I'm mostly out of video games to review for the moment, but simpler tabletop games can teach just as much about game theory as can video games. I've always liked Go Fish. While often considered somewhat childish, it's a good game for when you simply want to pass time without the stress of some other card games. Part of what makes it work so well is its simplicity. It's at heart a memory game; one of the most important aspects is keeping track of who has asked for which cards (meaning the asker has at least one of said card) and who does not have them. Interestingly, while drawing a card is a penalty (common in many card-based games), it can end up working to the player's advantage, either by providing a needed card or simply giving the opportunity to lay down more sets of cards. This, plus the inherent comedy and triviality in a phrase like "go fish," can help make the game less stressful than more "serious" card games. What can be gleaned from this is that comedic aspects can be useful for cutting tension in any game and preventing the player from growing too anxious or frustrated. Allowing disadvantages to be taken into stride and even used to the player's benefit is another interesting idea to keep the player motivated. While these aspects are not ideal for every game, it's helpful to consider what makes such a simple yet well-known game work. So, to summarize:
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It's my first post of 2020! I'm going to take a look at something that's been bugging me, which is the practical applications of the cloth and garment modifiers. There are, of course, times when you will need to animate cloth. Cloth exists in real life; of course it's going to show up in video games and animations. However, it can be glitchy and has some tendency to lag badly when rendering something complicated.
For things such as a tablecloth or bedcover, cloth modifiers make sense, especially when the object is then converted to an editable poly or something similar, leaving only the end product of the simulation. This allows for realistic folds. For 3D animations, animating complex movements of cloth can be complicated. Even a simple act of pulling back a bed cover (with the end goal of a nonmoving, pulled-back cover) with a dummy object proved incredibly complicated to get right; the simulation tended to glitch a lot. While this might be worth it for, say, an animated movie or even a cutscene in a game, having a cloth simulating in realtime in a video game, especially one the player could move and interact with, would be a terrible idea in most cases. It would probably get caught on something and turn into an unpleasant mess of polygons sticking out at odd angles (I've seen it happen). Even a flag blowing in the wind is probably best as a fully rendered loop rather than allowing it to simulate continuously. I'm having more trouble finding use for the garment maker. So far I've used it to make a sack, which turned out somewhat mediocre, and I understand using it for props like this, including clothing hanging on a rack. For character clothes, I also understand using it to create the object, but as I said before, realtime animation of the cloth is a bad idea. This leads to a trend I notice in some video games of characters' clothing stretching awkwardly as they walk. This is especially noticeable with skirts, especially when they avoid unfortunate up-the-skirt camera angles by connecting the bottom edge of the skirt with a flat plane which the character's legs poke through; I've seen it with figurines as well. I'm not sure why, but I find this particular visual to be incredibly uncomfortable. I just flat out don't like seeing characters' legs sticking out through a flat plane, and I don't like how uncomfortably solid it makes the skirt look. I think a flat plane a little higher in the skirt, where it's less likely to be seen, could fix this weird visual. I don't have a solution for the awkward stretching of clothing as characters walk; I understand it's just easier to animate it that way. That's the price we pay for less computer strain. |
AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
February 2020
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