Category Archives: design

7 Ways to Make Your AI Smarter

March 9, 2009 – 9:43 pm

Prompted by this article over at Bit-Tech on How AI in Games works it made me want to blog about some of the ways you can make your enemy AI appear smarter without having to re-write your AI back end or invest in expensive middleware. SCRIPTING A huge amount of what convinces us a game has [...]

By RobHale | Also posted in Videogames | Tagged , , | Comments (7)

Flow – Stating The Obvious

March 3, 2009 – 8:52 pm

Common sense is wonderful. It only ever gets applied in hindsight or the third person.

So when I tell you that games are at their most fun when your skills are in equilibrium with the Challenge you face you’ll scoff and claim that it’s just Common Sense.

By RobHale | Also posted in First-Person, MMO, Videogames | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (9)

Continuity Level Design

March 1, 2009 – 3:35 am

 Over There. by San Sharma Continuity Level Design is a school of Level Design predominantly used by Single Player games.  Recent examples include Portal, Mirrors Edge and Call of Duty 4.  Now it’s worth pointing out that the phrase “Continuity Level Design” is something I’ve just made up (well at least as far as I’m [...]

By RobHale | Also posted in First-Person, Videogames | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Ten Books Game Designers Should All Read

February 21, 2009 – 12:03 am

One thing I’ve learnt in my career is that the best books to read to learn about Game Design are rarely ever books about Game Design. Books about Game Design are a bit like mobile phones; sure they have a camera but when you want to take proper photo you need to reach for something [...]

By rob hale | Also posted in Videogames | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)