wfmag.cc \ 31Home for the holidays
Holiday periods, whether religious or not, can easily be depicted in two ways, even if in reality
they’re much more complex. First, there are the decorations, which could be found everywhere
from public spaces to the inside of houses. Then there are the holiday-specific activities: music
in the streets, sermons in the temples, choirs, people taking time off work, groups praying,
parties, a possible abundance of silly costumes, or maybe great public feasts.AdviceToolbox
AdviceToolbox
“All cities change
throughout
the year”to influence your gameplay, then they should
be as transparent as possible. So, if every night
the vampires come out to feed, players should
understand this without too much effort. NPCs
should talk of the night raids, and town bells
could ring to warn of the impending nightfall.
If your town is a clockwork of events, not unlike
Zelda’s Clock Town, it should definitely be one
that’s easy to understand.
Cyclical events can also add emphasis to
the unexpected. A cosy tavern,
for instance, where rumours
are routinely shared and
team members recruited,
would make an impression if it
were to be closed for a week.
The change would feel almost cataclysmic to the
player, and yet no new assets would have to be
created by the developer.
Other clever ways of showing the passage
of time and its cyclical effects could include
the closing of city gates, the sky’s changing
colour, the yellowing of leaves, or, in the case of
Dun Darach on the ZX Spectrum, streets lit by
torches at night.
THE SEASONAL CITY
Every season and time of day or year has its own
characteristics which move civic life forwards
and make it interesting. There is, however, a
fascinating category of location that is used all
too rarely in video games: the seasonal city.
These change fundamentally between seasons,
and may only truly function during particular
periods of the year.
The most common type of seasonal place
is the tourist city: a place where tourism is the
dominant financial function. This is especially
true when local tourism depends on the
weather, as would be the case for a ski resort in
the mountains, or a holiday spot on the coast.
Such a place would only come to life during
the appropriate season, and possibly remain
deserted for the rest of the year.
Even more extreme cases are those of
the temporary, pop-up cities hastily built to
facilitate a specific need or event. These can
be informal or planned,
constructed out of cheap
materials, or even formed
by caravans as they all settle
in a single place. Their civic
functions are rudimentary,
and are always focused on something specific:
a natural phenomenon or a concert, forming
a marketplace at the end of a wine season, or
celebrating a holy day in the desert as tradition
dictates. Temporary settlements also include
mining towns set up to take advantage of a
small vein of gold, and military camps like the
ones the Romans once built. Keep in mind,
though, that many of these Roman camps grew
to become permanent structures. Over time,
even temporary settlements can become civic
forms that last for centuries. The Clock Town in The Legend
of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is
essentially an elaborate
clockwork puzzle running on
scripted, cyclical events. In Dun Darach on the ZX
Spectrum, the passage of day
to night is signified by the
lighting of the torches found
around the city. Seasonal changes in World of
Warcraft include the subtle Christmas
lights and decorations of Orgrimmar.