example, the Mario series of games). However, enough games out there require decent interactive characters to warrant a chapter covering the topic.

We've split this chapter into three fairly independent sections. Which is most appropriate for you depends on the type of game you are designing. The first section is for simpler games, in which the appearance of the hero and the characters is the most important consideration. The second is for those games in which the character and personality of the hero is more important. The third section concerns the supporting characters and their interaction with the hero.

You can design a character in two main ways: through art-sourced design or through story-sourced design. With art-based design, the appearance of a character is decided upon first, and then a background story is fleshed out to augment it if necessary. Generally, the simpler sorts of games ”those that require superficial and simplistic characters ”use this approach.



Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
ISBN: 1592730019
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net