Progression of difficulty

Andrew Williams

Level creation in N

• I was impressed that so many of you were able to create, save, edit and run levels in N

• I was far less impressed by the levels themselves

• As Colin Harding shows, the time limit was the key to the task

N

• The task from week 8 was to create an N level which took some specific number of seconds to complete– Furthermore, in an outrageous hint, I said that you

could not use gold pieces– Gold pieces of course extend time in N

• The hint should have made it obvious that you should at all cost avoid including ….

Hazards in N

Why on earth did you need one?

• The task was not, “create an interesting level”• The task was not “create a challenging level”• It was “create a level which takes N seconds to

complete”

ZERO hazards!

Aesthetics

• Can we agree that, aesthetically speaking, this level is not that all that wonderful?

Aesthetics are really not the point here

Aesthetics• If I’m honest, I took away the sixty second

limit to enable you to do something like this• Aesthetically speaking, this is even worse!

4.5 seconds.Every time.

Csikszentmihalyi, 1997

Progression

• If that is level one (it takes ~ 4.5 seconds)– What should we do for level two?

Still no hazards!

Reminder

• The idea here is not to build a great game– You are trying to provide a progression of difficulty

As the player’s skill improves, the challenge increases too

Csikszentmihalyi, 1997

Level progression

Level 1Level 2

What might level three look like?

What about levels four and five?

More complex levels

• Suppose we’re up at level 20• There are multiple hazards etc in level 20• How do you make level 21 more difficult?• Specifically, what will be your difficulty

measure?– So far we have used time– What else can we use?

Using other people

• There must come a point when you need to use other people– You can’t just use yourself

• How would you select the right people?– What sort of people would you select for N?– What about WRC 5: Rally Evolved (Sony 2005)?– Worms 4: Mayhem?

Using other people

• Suppose you’re working for Blizzard– Simple – you know what sorts of games

• What if you’re doing this as a service for many companies?– What sort of thing would you do?– How many people would you use?– What would you want as payment?– How would you sell your service?