Spelutvecklare avslöjar sina många illusioner och tricks

Spelutveckling har alltid haft ett fokus. Se till att spelaren har kul. För att uppnå detta mål behöver man oftast tillämpa en rad olika knep för att förmedla känslan av rättvisa men i själva verket är mycket illusioner och dimridåer. Att vara spelutvecklare är ganska nära besläktat med att vara illusionist, fast medlen handlar mer om kod- och funktionskunskap än fingerfärdighet. Bägge egenskaper delar hursomhelst den kreativitet som krävs för att klura ut dessa lösningar som görs för att vi spelare skall få en friktionsfri upplevelse, att köpa illusionen. Utan dessa tricks hade spel varit en outhärdlig färd där vi mer än sällan anklagat spel för att vara orättvisa.

Av förklarliga skäl håller många spelutvecklare dessa magiska tricks hemliga mellan varandra men för två månader sen öppnade spelutvecklaren Jennifer Scheurle upp diskusison om en viss typ av tricks, de där mest osynliga som många av oss omöjligt kan se men på sin höjd bara ana att de existerar. Responsen till Twitter-inlägget blev en uppsjö av häftiga avslöjandet från utvecklare runtom världen. Scheurle ville fokusera på osynliga mekaniker och system men här och där dök det även om lite andra avslöjanden som var av mer visuell natur som var minst lika intressant att höra om.

Jag har samlat ihop de inlägg som jag fann mest intressanta och tankeväckande i den här artikeln så om du är redo att få lite insikt hur spel är byggda och få illisionerad splittrad så bjuder jag dig på en resa ner i kaninhålet som är spelutveckling.

Vi börjar med en helt färsk upptäckt från 2023 som gjordes i nysläppta Starfield och som är anledningen varför vi blev inspirerade att återpublicerar denna artikel från gamla goda 2017.

Hey #gamedev, tell me about some brilliant mechanics in games that are hidden from the player to get across a certain feeling. Example:

— Jennifer Scheurle (@Gaohmee) September 1, 2017

Assassin’s Creed and Doom value the last bit of health as more hit points than the rest of it to encourage a feeling of *JUST* surviving.

— Jennifer Scheurle (@Gaohmee) September 1, 2017

In Surgeon Simulator we hid many features to incite curiosity: for instance, if you dial your real phone number in the game, it calls you.

— Henrique Olifiers (@Olifiers) September 3, 2017

Apocryphally (?) the last bullet in a gun does 4x damage in System Shock to serve the ’won through determinedness’ fantasy. Is it true?

— Clint Hocking (@ClickNothing) September 1, 2017

Not a mechanic persee, but in Hi Octane we simply displayed different stats for vehicles without ever actually changing them under the hood

— Alex Trowers (@BulkPaint) September 1, 2017

In Bioshock if you would have taken your last pt of dmg you instead were invuln for abt 1-2 sec so you get more ”barely survived” moments.

— Paul Hellquist (@TheElfquist) September 1, 2017

Yeah I can’t recall if it was also in 1 or just 2, but we slow down Big Daddies’ run speed if you’re facing away, so you don’t die confused.

— Jordan Thomas (@nullspeak) September 1, 2017

First shots from an enemy against you in BioShock always missed…that was the design, think it got fully implemented. No ”out of blue!”

— Ken Levine (@levine) September 2, 2017

LÄS MER: Fem minnesvärda ögonblick från Metal Gear Solid

Far Cry 4 deliberately turns down the accuracy and damage of NPCs the more there are near the player. Helping you feel like a badass. 🙂

— Tommy Thompson (@GET_TUDA_CHOPPA) September 1, 2017

Not sure if it was mentioned, but the tutorial in Halo 2 asked player to look up. Their input determined whether y-axis would be inverted

— Charlie ? (@charliexbutler) September 2, 2017

We have a term called ”coyote time” for when the player walks off a platformer ledge and presses jump too late, but the jump still works

— Chevy Ray (@ChevyRay) September 1, 2017

First few LUFTRAUSERS enemies deliberately miss you to give you the feeling of being really good at dodging.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) September 1, 2017

Add HP +1 to a destroyed enemy Spacecraft until you’re sure its in camera view to show players more explosions and spectacle on screen

— Peter Hann (@phannDOTde) September 1, 2017

Not really a mechanic (and may be a repeat), but Fallout 3 created TRAIN HEAD to give the illusion of a vehicle:https://t.co/lfddY963ga pic.twitter.com/5nqCpIH706

— Steve Bailey (@IBasteEvenly) September 2, 2017

Most of the projectiles in Titanfall 2 have hitboxes that expand as they travel, so it’s slightly easier to hit fast targets at range.

