The real Dagger of Time
Sketchbook pages from my first day on the Prince of Persia set in Morocco, last summer:
Jake offered to hold the Dagger of Time so I could sketch it. The one drawing you’d figure I could do in my sleep. Naturally, under pressure (we were between takes), I rushed it, and messed up the proportions.
I asked him to hand me the dagger for a moment, thinking I might just turn back time and try that sketch again. Alas, it was empty. He must have used up the sand doing stunt work with 2nd unit.
It felt good to hold it, though. Much more solid and weighty than a PS2 controller.
Designing story-based games
Eons ago, in 1996, Next Generation magazine asked me for a list of game design tips for narrative games. Here’s what I gave them.
Reading it today, some of it feels dated (like the way I refer to the player throughout as “he”), but a lot is as relevant as ever. I especially like #8 and #9.
- The story is what the player does, not what he watches.
- List the actions the player actually performs in the game and take a cold hard look at it. Does it sound like fun? (Resist the temptation to embellish. If a cinematic shows the player’s character sneak into a compound, clobber a guard and put on his uniform, the player’s action is “Watch cinematic.” Letting the player click to clobber the guard isn’t much better.)
- The only significant actions are those that affect the player’s ability to perform future actions. Everything else is bells and whistles.
- Design a clear and simple interface. The primary task of the interface is to present the player with a choice of the available actions at each moment and to provide instant feedback when the player makes a choice.
- The player needs a goal at all times, even if it’s a mistaken one. If there’s nothing specific he wishes to accomplish, he will soon get bored, even if the game is rich with graphics and sound.
- The more the player feels that the events of the game are being caused by his own actions, the better — even when this is an illusion.
- Analyze the events of the story in terms of their effect on the player’s goals. For each event, ask: Does this move the player closer to or further away from a goal, or give him a new goal? If not, it’s irrelevant to the game.
- The longer the player plays without a break, the more his sense of the reality of the world is built up. Any time he dies or has to restart from a saved game, the spell is broken.
- Alternative paths, recoverable errors, multiple solutions to the same problem, missed opportunities that can be made up later, are all good.
- Don’t introduce gratuitous obstacles just to create a puzzle.
- As the player moves through the game, he should have the feeling that he is passing up potentially interesting avenues of exploration. The ideal outcome is for him to win the game having done 95% of what there is to do, but feeling that there might be another 50% he missed.
Prince of Persia movie trailer
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in HD
Trailer Park | MySpace Video
The first official trailer for the Prince of Persia movie (opening in theaters May 28, 2010) is now online.
There are some bootleg low-res versions bouncing around the net, despite the best-laid plans of Mouse and men. Accept no substitutes. The hi-def version looks better.
I got to see the trailer in a movie theater for the first time last week in San Francisco and L.A., when producer Jerry Bruckheimer and I did Q&As with journalists. It was quite a thrill seeing it on a big screen with a theater full of people.
There’s actually one line of dialog in the movie trailer that’s also in the homemade game-footage trailer John August and I used to pitch the project to Jerry and Disney six years ago. Which is funny, because the line’s not actually in the movie (at least I don’t think it is). No prize for spotting it.
The Making of Prince of Persia
Update: The Making of Prince of Persia journals are now available as an ebook. You can buy it here.
For the past year, I’ve been posting daily entries from the old journals I kept while I was programming Prince of Persia on the Apple II, 20 years ago.
This “blog from the past” covers roughly seven and a half years from May 1985 to January 1993 — from Prince of Persia’s conception through the development of its sequel, Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame.
In a coincidence I couldn’t have planned, this month marks both the 20th anniversary of the original game’s release, and the release of the first trailer for Disney’s Prince of Persia movie. Time is an ocean in a storm.
If you’re curious to know how the Prince’s journey began, back in those halcyon days when computers looked like this, it’s all in the Old Journals. Some highlights include: the day my kid brother modeled the prince’s moves; the day Prince of Persia got its title; and the first rotoscoped animation test.
You can read the whole story from the beginning starting here.
Shanghai sketchbook
From my last day in Shanghai:
This is my new favorite skyscraper, the Jin Mao Tower. (The one that looks like a bottle opener is the Shanghai World Financial Center.)
I did this sketch from the top of the tower. It was growing dark and the city was fast disappearing in the haze, so I only had a few minutes. I actually like it better than the more “done” sketch I did in the park.
