Substance and Style in Game Design

Gamasutra has a piece on the elements of substance and style within videogames, and what should be considered when designing with these elements in mind. From the article: "An easy way to understand the difference between style and substance is by example. Many shooter games have traditionally calculated world collision and bullet impacts by modeling bullets as instantaneous line traces and characters as moving collision cylinders. In this case, the line-projecting cylinder is the fundamental nature of the character - the character's substance. The image of a fighter, the sounds he makes and the way he animates is the character's style."

Comments

Strange game physics

[vertinox]

Many shooter games have traditionally calculated world collision and bullet impacts by modeling bullets as instantaneous line traces and characters as moving collision cylinders.

That always irked me in FPS games. In the real world, bullets aren't instantaneous and travel in an arc. Red Orchestra (a UT2k4 mod) does a pretty good job of simulating bullet drop and real life physics.