Game Design and AI Programming
Game development community is rapidly growing every single day. There will be a time that the Moore’s Law will die and exponential growth of different types of Video Games will be one of the top priorities of modern technologies development. We love to see how creators and developers manage to come up with almost infinite ideas for their games. We love to play different genre of games, whether actions, sci-fi, horror, adventure, and many other genre, it maybe 3D or 2D, whether moving or static. More importantly we want a game that can cope up with our feelings, and well of course we can enjoy it even when playing 24/7. Nowadays video game tend to be more realistic and have a more life-like design, but the downfall is, it takes a large sum amount of memory, plus it needs a powerful device to cope up with its needs.
Who doesn’t want to play a game that suits up with our needs and want? No one right? We tend to enjoy a game if we like the environment that we are in, all the characters, NPCs, textures, details, story line, even the lightings. In order to come up with a soothing environment we need to put in mind that there is no limitation in designing, and will only stop once we stop imagining. Games can definitely break the laws of physics for entertainment. Flying snakes? No problem. Fire breathing Squirrels? No problem. Floating Elephants? Piece of cake, but, designing a game is not just like that, we need to understand the game environment like a Spider who knows exactly all the movements of all the strands of its web, how each and every strand dances to every movement of the game. In game design we have two major things to consider, is it Static? Or Dynamic? Static means that design is just like a painting to be hang in a wall, it doesn’t move nor capable of interacting with its own environment. Designs like that are just purely for cosmetics and just to make the game environment more enjoyable to play. The other one is dynamic, these are the ones that are more complicated to design, because these are the design that needs to move, or interact with the environment. Most of the time, dynamic designs are important for the story of the game and most of the time, these are the ones that help us on completing the story for there are, as what is stated before, one of the strands of the web that needs to dance with its environment in order to make up the whole story of the game. Most common use of dynamic design is NPCs for Quests. Boys and girls, children of all ages, or even adults who acts like children knows how these NPCs for Quests works. Most of the time, they’re the ones who are responsible for the development of our characters to later finish the story line. And dynamic design needs AI programming to be called dynamic designs.
AI programming is what we say the skeleton and the muscles of the designs, and designs are skins. AI programming is the one responsible for the actual development of the story line. They’re the one who is actually working behind all that cheeky designs that we want to put inside the game environment. They’re the ones who are responsible for the flow of the game, and example of these can be seen and notice when we play most of the action games. AI programming consists of life bars, magic bars, hit and damage system, monster spawn system, activation of skills and magic system, clock system, trigger system, stage system, upgrades, changes in designs, movements, physics and other things. In short AI programming is the actual game that we play, and design are the clowns of the game to make it more appealing. Combining these two will give us the satisfaction that we solely need and want to feel contented in our gaming experience. Our developers tend to spend at least a year to come up with a complete game.
So next time we play, support the developers because designing alone is pain in the butt, and AI programming is twice as much pain as designing if both start in scratch. Here are the following games that we love base on the complexity of design or has a great storyline and gameplay that is not boring. We love these for its difficulty in both designing and AI programming. (We only list games that is suitable for low to high end, that way, all of us can enjoy).
1. Salt and Sanctuary
A mix of horror and our deepest monsters combined in a strange environment with us as main character to find out the mysteries that lies in this island. Side scrolling game. Complex Item and Weapons systems. Intricate details in every scene, and bosses that are gory looking creature.
2. Call of Duty
Military simulator but has a linear storyline. Very World War like environment, and has many sequels but we recommend to start from the first one because the preceding ones are heavier.
3. Mount and Blade: War band
A medieval type open world game that has a very unique style of gameplay and have a very old fashions design with castles, knights, horses, villages, NPCs. Very nice for those who want to be in the old times and be a conqueror or be a King on the whole map.
4. Need for Speed
A car racing game that makes you want to broom-broom! With a vast array of different cars for your different moods. Has an option if you want to roam or continue the linear story of beating different guys in racing to complete the story with the addition of police to have a very criminal racer personality.
5. Prototype 1
An open world with a storyline, and a main character that is half monster in both appearance and in movements. Perfect for those who want to roam around the city with a character that can almost break the laws of Physics. Super jumps, deadly kicks and punch, awesome experimented arms, and criminal-like looks in a normal city. Just like GTA but with a stronger character minus the cars. Come on! Who wants to drive cars if you can super jump and glide to your destination.
(Numbers of these games are not ranked based on anything, it’s just listed down)
