SDL usage, Part 3: Story development and graphic design of graphic design "Pirates Ho!"
Sam Lantinga and Lauren MacDonellLoki Entertainment Software 2000 April
Content: Story Important Story Development Inspiration Screen Reference About the author
Sam Lantinga and Lauren MacDonell are currently developing stories and graphic design for "Pirates Ho!", Which is the original exploration controversy role playing games developed for Linux. In this part of the diary, the author tells the story development process and their inspiration source. They also explained in detail how to design images used in the game.
Good game consists of story and picture. We believe that some games need to be better than other games. We rely on special development rules and our imagination. The picture is also a combination of technology and creative processes.
The importance of a good story is that some gamers say good plots that make up a good game. And others say that complex and realistic images make games more addicted. In "Pirates Ho!", The decisive factor in the game is a story.
Why do you want to put so much energy in the story? First, "Pirates Ho!" Is an adventure game, so the fighting scene in the game is deployed around the storyline. If we developed a street game, you don't have to limit the plot to your fight and collect treasures. However, the role-playing ingredients that build games need to be exciting the story of people as the foundation of people's development and interaction.
Based on past experience, we have found a lot of fighting and strategy games, and a good role playing game is very small. This is also reasonable to consider the time, energy and creativity of the idea to invest. But this is unfortunate for players who like to fought and strategically. Therefore, we decided to develop all of these ingredients within the largest possible range. The game not only includes thrilling fight and challenging strategic ingredients, but also tells a complete story, we hope that players can enrich their experience.
Finally, we hope "Pirates Ho!" Can cause extensive attention. We have a lot of enthusiastic readers and fans, they are not a game fan, but they say they are excited by playing a great adventure game and have been interested. We want to combine the "Pirates Ho!" Who plays strategy, fight and role, can attract the hardcore game fans and non-game fans.
The story development process In some cases, the story development is purely a creative process, not the technical process. However, in "Pirates Ho!", We face a variety of technical issues when developing stories.
Programming technology has caused a technical issue. We cannot design the game engine that cannot be supported for the player. For example, we can't write a large-scale faucery directly to the game, because the tactical combat system we have developed can only handle reality and specific battles between several boats. Therefore, it is not suitable for developing the main plots involving large-scale political conflicts and other global events. Fortunately, the relationship between the individual characters and the small-scale war is enough to develop a good story.
Our development story is also a technical process, that is, we systematically and carefully choose the elements you want to use. In addition to including all of us we think interesting and fun, we also try to create appropriate elements combinations to promote people development and interaction, so that they can keep up with the game, so that players will pay attention to what will happen next. We try to create a storyline, which gives players a lot of opportunities to affect the game environment and make players to easily develop and improve characters.
The details of the fictional game world are the main part of the story development. We develop the social and cultural background of the game to give us a environment for developing the main plot. We in favor of this world should include incredible things, places and creatures, and people with magic. But we have not yet determined that the scope of magic is wide, and who has magic. With magic, the development of the story is more confusing, making the characters a more wide range of movements. Inspired by the source of the inspiration, we draw inspiration from all kinds of raw materials. Of course, we started research or classic pirate stories, such as Treasure Island. These stories make us understand the general rules of such stories:
Good people (relatively) found or inherited a map, or received an instruction to see someone, and this person will eventually give him a map. Good people have conflicts with bad people, and bad people want to get maps and / or have a good person. The bad guys caught a good person and / or took the map from him. Good people have to escape and / or rush back from the bad guys. Good people find treasures, kill or hurt bad people.
Our story meets the basic law, but each event may not occur in the order listed above, and each matter may happen several times. Optional story elements include love small episodes (must have a kidnapping of a bad person), all kinds of good people's alliance, add comedy, fool. We include at least one optional element, but you have to wait for what is it.
Since our game is in an unreal world, we also hope that combined with some elements that are not always linked to pirates in Western literary works. Adding exotic ingredients in the story makes us feel more fun, we hope that this can also produce the same effect. For example, most places are quoted. We borrowed ideas from many stories, such as "Tianfang Night Tan", Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series and "Southern Park".
Screen
Conceptual art drawing in designing game images, we first draw a concert in paper. Our concept art painting begins with sketch and character lines. After development of various phases, various media uses the images used in the game. This process is very important because it allows us to use different visual elements and determine the best way to achieve our expected visual effects. Painting the concept on the paper to see the friends to help us get feedback. Here are some "Pirates Ho!" Concept art painting:
Dialogue interface
Small town interface
Map interface
Graphics Design We use Bryce4, Fractal Design Painter 4 and GIMP to complete some of the initial pictures of "Pirates Ho!". The following is a brief description of some technologies we use when using images.
Ship original
To build a model of the ship, we combine the basic geometry in Bryce. Using the Boolean operator combined with the positive and negative forms, we created all the basic shapes of the ship. For the body of the ship, we have a flat bulb that covers the upper half of it. When the value of the sphere is set to positive, set the value of the rectangular square to negative, then after a group, only the bottom of the sphere is found, and there is half of the vessel shape. We added three high and thin cylinders as a mast, and then created sails. For sails, we combine a positive flat cylinder and a negative similar flat cylinder that is slightly misplaced. This means that the edge part of the positive cylinder is visible, it looks more or less like a drum. The next challenge is to build a detail of the ship's some characteristics, such as railings, cannons, and other gadgets.
