Abstract

Introduction

Computer games hold the title of a games that require intense mental work for a long time. Their analog predecessor - chess, whose ability to develop analytical thinking is undeniable.

Subgenres allow us to find the most suitable style of play to anyone: from sporty real-time strategies, requiring both deliberate action and quick response, to turn-based ones, where the skill of the analysis is the predominating.

1. Low demands to graphics part have a great influence on the whole genre:
2. big expansion in the 90s, according to the PCs of that time;
3. need in seamless game mechanics for good gameplay;
4. ability to be ported to mobile platforms [1];

Lots of ideas are still waiting to be implemented within the genre. It allows creating interesting game projects, even by a small number of developers.

1. Theme urgency

The expanding market of personal electronics, along the entertainment market – are good arguments to implement a game project.

Strategies are the right genre for touchscreen tablets and phones. It allows them to be presented at multiple platforms at once, taking both classic PCs and popular portable gadgets [1, 2].

Wide variety of tools available and easy access to related informating allows rapid and effective development of games nowadays.

2. Goal and tasks of the research

Purpose – designing gameplay and fulfillment of game development stages of a strategy game.

Related tasks: study methods of planning a gameplay, stages, processes and methods of organizing development processes in order to maintain stable and effective development of a game.

Planned results: a complete game, targeted to PC platform with actual Windows version.

3. Thematic sources overview

Game development theme is widely represented at international level. Good availability of publications allows to obtain good understanding of the topic.

Variety of materials is numberous. There can be amateur blogs like [3], and complex publications like [4], written through collaboration of industry leaders.

Community websites should be highlighted as a valuable source of information. Such websites provide

Academic publications are concentrated in AI for strategy games. Good example of such research can be seen here [5].

Some of them have been found on this portal [7, 8, 9].

4. Strategy game development

Game development consists of a number of separate stages [10]. By current moment, this master’s work isn’t compelte yet, so only beginning stages are covered here.

4.1 Creating concepts

Basic idea is the heart of each game. Only idea separates one game from another in this genre. Otherwise, the result will be a straight clone.

Basic idea – or concept, it’s a description of the raw key ideas of the project. At this point, game genre should be determinate. For example, one idea of an unusual conflict became both a strategy(fig. 1) and a shooter in Command & Conquer series (fig. 2).

The concept defines the setting – a description of the game universe: the world’s history, character description, rules and laws of that universe [11].

The next important step in this phase - defining the audience of the project. Usually, audience has two main metrics: age and social group. Small changes in orientation of the project may entail a radical change in the target audience of the game. For example, middle-aged housewives and young experienced gamers.

We should also consider features – fundamental elements of the game that make it unusual. As an example, the Starcraft - its main feature is three completely different races with totally different capabilities, but perfectly balanced. This element made the game very popular.

As to current work, the setting has been chosen to the war simulator with less microcontrol, and with unit groups structure similar to modern military forces. Visualisation will be like detailed map, stylished like the real military ones.

The audience will be 12-40 years old gamers, who have at least basic experience within strategy gaming.

Platform and preliminary system requirements:

1. Hardware Platform: x86;
2. software platforms: Windows 7.
3. video card is not lower than the GeForce 8800 GT with 512 MB of video memory;
4. processor-level Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz and 2 cores;
5. at least 2 gigabytes of RAM;
6. 5 GB of hard disk space.

These requirements can be fulfilled by a widely available hardware, including legacy systems. All of the above is essentially a concept document - a brief description of the game basics.

4.2 Elaboration of ideas

When the concept document is ready, it’s the time to make more important one – desing document.

The definition of a design document is project-dependent. Why is it needed? Formalized presentation of ideas for programmers, workflow control for project manager, features vision for testers, inspiration for graphic designers, total information for project owner.

By practical experience [12], the design document should contain:

1. A brief description of the game project;
2. Platform and system requirements;
3. a list of tools that will be used in the project ( editors, version control systems, etc. );
4. AI architecture, physical modeling, networking;
5. prospective user interface, implementation, user interaction;
6. sounds and music;
7. capabilities of the graphics engine;
8. A list of specific opportunities for play, their implementation;
9. requirements to models, levels, textures.

Additional useful items:

1. partition the project in stages;
2. the complexity of the assessment;
3. A description of the architecture of the game engine, its components
4. a description of the scripts and special effects;
5. how to debug;
6. interface structure;
7. agreement on the code;
8. different technical standards and regulations;
9. file formats;
10. A description of assembly systems, localization.

Currently, the design document for the game is in development.

4.3 Planning of a development process

Development process with respect to games is commonly expressed by two approaches: the classical waterfall model, and the new agile methodologies.

Classic waterfall model is rather cumbersome thing when it comes to game development. Due to the great complexity of the games, the time required for implementation of each stage is quite long.

Game developers are increasingly paying attention to flexible software development practices.

Among the most proven and working practices are the following [13]:

1. iterative development that consists of small cycles every 2-3 weeks; at the end of each iteration is a product suitable for use in a particular set of features;
2. unit-testing, which consists in verifying the correctness of the individual modules of the program in isolation from the others;
3. development through testing to be implemented first tests, and then the functionality that is covered by these tests;
4. refactoring is to continually improve the quality of code by rewriting the problem areas; combined with unit- testing removed fears break functional working quietly for developers;
5. pair programming, in which the computer, there are two men, one of whom wrote the code, and the other checks, ask questions and corrects if necessary; plus this approach is in the fact that parts of the code is not supported solely by one person;
6. Continuous Integration, when changes from the developers get on a centralized server build, which is engaged in a continuous assembly and testing of all new developments; plus this approach is more rapid detection of errors.

The planned gaming project will be implemented using Agile practices in order to provide results quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion

The analysis of the planning processes of game development was made. Primary stages of them have been implemented. Basis for design document has been developed. After the completion of the design document the practical implementation of the project will be possible.

References

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