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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

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Session Name: Four at a Time: Techniques for Maximizing Enemy and Object Placement
Speaker(s): Chris Cross
Company Name(s):
Track / Format: Game Design

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Overview: Game design for consoles is always a balance between features and limitations. There are many ways to try and take advantages of the hardware at hand, but ultimately the final battle versus these limitations that take place during the implementation of Levels, specifically NPC and Object placement and management. The lecture touches lightly on some of the Design Philosophies utilized during the development of the console Medal of Honor titles. The title "Four at a Time" refers to the amount of NPCs that could be active at one time in original PlayStation version of Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor: Underground. The limitations were so extreme this talk is tailored towards those tools, trials and workarounds and specific techniques. Also, the lecture illustrates the transition to the PS2 and how that affected our approach. The goal of the lecture is to be able to takeaway techniques that you can apply in your own projects, regardless of genre, and at least a new way of looking at the problems and solutions fo some of the limitations put on NPC and Object placement. Interactive worlds are becoming increasingly complex with some of these techniques you should be able to turn technology imitations into strengths both for the end product and implementation methodologies.

GDC 2004

Chris Cross

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Game Design

Design