— Tobasco da Gama (@tobascodagama) September 2, 2017

In DmC, off screen enemies slow down or stop their attack patterns, to avoid hits from blindspots + allow players to fight larger numbers

— Good Stevening ? (@_SteveThornton) September 1, 2017

If you’re on something that’s collapsing, we slow down/speed up the anim of that object based on how far along the ideal path you are…

— Kurt Margenau (@kurtmargenau) September 3, 2017

We’ve used it in Uncharted since U2, so all players get a perfect transistion to the final animation no matter how ”good” they are.

— Kurt Margenau (@kurtmargenau) September 3, 2017

The train/cliff in U2, crumbling rocks in U4 jungle, many things in UTLL. Lets us author a ”final moment” and work backwards to target it.

— Kurt Margenau (@kurtmargenau) September 3, 2017

HL1 – if facing more than two enemies, only two would actually attack. The rest would run to random locations and bark lies e.g. ”flanking”

— Tom Forsyth (@tom_forsyth) September 1, 2017

In Scribblenauts, we used synonyms liberally to spawn the same object, but that object kept the name you spelled, making it seem unique!

— Matt Cox (@findmattcox) September 4, 2017

In Jak and Dexter the player would ”for no reason” trip and fall to give enough time to load the next section off disc.

— Matt Ditton (@polymonkey) September 2, 2017

In Shadow of Mordor, I would add additional health back to dueling uruk, to artificially extend their fight a bit, for spectacle!

— Rick Lesley (@Rick_Lesley) September 1, 2017

Trying to go SOMEWHERE and don’t want towaste time. If players zig-zag around, more enemies will attack, to help them grind.

— Giada Z (@Brica6rac) September 1, 2017

In The Bureau/XCOM, we ramped up the enemy AI aggressiveness if the player didn’t move around every ~15-20 seconds.

— David Pittman (@dphrygian) September 1, 2017

Small one: in Donkey Kong Country, when you shoot out of a barrel cannon, gravity and air control are turned off for a very short time.

— Jason Good At Tweets (@singing_pigs) September 2, 2017

A sphere cant really tesselate into a regular grid.So Tetrisphere just hid the errors at the back of the sphere. You really play on a Torus! pic.twitter.com/sWuvWaN09C

— SmoMo-Ben Greenfield (@t3st) September 1, 2017

In Bloodborne, if you’re reloading your weapon your character’s collisions are temporarily disabled to give you a safe reload period.

— Playologist (@kristercollin) September 3, 2017

In MGS2 a person says ”You have 300 seconds to find the bomb! GO!” And a timer pops up ”3:00”, and you don’t realize that’s actually 5min ;P

— Matthias Zarzecki (@IcarusTyler) September 1, 2017

Not from one of our games, but I think it’s really clever how in Overwatch, enemies you’re badly matched against sound louder.

— Asher Einhorn (@AsherEinhorn) September 2, 2017

and of course the classic – enemies are less accurate if you have your back turned / running away. Made famous by Halo but used everywhere

— Asher Einhorn (@AsherEinhorn) September 2, 2017

In Gears of War we made the last shot more powerful to make the odds of finishing the monster at the end of the magazine more likely

— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) September 3, 2017

In Infamous, if you fire and your crosshair just tracked across an enemy, we’d retroactively make it so you fired at the exact right moment.

— Nathan Reed (@Reedbeta) September 3, 2017

(know you know but extrapolation for readers) game detects collision blocks and steers player around them, ignoring direction of input

— Mike Bithell (@mikeBithell) September 2, 2017

The scalable ’mountains’ in games that feature them (Skyrim etc) are really just hills; they’re super tiny, but the texturing, fog, >

— Transcendent Lεxa (@LxFrancis) September 1, 2017

> it feels great. Everything feels more epic even though these games’ worlds are only a few square kilometres! Tiny!

— Transcendent Lεxa (@LxFrancis) September 1, 2017

The best thing about this trick: Disney uses it in their modern theme parks. They paint haze into far back rocks to make Cars Land seem huge pic.twitter.com/r0EPAjODc8

— Jake Rodkin (@ja2ke) September 3, 2017