Alex: So Jamie, I hear you are going back to Sacramento for the holidays. That means we really need to decide the final direction of our game before the semester break. The project will be due in September. That only gives us nine months to get everything finished! Then I want to graduate and start selling this thing!
Jaime: I totally hear you, Alex. And I really like the fighter prototypes you have done, but I still have my heart set on making a retro classic side-scrolling beat 'em up. Something similar to Streets of Rage, where you fight your way through gangs of hostile hoodlums. What's not to love?
Alex: Well, I really like beat 'em-ups too actually, but I've already spent so much time on the fighter style game AI, combos, and game mechanics. And a true one-on-one combat genre gives us deeper game mechanics—timing, combos, and skill.
Jaime: Yeah, but beat 'em ups have much more room for creativity and scene design. They don't even need amazing graphics or expensive cutscenes to be engaging.
Alex: True! But beat 'em ups require way more assets— like backgrounds, animations, and music. I don't know if we have time for all that, so if we focus on simple duels, then we will have time to polish the hitboxes and hurtboxes better. That's how you get balance. Nothing good comes easy.
Jaime: Sure, but balance and solid collision detection in a beat 'em up game is pretty trivial by comparison. The game engine in Unity can handle most of it automatically. Plus, I already wrote most of the game design document for that direction anyway. And I know how much you hate working on game documents! You'd rather be coding!
Alex: Fair, but what about lag? A side-scrolling beat 'em up game might drop too many frames per second when there are multiple enemies on screen.
Jaime: Yeah, but I think I can optimize the lightmaps and lower the texture sizes. That should help performance, even on older systems if we need to port the game that way.
Alex: Okay, but if we go with lots of on-screen enemies, I will definitely need to nerf the new AI that I wrote for the bots. Otherwise, players will need a freaking cheat code just to get past the first level.
Jaime: Okay, you get working on the new dumbed-down AI over the break. And I will get started on the level editor. Then maybe by Easter we can start recruiting classmates and friends online to help us make new levels. Having lots of levels should really increase replay value.
Alex: I like that idea. We could even release your game editor for free at launch, and hopefully encourage people to share their homemade mods, skins, and new levels. Fans love to tweak things and be creative. And outsourcing bonus levels and mods to the community will allow us to focus our energy on refining essential game mechanics. That's the part that I love most, anyway.
Jaime: Exactly. Game mechanics are everything. Things need to feel "just-right" or players won't come back. And that perfect balance rarely happens at launch. Or maybe we should just mix both our ideas together? A side-scroller beat 'em up, with intense boss fights using 2D fighter-style combat mechanics?
Alex: Wow that’s actually perfect— something that pays tribute to both classic genres. And then I wouldn't need to scrap all the work I did so far.
Jaime: Okay, so it's decided. Our game will be a cross-genre mashup like never before— Streets of Rage IV meets Street Fighter II. I’ll update the game document tonight. This is gonna be amazing!
Alex: Agreed. People are going to absolutely flip when they see this! It's funny when you think about it. At first I was worried about too many assets in this project, but now I think our creativity and teamwork might be our biggest assets of all!
The two students laugh together, at Alex's impromptu pun about assets. Then they decide to go out and celebrate. End of DIalogue.
- Which game idea do you think sounds more interesting—Alex’s fighter-style game or Jamie’s beat ’em up? Why?
- Alex and Jamie talk about game mechanics and replay value. What do those words mean to you? Can you give examples from games you like?
- If you were on their team, how would you divide the work (design, coding, AI, graphics, testing)? Explain your choices.