Modern Warfare 2 gunsounds, as all the players who have played the game have noticed - the gun sounds are different from most other shooters - it is crispy. Sounds very sharp, no heavy tremble, almost like someone clashing two undense metallic toys together.
There are several very good reasons behind it, and one of the most important and not easy to found reason is that they purposely removed the low frequency part of the sound pieces to not tire the players out. Low frequency are drum sounds, those deep trembling sounds that make your heart pound. Why this works is that drum-like sounds may sound realistic and terrorifying, but in a game that players play for long periods of time, it can cause disconfort, as the rhythm provided by the gun shootings have no good pattern at all, thus bad for the heart, and therefore tires the players out.
Notice how Black Ops have much deeper gun sounds and the players seem to be only to play the game for 2 hours or 3 hours maximum, where as lots of Modern Warfare 2 players play the game all day.
February 22, 2011
February 17, 2011
Game Design Philosophy - Numbers
Almost every MMORPG game relies heavily on numbers. Levels have numbers, stats have numbers, experience points have numbers and so do lots of other things. The stuff that players look at the most are probably level, stats, and experience points.
It's important to keep these numbers at different magnitudes. If levels were within 1 to 100 limit, then experience should be something in the hundreds, and a different colored font to not cause confusion and make memory easier.
It's also important to not prioritize numbers as representatives of stats. Bars, lines, charts, symbols, fullscreen effects are the better choices.
It's important to keep these numbers at different magnitudes. If levels were within 1 to 100 limit, then experience should be something in the hundreds, and a different colored font to not cause confusion and make memory easier.
It's also important to not prioritize numbers as representatives of stats. Bars, lines, charts, symbols, fullscreen effects are the better choices.
Game Design Philosophy - Sound Mix
Just like a painting, to have good sound for a game, is to make it realistic, with a bit of artist's touch to it.
Sounds for any great game should be realistic, both by what it sounds like and also its reverb matches that of the environment and the location of the sound emitter relative to the ear in the game. Seemingly realistic, but not really realistic is also fine, for example, a swift sound for a knife stab, may pass as a knife stab. But to players experienced to real life knife sounds, they will find slight disconfort when experiencing. Game sound designers of great skill would examine each sound piece individually, and also examine them when mixed together. A good mix would be that nothing is too loud, nothing is too covered up and that each sound piece can be heard easily if under tracking and no confusion between the sound pieces. To do so, sometimes, designers would have to eletronically alter the sound pieces, a common practice is to exaggerate the emotion or symbol behind that particular sound piece. If everything is too muffled up or sound similar, it would create sound chaos.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare games have great sound mixes, the gun sounds are crispy and sharp, where as opponent gun fire are purposely slightly deeper, so when both sides are firing, both gun sounds can be heard, this is not existant in Call of Duty Black Ops.
Sounds for any great game should be realistic, both by what it sounds like and also its reverb matches that of the environment and the location of the sound emitter relative to the ear in the game. Seemingly realistic, but not really realistic is also fine, for example, a swift sound for a knife stab, may pass as a knife stab. But to players experienced to real life knife sounds, they will find slight disconfort when experiencing. Game sound designers of great skill would examine each sound piece individually, and also examine them when mixed together. A good mix would be that nothing is too loud, nothing is too covered up and that each sound piece can be heard easily if under tracking and no confusion between the sound pieces. To do so, sometimes, designers would have to eletronically alter the sound pieces, a common practice is to exaggerate the emotion or symbol behind that particular sound piece. If everything is too muffled up or sound similar, it would create sound chaos.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare games have great sound mixes, the gun sounds are crispy and sharp, where as opponent gun fire are purposely slightly deeper, so when both sides are firing, both gun sounds can be heard, this is not existant in Call of Duty Black Ops.
February 13, 2011
Game Design Philosophy - Ease of Access
Welcome back. Today's topic will be Ease of Access regarding to video games.
A game with great ease of access, easy to buy the game, easy to see the trailers of the game, and most importantly, easy to go from loading screen to the target game content is a great game. I've been playing numorous games lately, mainly the single player games with great graphics. One thing I've noticed is that out of all the games I thought was fun, all of them had very short loading time, no prelogs of dialogues of somesort that player have to go through to get the fun part of the game. Examples are Call of Duty Black Ops and Batman Asylum. To make sure the game is popular, it has to be easy for players to buy the game, sounds something unimportant, but is not negligible. Online order solved the issue of players having to travel afar or not have shipment at certain stores. Ease of access to trailers of the game boost popularity greatly. Many gaming companies already know this by heart, and that's why they always put out these fabulous trailers for free, and sometimes at enormous their cost.
This has drifted my mind onto a related topic - marketting, which is something for the next topic.
A game with great ease of access, easy to buy the game, easy to see the trailers of the game, and most importantly, easy to go from loading screen to the target game content is a great game. I've been playing numorous games lately, mainly the single player games with great graphics. One thing I've noticed is that out of all the games I thought was fun, all of them had very short loading time, no prelogs of dialogues of somesort that player have to go through to get the fun part of the game. Examples are Call of Duty Black Ops and Batman Asylum. To make sure the game is popular, it has to be easy for players to buy the game, sounds something unimportant, but is not negligible. Online order solved the issue of players having to travel afar or not have shipment at certain stores. Ease of access to trailers of the game boost popularity greatly. Many gaming companies already know this by heart, and that's why they always put out these fabulous trailers for free, and sometimes at enormous their cost.
This has drifted my mind onto a related topic - marketting, which is something for the next topic.
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