Summary

Vehicle simulations require a designer to knowledgeably represent a known physical world in a realistic and fun manner to the player. You should spend time learning about the characteristics of the vehicles you wish to simulate within the game, work to adapt the core mechanics to the limitations of the UI, and devise and create compelling opponents and courses for the player to use.

You should determine whether the audience of your game will be purists or casual players, and design core game mechanics to satisfy them. For the purist, the simulation needs to be the most accurate representation of the vehicle possible, whereas for the casual player, the ability to pick up and play trumps any complicated realism.

The most critical things for you to consider after you choose your audience are the vehicle characteristics, the opponent behaviors, and finally the design of the courses or tracks within the game. You will also need to provide progression features, especially in single-player games: vehicle upgrades, customizations, and new vehicles to unlock.

Vehicle simulations can be highly technical and challenging, and a dedicated designer must be prepared to undertake a lot of research.

Design Practice Case Study

Choose a vehicle simulator that you believe, from your own experience of playing it, is an excellent example of the genre (or use one your instructor assigns). It should be a serious simulator of a real vehicle rather than an arcadelike game about a fictional vehicle. Write a report documenting why you believe it is superior to others of its kind. Be sure to cover at least the following areas:

• Describe the challenges that the game offers and any rewards that it gives for achieving them.

• Compare the physics of the behavior of the real vehicle to that of the simulated vehicle. Try to find the performance characteristics of the real vehicle online, and see if you think the simulated vehicle accurately duplicates them or exaggerates them. If it diverges sharply from the real thing, explain why you think the designers made that decision and what it does for the game.

• Discuss the effects of weather and damage on the vehicle.

• Briefly document the steering mechanism that the game implements. Note important indicators that appear on the screen and explain how they improve the playing experience.

• Address the game’s progression. Does it include a growth path such as a career mode or campaign mode? Are there any ways to upgrade the vehicles, or available player actions (such as tricks in a BMX game)? If so, describe them. What challenges and actions are available when the player is not actually driving the vehicle? If the player’s decisions when not driving can affect the driving experience, indicate how.

The design questions in the next section may help you to think about these issues. In your report, use screen shots to illustrate your points. End the case study with suggestions for improvement or, if you feel the game cannot be improved, suggestions for additional features that might be fun to have in the game.

Alternatively, choose a game that you believe is particularly bad. Do the same case study, explaining what is wrong and how it could be improved.

A case study is neither a review nor a design document; it is an analysis. You are not attempting to reverse-engineer the entire game but simply to explain how it works in a general way. Your instructor will tell you the desired scope of the assignment; we recommend from five to twenty pages.

Design Practice Questions

1. What vehicle are you going to simulate? Is it an existing car, plane, boat, tank, and so on, or is it a fantasy vehicle?

2. If it is an existing vehicle, are you aiming for the purist player who knows all its technical specifications or for the casual player who simply wants to enjoy using it? How detailed is the physics model going to be?

3. How will the game handle damage to the vehicle? Can it be visually shown to be damaged? (Licenses for real vehicles sometimes forbid this.) Will damage be treated globally, like hit-points, or locally for individual parts of the machine?

4. What are the competition modes and victory conditions in the game? If this is a military vehicle, what sorts of missions are available for it? If it is a civilian one, what kinds of things can it do besides simply racing (if anything)?

5. What settings are available for the vehicle to travel through? Even a flight simulator needs ground to look at below.

6. What camera views are appropriate for this vehicle? If it is a military vehicle, are there special camera views that assist in fighting? Can the player record and even edit instant replays so as to relive and show off his triumphs?

7. How will you map the many controls of a plane or even a car onto the input devices available to the player? What aspects of the vehicle’s controls will need to be simplified? Which can afford to have simple on-off buttons and which require analog controls?

8. If a vehicle is capable of steering in a direction different from that in which it shoots, how can the player control both at once conveniently?

9. What navigational facilities is the player going to need in order to know where he is (radar screen, overlay map, separate map mode that pauses the game, and so on)?

10. What artificial intelligence is needed to create suitable opponents in the game’s competitive modes? What sorts of things will the artificial opponents need to manage? Will they be smart enough to take advantage of superior speed, acceleration, cornering ability, braking ability?

11. Do you want to create a sense of speed for the player? If so, how will you create it? (Remember, you can use both visual and audible cues.)

About the Fundamentals of Game Design E-books

You understand the basic concepts of game design: gameplay, user interfaces, core mechanics, character design, and storytelling. Now you want to know how to apply them to individual game genres. These focused guides give you exactly what you need. They walk you through the process of designing for game genres and show you how to use the right techniques to create fun and challenging experiences for your players.

All of these e-books are available from the Peachpit website at www.peachpit.com/ernestadams.

Fundamentals of Shooter Game Design discusses designing for this huge and specialized market. It examines both the frenetic deathmatch style of play and the stealthier, more tactical approach.

Fundamentals of Action and Arcade Game Design is about the earliest, and still most popular, genre of interactive entertainment: action games. This genre may be divided into numerous subgenres such as fighting games, platformers, and others, which the e-book addresses in as much detail as there is room for. It also looks at the most popular hybrid genre, the action-adventure.

Fundamentals of Music, Dance, and Exercise Game Design addresses a popular new genre that has made gaming more accessible to new players than conventional action games are.

Fundamentals of Strategy Game Design discusses another genre that has been part of gaming since the beginning: strategy games, both real-time and turn-based.

Fundamentals of Role-Playing Game Design is about role-playing games, a natural outgrowth of pencil and paper games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

Fundamentals of Sports Game Design looks at sports games, which have a number of peculiar design challenges. The actual contest itself is designed by others; the trick is to map human athletic activities onto a screen and control devices.

Fundamentals of Vehicle Simulation Design addresses vehicle simulations: cars, planes, boats, and other, more exotic modes of transportation such as tanks.

Fundamentals of Construction and Simulation Game Design is about construction and management simulations in which the player tries to build and maintain something—a city, a theme park, a planet—within the limitations of an economic system.

Fundamentals of Adventure Game Design explores adventure games, an old and unique genre of gaming that continues to earn a great deal of critical attention by its strong storytelling and its visual aesthetics.

Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design examines puzzle games and casual games in general.