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January 7, 2003 - Imagine for a moment that you have all the money
you need to make your dream game. You have all the textures and 3D models you're
ever likely to need, unless you're making the computer game version of Deep Space
69. You have a fantastic graphics engine capable of drawing everything beautifully
and at high speed. On top of all this, you have the most talented team of programmers
ever to grace God's clean earth, who are so eager to start work they've permanently
Velcroed themselves to their computer terminals. Everything is ready for you to
make your perfect game.
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What bits of gameplay would you work on first?
This is the first and, possibly, the most important question any game developer
worth its salt will ask itself. In general, the priority is to work out which aspects
of the game's design are fundamental in making it fun, playable and unique, and
start with those. Ideally, once you have these elements of your game in, you will
have something that is at least moderately representative of the final game, and
you can start playing with it.
As experienced developers, we've obviously asked ourselves these difficult questions
with Fable. Unfortunately,
as experienced developers, we've also all got our own ideas as to what's the most
important thing.
Ask Matt, and he'll point out that Miyamoto got the Mario 64 team to focus
on how Mario moved and 'felt' to the player, to the extent that Mario started off
as a simple sphere, rolling across a platform environment. His point is well made,
since the 'feel' of a game is critically important. Then again, Matt's ideal evening
in would involve a chloroformed Miyamoto, some premium rubber matting, a syringe
of saline solution and a bumper pack of tissues.
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On the other hand, Simon will claim that trying to play this game without having
developed the artificial intelligence for all the people in our world is a fundamental
brain-wrong. In Populous and Black and White , for example, the
AI of the villagers was a top priority, and absolutely key in giving the player
a sense of freedom and power in the environment. This is exactly what we are trying
to capture for Fable and so Simon is, as usual, annoyingly correct.
Thankfully, at that moment Leroy usually silences Simon with a short jab to the
back of the head. He then points out that it is the action in games like Onimusha
and Devil May Cry that make them 'the best bloody games ever'. He
will then argue, vociferously and at considerable length, that without our combat
and 'magic' systems being completed we will never get a real feel of what it is
like to play Fable.
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It's usually at this point that we realise that Angus has been talking throughout
all of this. As our resident RPG head, he will point out that any RPG worth playing
will have a top-notch story line to keep the player interested and give the whole
thing a sense of depth. Trying to develop the game without the story, he will say,
is like weeing into an oncoming gale with your mouth wide open.
The interesting thing here is that they are all right. One of the problems with
working on an Action-Simulation-Stealth-em-up-RPG with a proprietary magic system
is that all of these elements are pretty much equally important. Certainly, one
of our biggest development challenges so far has been having to work on all of these
big, difficult areas of the game simultaneously, just so we can get a true impression
of the full flavour of the thing.
In times like these we try to remember Dene's rousing developer battle cry ? 'Next
time, we're doing a *BLEEP*ing Golf game.' |