Input


One of the great advantages to working on a game for the arcades is that the designer has complete control over the type of device players will use to control the game. On the PC, the designer can only count on players having a keyboard and a mouse, and on a console, the designer must work with the standard controller that comes with that particular console. The arcade designer (budget constraints notwithstanding) is able to pick the best type of control for the game and provide players with that control system. The designer can then create the game around those controls, precisely balancing the game to work perfectly with that input method. Centipede does this expertly, providing players with an extremely precise analog control device in the form of a trackball . This is ideally suited to moving the player s shooter ship around on the bottom of the screen. Players can move the ship quickly or slowly, whatever the situation calls for. For many fans of Centipede , the excellent controller is one of the first things they remember about the game.


The player s shooter in Centipede is more mobile than in Space Invaders , since it can move up and down in addition to moving sideways . Pictured here: Centipede .

The shooter is extremely responsive to the players manipulation of the trackball, with players being able to easily and intuitively understand the relationship between their manipulation of the trackball and the shooter s movement. Centipede was no doubt inspired by other classic arcade games , such as Space Invaders , which feature the players game-world surrogate locked at the bottom of the screen, allowed only to move left or right and shoot. Centipede takes that idiom one step further: players are still trapped at the bottom of the screen, but the shooter can move within a six-row vertical space. This allows players to avoid enemies that might be on the bottom row. At the same time, the shooter can still only shoot forward, so enemies that get behind the ship cannot be destroyed . Aside from the trackball, the only other control players have is a button for firing the shooter s laser-type weapon. The game allows an infinitely fast rate of fire, but only one shot can be on the screen at a time, which means players have to think beyond just holding down the fire button constantly. If players move the shooter directly below a mushroom, they can hold down the fire button and quickly shoot the mushroom four times, thus destroying it. But at the top of the screen, where players cannot maneuver the ship, destroying a mushroom takes much longer, since players must wait for each shot to hit the mushroom before another shot can be fired . Shooting the ever-approaching enemies creates a similar situation. If their last shot is in the midst of traveling to a faraway target, players will be unable to shoot again in order to take out a dive- bombing enemy. Thus, when the enemies are far away, they are less of a threat, but players have trouble killing them. As the critters get closer, players can kill the bugs more easily, but their chance of dying goes up. This keeps the game perfectly balanced, and requires players to plan their shots carefully , a design element that adds more depth to the game s mechanics.




Game Design Theory and Practice
Game Design: Theory and Practice (2nd Edition) (Wordware Game Developers Library)
ISBN: 1556229127
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 189

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