Latest Video: Geometry Lesson
Here I talk about geometry in game design in The Real Texas, my upcoming game.
Real, wild forests have a natural layout that is chaotic and actually uninviting to humans; they are confusing and dangerous. When you're designing a game, don't imitate this but instead think about laying things out geometrically, to afford the player a better understanding of where they are, and make them feel at home.
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS for the movie/book INTO THE WILD.
The changed version looks boring and segmented, no fun in exploring it. I understand people had problems traversing the area before but surely you could have the best of both worlds? Having trees and walls dotted around the place, but still with defined goals and paths that you can follow to the end.
@Krumbs: Hmn. I do understand what you're saying; the trick, however, is that the sense of being "inside" the game stems a lot from being able to parse it in your brain, and so produce a higher-level model. I don't want the player to spend his brain-energy trying to parse the specific layout of a group of trees. Instead, I want him to see that group of trees in a larger context. To use a coincidentally apt metaphor, I want the player to see the forest for the trees.
Another way to look at it, is that if the intent was to be interesting because you were trying to navigate a forest, then making that forest organic and a bit confusing might help that. But the intended interest of the game lies elsewhere, in making a map of the town in your brain and then seeing connections there.
That said, I am being careful to keep things interesting. It's not my intent to create one box after another, but rather to make patterns that are themselves are more apparent.
Before, the layout wasn't just irregular, it was actually random: a result of me having laid objects over and over each other.
Tchus! PS: Do you want to be an alpha tester?
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