Game Development Giant

In fact, judging from the rapid rise of the "God of War" series, this experiential action game is indeed impeccable, so for newcomers to making action games, this is the absolute best solution. For example, if you make a game with multiple protagonists and multiple weapons, and get the basic movements, combat, etc. right, and then make the experience gap between each protagonist or weapon as large as possible under reasonable circumstances, then in the end it will definitely be a good game. . When making this type of game, there are very few difficulties: action design, feel debugging, and how to differentiate between different protagonists and weapons.

In fact, a later domestic act game called "The Legend of Yutian Conquering Demons" has this style.

When they promoted it, they were touting the Chinese version of Devil May Cry, and looking at the demo, it seemed that the various floating combos were very similar to Devil May Cry, but this was only a superficial phenomenon.

At its core, this game is an experiential action game.

The action design is simple, and the combat experience is completely different from Devil May Cry and Ninja Dragon. However, you will continue to have this kind of combat experience between different characters. Every character and every weapon is A different experience, this different experience, is the biggest selling point of this game.

There is also a type of action game called a rule-based action game.

How should this type of game be understood?

it's actually really easy.

Different weapons or protagonists not only have very different experiences, but also correspond to different enemies and bosses. When playing this type of game, players need to think: "When this enemy appears, what can I use to hit him most efficiently?"

In fact, this is the first type of evolution.

The addition of this change will make the game more "fun".

But this approach has advantages and disadvantages. Although it is more interesting, if the player needs to think too much during the battle, he will not be able to fully concentrate on experiencing the thrill of the action. We must grasp the degree of thinking and the corresponding intensity. This is a test of the designer's skills.

Let's take an example.

"Devil May Cry 3" and "New Devil May Cry" are both of this type.

But why is the former so successful. And the latter failed in terms of reputation and sales?

The difference is "level design".

For action games, the essence of so-called "level design" is actually mainly the arrangement of enemies.

Let’s take a look at the new Devil May Cry.

It can be said that it is a complete negative teaching material for action games.

Fighting minions requires changing weapons, and the strong correspondence greatly reduces the fun of the game; fighting bosses mostly has nothing to do with weapons, making players have no idea what the main idea is in this game that mainly uses various weapons; A single minion battle is filled with two or more strongly corresponding entities, which is simply outrageous; minibosses can adjust the corresponding rhythm, but there are too many minibosses...

The shortcomings are almost countless, but this is not the case in "Devil May Cry 3" at all.

For example, the minions at the bottom have almost no correspondence; the mini-bosses have correspondences; and the boss at the end of the level is easy to defeat with the right weapons. This is a step-by-step process. At this point, we can actually see the difficulty of the rules corresponding to action games. It is based on experiential action games and adds two more points.

The first is to design corresponding rules reasonably. The simplest example: You can't let a fire attribute weapon restrain water attribute enemies, right? Second, reasonable level process design. How to comply with these four important steps of acquisition - familiarity - strengthening - development.

And the last type.

It is an action-oriented action game, which is almost the most difficult type of action game to design.

At first glance, this game looks and feels like an action game! For example, on low difficulty. Just play randomly and just enjoy the fun. But at a higher difficulty level, I discovered that this kind of game actually creates a time and space correspondence between your moves and the enemy's moves. Players consider "what move should I use when the enemy uses it" or "what move should I use when the enemy uses it?" What tricks can I use to achieve the highest efficiency per unit of time?"

It is currently recognized as the pinnacle of several act games in the world. "Devil May Cry 1", "Devil May Cry 4", and "Ninja Dragon 2" all belong to this type.

Action correspondence is the highest level and most difficult in action production. The starting time, stiffening time, interruption time, attack frame size, knockback distance, etc. of each action are all very particular.

This movement corresponds to a solid, reliable theory of design methods, even for the future. There may be only one person in the world like Cap's action design team and Sulfur Face... because they grasp this thing just right in every game. Both Devil May Cry 1 and 4 were purely based on action, so it was said at the time that the fourth generation was a return to the first generation.

As the name suggests, the difficulty in game production lies in the reasonable design of action-corresponding rules.

