Making a Difference in Large Battle Scenarios

RolandofGilead · 2004-06-09T15:05:41

Well, the reasons a lot of games don''t offer big battle scenes include the effect of one player isn''t usually that much, the results are unpredictable, and the technical issues. As technology improves the technical issues recede. The effects of one player can be enhanced by game design. That leaves unpredictability. I propose two solutions. One is to make your ai behaviour extremely reproducible; hard but not impossible, but also not worth it. The other is to play the game without the player and record the entire sequence until you find a battle with both sides decimated or with the enemy slightly victorious, depending on difficulty level. You then run the script while the player plays so that only she can affect its outcome. One upside is that the script can probably be executed faster than the game could be played normally since you don''t have to run physics nor ai, allowing for extra cycles to be played with. Since the battlefield is entirely scripted it is essentially frozen into space-time, so we put a ''defroster'' around the player so that the local environment is taken out of its script and resumes its lifetime of being calculated. One problem that I didn''t think about until now is that the analogy holds true to a greater extent, objects once defrosted will have to remain so for the rest of the time, so you can''t expect too many extra cycles to be freed. You could go back and resume the script, but then the player might effect things just by being there rather than by actually doing something. One might be able to combine scripted and simulated action, for instance, if you''re in a fighter, the anti-capital ship weapons could continue their scripts whilst anti-fighter weapons are simulated. I know Freespace 1/2 can do this, but in that game it''s all scripted by a person, meaning that it''s not easily done for dozens of ships at a time(I don''t think any mission has more than half a dozen cap ships, except ones I write).

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by RolandofGilead June 03, 2004 03:09 PM

11 comments, last by RolandofGilead 19 years, 10 months ago

Ceoddyn

192

June 06, 2004 02:11 PM

The other good thing about that is that as the battle goes on more units die so it makes up for the units leaving the script.

RolandofGilead

100

Author

June 08, 2004 12:47 AM

I was also thinking about the pure cinematic benefits of this. Imagine flying in your X-Wing and you see various Alliance ships and Star Destroyers blowing up around you or flying a Nial and seeing a Vorlon Planet Killer go kablooey under the intense fire of the remaining First Ones, what''d really be cool is flying through said intense fire and trying to get enemy fighters to fly into it hehehe.

Corrmick

134

June 09, 2004 03:05 PM

Great ideas on that. the only thing i had in mind was to have recorded video around the player and have the maybe 30 people around him to fight. When the player moves the circle of film goes with him. This was what I was thinking for FP sword fighting game, but I like your guys ideas alot more. BTW I also like the idea of mass destruction Muahahahahahaha

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Making a Difference in Large Battle Scenarios

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Making a Difference in Large Battle Scenarios

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