Assignment 1- Diablo 3
Diablo III
Well, this might be one of the most complicated games chosen.
Diablo 3, according to Wikipedia, is a tactical action game that is played primarily using the mouse to direct the character with supplementary commands provided through the keyboard. In the game, the player has a character that they use to move around and interact with the world, while progressing through areas and various enemies to experience the game. During this progression, the character develops new abilities and is improved to be able to continue to progress through the game.
Real-Time Control
In Diablo 3, the player’s character moves and interacts with the world in nearly real-time.
Mechanics:
There are probably over a hundred mechanics in Diablo 3, so I am going to group them into movement and abilities because each mechanic is essentially one of those two things with many different flavors.
-Movement- In order to move through the world in Diablo 3, the player uses mouse clicks and the character moves to where the click was performed. The character reacts to clicks within 100ms of the click, giving a feel of real-time control of the character’s movement. This is especially important as the player progresses through the game, as any delay in movement after a given command could result in death of the character.
-Abilities- There are 5 “classes” a player can choose to play. Each class has an array of around 25 class unique abilities that a player may choose to use. Out of these 25ish abilities, a player may only have access to 6 at one time. Abilities can be used (depending on the hotkey assigned by the player) in a variety of ways. One way is to click on an enemy continuously, and each click will result in the ability being performed if it is ready. If an ability is not ready to be used, or the animation time for the ability is longer because the winding up a huge attack takes longer than short jabs. There are 2 ways to look at this in terms of game feel.
#1 The player is experiencing real time control, because as soon as he/she decides to use the ability, it is used.
#2 Because some abilities take longer to use than others, and characters are sometimes intended to take longer amounts of time to attack, real time control isn’t really there because the delay is greater than the perception of instant reaction. I would argue that while this doesn’t give a sense of full real-time control such as jumping in Mario does, it gives a higher sense of realism because it takes beings different amounts of time to perform different actions.
Another way to use an ability is to hold a mouse click, and the character will perform the ability over and over again as fast as it can, given that it is in a situation where the ability can be performed (having enough energy/mana/etc). This isn’t really defined as real time control because the character has limits on what it is able to do. However, as stated earlier, in a practical sense this gives the game a higher sense of realism, which is a positive for game feel.
The final way to use an ability is to press a hotkey, and the ability will instantly activate either around the character, or at the location of the mouse if able to. This is real-time control because as soon as the player wants something to happen (given the character has the fuel to do it), it happens within the 100ms reaction time, giving a sense of real-time control.
To summarize if Diablo 3 has real-time control, it does and it doesn’t. In the sense that a player feels he/she has complete control over the character, there is real time control. When the player wants the character to do something, the character reacts in the appropriate time to give a feeling of real-time control. However, given the desired realism that the game aims for, there are restrictions that purposely impair real-time control. Thus, Diablo 3 has real-time control in the feeling sense, but not in the continuous sense, and this is intentional.
Spatial Simulation
The entire point of Diablo 3 is to immerse the player into the fictional world of Diablo, and make him/her feel as though their character is in a real world. The world is able to be interacted with, there are obstacles which stop the character, things in the environment the character has to avoid, and objects in the world that affect the character both positively and negatively.
There is definitely spatial simulation, whether it’s the interaction with the environment, the interaction with the enemies, or the fact that objects and the world around the player dictates how the player should move around to avoid enemies or gain a tactical advantage.
Polish
Diablo 3 is incredibly polished. It should be considering how long it took to be released, and how large of a following it has.
There are sound effects for everything that goes on in the game. Whether it’s walking, running, fighting, talking, or anything the character is doing, the sound effects compliment the game perfectly and are very detailed. It gives the user a full experience, with background noises in the different environments, to different voices for each unit the player interacts with.
The particle effects (depending on how good your computer is) are very, very, good. There is so much detail for every ability, every motion, and each character in the game has detail that isn’t just a generic model. Everything works together in one huge game concept.
Summary
The entire point of Diablo 3 is to give the user a feeling of game immersion. Game feel is an extremely high priority for the game, and I believe it accomplished it well. There are other issues with Diablo 3, but those don’t really have anything to do with game feel, the game feel is very good and very smooth. Acompany like Blizzard should be good at creating game feel, which is one reason why their games are so popular.
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