For designers who want to play this kind of game, they can only pay attention to every frame of every action. There is no shortcut. They can only continue to accumulate experience in this kind of game. For example, you have to play a lot. Action games require a good understanding of the meaning of actions.

There are actually many such examples. For example, because two players played "God of War 3" extremely well and the videos they made were seen by people from Santa Monica Studio, Santa Monica Studio directly directed them to these two players. Players sent out invitations, and these two players actually got jobs at Santa Monica Studio. It can be regarded as a good story between game developers and players.

Don't think there are few such examples.

Although it is indeed not too many, there will still be a lot of such things in the future gaming industry.

For example, the most famous one. Old players who have played "World of Warcraft" may all know that in "World of Warcraft" in the 1960s, there was a very famous prop that would only drop from Dire Maul. If you take it Once you get this item, you can go on a quest to kill the Black Dragon Princess. After completing this quest, the quester will get a weapon, Quel'Sera, which was a symbol of the warrior at the time.

And this weapon was the symbol of the warrior t at that time. Basically, to judge the level of a guild, it was enough to see whether their MT was carrying Quel'Sera.

This item is called "Flor's Dragon-Slaying Technique Compendium".

Maybe many people were curious at that time, who is this Flor? A legendary hero in the history of World of Warcraft?

However, after some people searched through the history of Warcraft, they could not find such a character. They were confused at that time, who is this guy? Of course, someone later solved the mystery.

This Flor was actually a designer of "World of Warcraft" at that time, and Flor was not his real name, but his game ID, not even his ID in World of Warcraft, but his name in another world. A similar game, "EverQuest", the pioneer of "World of Warcraft", is also an id in eq.

This ID is very prominent in eq, a bit similar to Brother Kun in World of Warcraft in the 1960s and 1970s.

At that time, it was the same guild that killed almost all the dungeon bosses and wild leaders in eQ, and the president of this guild was named Flor.

It is for this reason that Blizzard recruited him to work on the design of World of Warcraft, and something as extremely narcissistic as "Flor's Dragon-Slaying Technique Compendium" came into being in the game.

Back to business.

Or, let’s talk about the design issues of action games.

In fact, in the future, games will be more comprehensive, and there will no longer be a single type of game. However, each type targets different levels of users. When a designer decides to make an action game, it is best to take a look first. What is your user level? Otherwise, it will be like "New Devil May Cry". A group of people who are used to making experience-oriented action games, under the command of a group of people who are used to making action-oriented games, make a rule-oriented game. (weapon matching), the result is not suitable for the general public (the matching is too strict, the level design is too poor), and it is not suitable for action game diehards (action game diehards themselves prefer action-matching games), and in the end the gain outweighs the loss.

In fact, there is an interesting phenomenon among the players of Devil May Cry.

Devil May Cry fans are divided into "Devil May Cry 3 faction" and "Devil May Cry 4 faction". Especially those who love "Devil May Cry 3", most of them don't love "Devil May Cry 4". In fact, this is because the rules of "Devil May Cry 3" are corresponding. The traces of "Devil May Cry 4" are very heavy, and choosing the right weapon is very important; while "Devil May Cry 4" returns to the first generation, and the action correspondence is implemented very thoroughly. Therefore, there are almost no people who love these two works equally, so they must have a preference.

If someone says that he likes "Devil May Cry 3" and "Devil May Cry 4" very much, the most likely reason is that he has never played these two games in depth at all, and only plays a set of gorgeous combos on the lowest difficulty level xxoo , a rookie who has not even experienced the charm of action games, or he is just bragging.

Although the games are a hodgepodge of various types of games, it seems to be able to satisfy the hopes of all fans.

But in fact, there is only one game in Jester’s memory that can do all three of these things impeccably, and that is the classic “Monster Hunter” that is like a textbook of action games. It can be said that this game The game is the culmination of Capcom's more than 20 years of action game production career. Among the advantages you can mention for an action game, apart from the graphics, it performs flawlessly.

To be honest, this is a very special ‘single player’ game.

Because this is a "combat" game where 80% of the fun is online.

It seems a little inappropriate to put this game among the ranks of stand-alone games, but even if you are not online, this game will not prevent you from playing it alone, so it seems that it is a stand-alone game. (To be continued...)