Boolean image generation Boolean image generation is an image generation process. In this method, the space occupied by the "positive" object is deducted by "negative" object, generating an object that is excavated, or two or more objects. Combined into a synthetic subject that combines all the quality and volume of the active object (see the Bryce4 User Guide in References). Island we use the terrain editing tools in Bryce to create an island. We use the brush function in the topographic editor to draw the shape of the island. We created different terrain effects using the highlands and erosion brush capabilities. We use different materials for the island. Finally, we determine the use of "Mediterranean Hills", which is characterized by bushes, and is rock everywhere; some seem to be suitable for some smaller islands. The next puzzle is to add a village, small town, pier, and human society on the island. The main architectural style is best used in a simple and two-story buildings. This is not only because they are easy to model, but it is like the real Mediterranean village.
World Map We use Painter 4 to create a map. Before developing a map, we took a long time to observe the actual pictures and the replica of the 16th and seventeenth century maps. All elements of the game world map are based on the features we found during study. We draw out the contour of the island and constantly adjust them until we are satisfied with the color and shape. When putting the island on the map, we try to produce a best arrangement suitable for travel and business, and make the location of this area look like a well-planned. Finally, we apply paper materials to the map and continue to edit it until it looks very old.
Character Display Screen We also use Painter to create a prototype of the character display screen, this screen will be used at the beginning of the game to display the statistics of the characters and other information. To create a background of this screen, we copy some graphics that contains wooden board texture. We have adjusted color and texture, and we use a modified texture to create a wooden board that looks like hull.
By importing the digital photos of the pirate costumes to create a portrait, fill it in the appropriate fields, and use the texture tools in the Painter to apply paper particles and the brush to change the effect. We add a frame because the screen looks a little flat, and the portrait is uncomfortable on the background without the frame. To create a framework, we use pictures of the golden wooden frame, copy and paste it until it is appropriate. We add a reel to highlight the name of the person and make it separated from other information on the screen. We created it by downloading a reel image and changing its color and shape to suit our display screen.
Then add a value that is substantially the same as the background to display the character statistics. We let it be part of transparent, because we want to show the wooden board; the details of the left side of the screen are slightly more than a little bit, which is balanced with the portrait. To form a comparison, we added a white text character as character statistics and history (other elements of character statistics and role-playing systems) in future articles).
The game menu screen For the main menu, we want to have a bright and illusory effect similar to the illumination screen. We create a sea view as a background and find a suitable tool to make a button in the toolbox. We finally use the GIMP to create buttons, GIMP has many logo plugins and text effects with free fonts. We have been trying until you find a font and effect close to us. We decided to use "Glowing Hot" and No. 18 DRAGONWICK font.
We have found GIMP to generate a hierarchical logo, which can perform a very interesting operation of the ordinary logo output by manipulating these levels. We have eliminated the idea of creating a box button, we removed the background layer to get a clear effect in the edge of the text of the menu image. We save images as a PNG format image, and the PNG format saves the Alpha channel, which can be read directly by the SDL_IMAGE library and transmitted to the screen in a bit block. During the test, we increase the speed of the SDL Alpha channel in block mode to increase by nearly 100%, and put these optimized into the SDL 1.1.3 CVS code library. We have also found that through the removal of all the "Glowing Hot" effect layers other than that have a distinctive effect, it has been more bright than the original buttons. We use this technology in the main menu. When the mouse moves to the menu option, the menu option will "shift".
The appearance of the game is currently trying to complete such a look, it is suitable for the technical layer of the game world, or more or less, like Europe in the 17th century. For example, we have created a world map and character portrait in the art style. As for land and sea views, we use bright colors to evoke Lenovo on tropical scenery because the weather in the game world is a bit like the Caribbean climate. Of course, we look forward to the appearance of the game will become more beautiful as we add new elements and continuously improve the skills of using design tools.
Looking forward to our future we have just prepared to start a graphical interface, we will discuss this work in detail in the next article. The animation fragment that appears in the game is also planned. Next article will also discuss scripting languages and build user interfaces using LEX and YACC.
Reference
Free fonts for use with the gimp pirates ho! Website
See Sample Binary Code We use the SDL image (SDL_IMAGE) library SDL_MIXER library SMPEG library SAM introduces you "SDL: Make Linux fun", in the developerWorks site, this series published in SAM and Lauren, "SDL Usage:" Pirates Ho! "The birth" tells how they design the game concept, introduce the SDL API (An Introduction to the SDL API) Freshmeat, a good open source project, a variety of software downloads, have a variety of software downloads Prices a well organized Windows, Mac and Linux graphics, programming, and other packages collection
Canoma: Creating photos Reality 3D Modular Scitech Graphics Library from Scanning Digital Photos (THE Scitech Graphics Library
Some best games on Linux:
Maelstrom Hopkins F.b.i. Descent 2 Civilization: Call to Power Mythii: Soulblighter Railroad Tycoon II
Game developer's newsgroup Myth 2: Soulblighter comments (A review of MythII: Soulblighter), at LinuxWorld in "Games users play", at LinuxWorld in "new civilization built on Linux (A whole new civilization built on Linux)", in Linuxworld
About the author sam lantinga is the author of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library, is now the Chief Programmer of Loki Entertainment Software, which is committed to producing the best-selling Linux game. His deal with Linux and games started from 1995, engaged in various Doom! Tool transplants, and porting Macintosh game malstrom to Linux. Lauren MacDonell is a technical writer of skillednursing.com and a cooperative developer of "Pirates Ho!". In the work, write book or dancing, she takes her tropical fish.
