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Sue Blackman Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity 4: All-in-One, Multi-Platform Game Development 10.1007/978-1-4302-4900-9_1 Sue Blackman 2013

1. Introduction to Game Development

Sue Blackman 1

(1)

CA, U.S

Abstract

In the first edition of this book, the classic point-and-click adventure genre provided not only a forgiving environment in which to create a game, but it also allowed readers to explore tips, tricks, and techniques often ignored in other beginning Unity game books. This edition updates the classic adventure game to its modernized counterpart, the contemporary adventure game. A 3D world, physics, real-time special effects, and 3D characters enhance the players experience as he goes through the world acquiring objects of questionable use and solving puzzles, both physical and logic-based.

In the first edition of this book, the classic point-and-click adventure genre provided not only a forgiving environment in which to create a game, but it also allowed readers to explore tips, tricks, and techniques often ignored in other beginning Unity game books. This edition updates the classic adventure game to its modernized counterpart, the contemporary adventure game. A 3D world, physics, real-time special effects, and 3D characters enhance the players experience as he goes through the world acquiring objects of questionable use and solving puzzles, both physical and logic-based.

Coupled with the fact that it appeals to a wide range of players, including many who have never played a first-person-shooter type game, it also becomes an ideal vehicle for the casual games market. And in case your idea of adventure still includes gratuitous use of weaponry, you will even get an introduction to that as well, as the book progresses. As with any project, how to begin is with a bit of research. Critical thinking and investigation at the start will save time in the long run.

The Adventure Genre

If you are old enough to have been around during much of the adventure games history, youve probably gotten ideas for your own game, based on the most successful and entertaining features of the classics. If you are younger, you may have discovered them through various web sites dedicated to their preservation. Either way, there are lots of good ideas to be found, especially as changes in technology open new avenues for game content to take advantage of.

Text Adventure Games

You are standing at the end of a road

The granddaddy of all adventure games is arguably Adventure , the text-based game originally design by Will Crowther in the mid-1970s. In an era where computer games were dominated by Pong and PacMan , the text-based game that catered to those with a dexterous mind rather than dexterous fingers was a revelation. In the earliest version, also known as Colossal Cave , Crowther set the scene for intrepid adventurers to explore a great underground cave system, collecting loot and dealing with the occasional monster. It was reportedly fashioned after the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky, where Crowther had developed a vector-based map in conjunction with his own explorations and existing surveys.

Adventure set the stage for the genre, where the prose was always beautifully descriptive and often highly entertaining, due in part to the vocabulary and parsing of the users input.

Infocoms Zork series, introduced us to the Great Underground Empire, the Flathead dynasty, and the coin of the realm, the zorkmid. They spawned several memorable lines, such as Your lamp is getting dim, You cant get there from here, and many running jokes. Anyone who knows what a grue is can tell you that when your lamp goes out, you are in danger of being eaten by one.

Graphical Adventure

With the advent of computer graphics, the text-based adventure-game genre waned, as graphic quality and resolution slowly improved. Eventually, the text-based predecessor gave way to the still-image format, or graphical adventure genre, pioneered by Sierra Onlines Kings Quest , a host of LucasArts offerings, and Infocoms later Zork titles.

The graphical format spelled the end of players typing in their instructions or questions, relying instead on a short predefined list of verbs activated by mouse picks. Gone was a large part of the charm of the early text adventures, where one could type in just about anything to see if the authors had allowed for it, no matter how ridiculous or risqu.

As far as creating material for the new genre, it now required more than just a writer and programmer. It introduced the artist as a major part of the production pipeline. As resolution increased, so did the art assets required. Unlike levels in todays first-person shooters, where the player faces enemies that are increasingly more difficult to overcome in each successive level, the worlds in adventure games continue to be strongly differentiated by theme, visual style, color scheme, and music. The reward for gaining access to the various worlds is the discovery of new and intriguing environments, designed to stimulate the senses and draw the player into the fantasy.

In the early 1990s, Rand and Robyn Millers Myst twisted the usual format to introduce the concept of using game play to reveal the story itself. Acquisition and inventory was practically nonexistent, but interaction and task- or puzzle-solving was visually breathtaking for the times (Figure ). Among the first to incorporate 3D graphics instead of traditional artwork, they introduced another shift in the genre. Now, not only did one require artists to produce a game, a good number of them had to be able to create artwork in the fledgling 3D programs.

Figure 1-1.

Myst, one of the first adventure games to make use of 3D graphics. (Myst [TM] is the sole property of Cyan Worlds, Inc. Copyright 1993, 2001. Cyan Worlds, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.)

LucasArts Titles

Undoubtedly a force in the early days of the graphical adventure game genre was LucasArts. With an army of professional film personnel from which to draw, LucasArts titles gained a huge reputation for outstanding storytelling, top-notch graphics, and marvelous soundtracks. Of note is the Monkey Island series. As with several other titles, such as Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle , the entertainment is heavily driven by humor, references to pop culture, and a hearty sense of the ridiculous.

Monkey Island III, The Curse of Monkey Island was one of the last LucasArts titles to use traditional hand-painted backdrops and cell animation. Apart from low resolution by todays standards, its style and execution continue to stand the test of time.

Fast Forward to Real Time

The next paradigm shift in the game industry came with the introduction of real-time environments and navigation. By now, adventure-game enthusiasts expected stunning high-end graphics, such as those in Myst s sequel, Riven (Figure ). The difficulty of staying oriented in a beautiful pre-rendered world was still preferable to the low resolution, minimalistic environments of real-time navigation. While it allowed the graphical adventure genre to hold on a bit longer, the latest threat to the pre-rendered formats existence became economic. In the early 1990s, the big publishers found larger markets with real-time first-person shooters, such IDs Doom and its successor, Quake , at a fraction of the production cost.

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