referred to as a finite state machine or FSM.
State Machine: SeeState-Based AI.
Story Bible: A document that contains all the information available about the story
elements of the game-world. Story bibles can be quite large, especially when working
with properties with established histories, such as theStar TrekorUltimauniverses.
These documents are usually used as reference works for the developers during the
game’s creation. Described in detail in Chapter 17, “Game Development
Documentation.”
Surrogate: A term used to describe the entity that the player controls in the game,
also known as the player character or the player’s avatar.See alsoAvatarandPlayer
Character.
Suspension of Disbelief: A mental state that players achieve when they are fully
immersed in the game-world and briefly forget that they are playing a game at all. Natu-
rally players will disbelieve what is happening on the screen, since it is projected on a
flat screen, it does not look exactly like the real world, and players control their actions
in it with a keyboard and mouse or a controller instead of their normal body movements.
However, as with movies, the time comes when players make the subconscious deci-
sion to forget the inherent fake-ness of the presentation, to suspend their disbelief, and
to start to believe that they really are great heroes or they really are in outer space or
what have you. Maintaining players in that state for as long as possible is one of the pri-
mary goals of immersive games.
TDD: SeeTechnical Design Document.
Technical Design Document: This document takes the gameplay as described in
the design document and explains how that gameplay will be implemented in more
technical, code-centered terms. As a result, this document is often used primarily by
the programming team. This can take the form of one massive document that covers
the whole project, or it can be a number of smaller documents about specific features.
Described in detail in Chapter 17, “Game Development Documentation.”
Technical Specification: Another name for the technical design document.See
Technical Design Document.
Text Adventure: Text adventures are devoid of graphics and describe the game-
world to the player exclusively through text. Players are then able to interact with the
game-world by typing in natural language sentences in the imperative form, stating
what they want their character to do next. The form was made extremely popular by
Infocom in the early 1980s.See alsoInteractive Fiction.
Three-Quarters View: Typically refers to games that have an isometric viewpoint.
This view can be in any rendering system with an overhead view of the ground where
the camera is oriented at a 45-degree angle from the plane of the ground.See also
Isometric.
Turn-Based: Any game where the computer waits for the player to act before pro-
ceeding with its own actions.Civilization, for instance, is a turn-based strategy game,
whileWarCraftis a real-time strategy game. For some non-computer game examples,
chess is a turn-based game while football (soccer) is real-time. American football is a
670 Glossary