reflective essay #3

This assignment being a ‘theoretical’ role, and not necessarily one for which I am qualified in the real world, I think it would be fascinating (and probably extremely stressful) to be a designer. In a perfect world, it would be fun to dictate the research to be done on the game, the level of (in my case) realism to be achieved for the graphic artists, and some of the 360 degree point-of-view I would want to be accomplished. I have mentioned before the level of detail in the game ‘F-16 Fighting Falcon’, which apparently is now owned by Aerosoft. I have seen an interior pan of the cockpit in a recent version, and it almost looks like actual film footage. It would be nice to be able have that same degree of realism in other flight simulators, but with a first-person point-of-view of the player’s arm/hand actually resting on the controls. This requires getting people to get photos of the intended plane cockpit, as well as tracking down pilots who flew them, and finding out how they positioned their hands and feet during flight, as well as interviewing them to find out the sounds, and smells, and general feel of flying. How much vibration was present flying different current and historical planes, and how is that affected by firing wing guns/nose cannons, and shooting missiles? Get the graphic artists to come up with ways to portray that, and have the programmers program that in. How many rounds did each gun carry, what was the ‘cyclical rate of fire’, and how many (literally) seconds of gun use does that translate into? How hard was it to accurately drop a bomb from your fighter on an enemy ship/shore gun was it, and in practical terms, how did the average success rate change with how low your plane was? What atmospheric/sunlight conditions change the pilots’ view through the canopy? Artists/programmers, get to work! The Lockheed P38 was the only fighter with ‘counter-rotating’ propellers. Other planes tended to ‘drift’ (that’s not the correct aeronautical term). That should be programmed into the game. An historically-based game should also be educational, even if that isn’t necessarily what the buyer is initially considering. I want to see some very detailed concept sketches and prototype screen-captures! How do programmers program haze, and briefly blinding sunlight? Wow, I’m glad I’m only giving orders. No, I never got the memo about already being over twice the budget. Sorry, my bad. Seriously, there is a great deal of work involved in a near photo-realistic view out of the front of the Aerosoft F-16 cockpit, and the perspective when you are looking to both the right and left side views of the cockpit interior. How do you depict getting shot down by someone? In a WWII plane, would it be a sequence of large holes in your canopy in extremely rapid sequence, with various cockpit-related things ‘blowing up’ around you, and your vision rapidly fading to black? I suppose this would involve numerous discussions with the artists, and then the programmers. A realistically-challenging aircraft carrier takeoff-and-landing, with the possibility of imminent demise if the flier handles it poorly, would cost more, but might spur more interest in the game. How does one handle the programming of random events? On every xth mission in the Pacific theater of war, there will be a x% possibility of an enemy fighter descending upon you unseen, and either killing you (the pilot) or putting some holes in your wing/flap/engine, which will decrease the functionality of your plane by x%, depending upon the severity of the random event generated by the game. There should also be some programming for your engine getting hit, and more-and-more oil spreading over your frontal windshield, the longer it takes you to land somewhere. That means the game has to able to simulate being able to open the canopy, and look out frontally, on both sides. I think that something of a random event probability will spur player interest by keeping the game from being too predictable, especially for skilled game-players. One thing I’m not too fond of is extraneous music. I would rather have hours-and-hours of randomly generated sparse dialogue from one’s fellow pilots. I realize that this would raise the voice actor costs somewhat, as well as the writing costs. Once you had played the game 5000 times however, you would know your fellow pilots fairly well – almost as if they were family. Music, I think, gets overly familiar and boring fairly soon, but I think that one can more easily accept the omnipresent normal noises. It would be fun to have an extremely graphic-realistic game as depicted above, with different plane configurations, including planes with a rear-gunner, who would have a completely different view, if one were in a multiplayer game with other enemy planes. There could be a mission for a photo-reconnaissance-equipped P38 (no guns, but fast, but you had better get close enough to get the pictures the mission requires), or a duel between a Hellcat, and a Mitsubishi ‘Zero’. These scenarios would have a much lower ‘random-ambushed’ programming factor, although occasionally a gun/guns might jam. Bailing out should be an option (more research into what these pilots were supposed to do once they hit the water is called for). I tend to be ridiculously demanding regarding my expectations of the graphic quality of games that I will even look at. Graphic art realism is probably expensive. Research to make sure that something is accurate is probably expensive. Including random-event generators into many stages of the game is probably expensive. At first I was shocked at the costs mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but after reflection, I can understand it. Making a high-quality video game is very analogous to making a modern motion picture.