Chapter 12. Sports Games 第十二章：体育游戏

Sports games set an unusual challenge for the game designer. Unlike most other games, which take place in a world the player knows little about, sports games emulate a world the player knows a lot about: sporting events as they are in real life. No one has ever really led an army of elves into combat, and only a small number of people know how it feels to fly an F-16 fighter jet, but a great many people know what professional football looks like and how the game is played. Sports games belong to a small number of genres that permit a direct comparison with the real world.

体育游戏给游戏设计者带来了不同寻常的挑战。与大多数其他游戏不同，这些游戏发生在玩家知之甚少的世界中，而体育游戏模拟了一个玩家非常了解的世界：现实生活中的体育赛事。没有人真正领导过一支精灵军队作战，只有少数人知道驾驶 F-16 战斗机是什么感觉，但很多人都知道职业橄榄球是什么样子，比赛是如何进行的。体育游戏属于少数可以与现实世界直接比较的游戏类型。

Not all sports games are ultrarealistic, of course. Some, such as Electronic Arts' old Genesis game Mutant League Football, are fantasy games, even if they are based on real sports. Others, such as Midway's arcade game NFL Blitz, simplify a sport and deliberately make it more extreme for dramatic purposes. Most of these kinds of games are designed to appeal to kids, who might not know much about the real sport. But for aficionados, the game must be a reasonably accurate depiction of the real thing, and they will see any deviation as a flaw.

当然，并非所有的体育游戏都是超真实的。有些游戏，如 Electronic Arts 的旧版 Genesis 游戏《变异联盟橄榄球》，即使是基于真实体育运动的游戏，也是幻想游戏。还有一些游戏，如 Midway 的街机游戏《NFL 闪电战》，则简化了某项运动，并故意使其更加极端，以达到戏剧化的目的。这类游戏大多是为了吸引儿童，因为他们可能对真正的体育运动知之甚少。但对于游戏爱好者来说，游戏必须相当准确地描述真实情况，任何偏差都会被他们视为缺陷。

This chapter discusses athletic sports, as opposed to sports such as motor racing. Although racing games are often sold in the sports category, from a design standpoint, they really belong in Chapter 13, "Vehicle Simulations."

本章讨论的是田径运动，而不是赛车等运动。虽然赛车游戏经常在体育类游戏中出售，但从设计的角度来看，它们真正属于第十三章“驾驶工具模拟”。

A Note on Terminology 术语说明

Because sports games simulate other games, as opposed to a war, a race, or an economic competition of some kind, the words player and game are ambiguous. Does player refer to the person playing the computer game or one of the athletes playing the game on the field? In this chapter, we use the following convention: Player refers to the person playing the computer game, as it does throughout the rest of the book. We call the people in the game athletes. Game refers to the computer game. When we refer to one particular contest, we call it a match. The type of match that the athletes are playing (basketball or soccer, for example) is called the sport.

因为体育游戏模拟的是其他游戏，而不是战争、比赛或某种经济竞争，所以玩家和游戏这两个词很模糊。玩家指的是玩电脑游戏的人，还是在赛场上玩游戏的运动员？在本章中，我们采用以下惯例：玩家指的是玩电脑游戏的人，本书其他部分也是如此。我们称游戏中的人为运动员。游戏指的是电脑游戏。当我们提到某场比赛时，我们称之为比赛。运动员进行的比赛类型（例如篮球或足球）称为运动。

A great many sports involve a playing area with a goal at either end and athletes trying to manipulate some object into the goal. Basketball, ice hockey, water polo, and soccer are all examples. We refer to these collectively as soccerlike games.

许多体育运动都有一个比赛场地，两端各有一个球门，运动员试图将某个物体射入球门。篮球、冰上曲棍球、水球和足球都是例子。我们将这些运动统称为类似足球的比赛。

The Common Elements of Sports Games 体育游戏的共同要素

Using the elements of a game that were established in Chapter 2, "Game Concepts," we can observe the following characteristics of serious sports games.

利用第二章“游戏概念”中确定的游戏要素，我们可以观察到严肃体育游戏的以下特征。

Rules 规则

The rules of a sports game are, for the most part, the rules of the sport that is being simulated. You might find that you need to relax these rules in some areas, particularly with respect to faults, fouls, or judgment errors that the player might make. Because the player is using a handheld device to manipulate an athlete onscreen instead of playing on the field himself, it's much more difficult to judge when his avatar is about to bump into someone, cross into a forbidden zone, and so on. A few games allow the player to set the level of "refereeing" to forgiving or strict, depending on which way he likes to play.

体育游戏的规则在很大程度上就是所模拟的运动项目的规则。你可能会发现在某些方面需要放宽这些规则，尤其是在玩家可能犯的过失、犯规或判断错误方面。因为玩家是用手持设备来操控屏幕上的运动员，而不是亲自上场比赛，所以要判断他的化身什么时候会撞到别人、越过禁区等等，要困难得多。有些游戏允许玩家将“裁判”级别设置为宽容或严格，这取决于他喜欢哪种游戏方式。

You'll also have to address an important question about errors that are not the player's fault. In American football, a certain number of penalties are called each match for "holding," grabbing hold of another athlete instead of merely pushing him. This is an aspect of the sport that a computerized version could avoid entirely: It could simply make it impossible to hold someone. Of course, a match in which no holding penalties ever occurred would feel unrealistic. On the other hand, a match in which holding penalties occurred at random might be frustrating for the player. This is another issue that can be controlled by the refereeing variable described earlier.

你还必须解决一个重要问题，即关于非玩家过失的错误。在美式足球比赛中，每场比赛都会有一定数量的“抱人”判罚，即抓住另一名运动员，而不仅仅是推他一把。电脑版美式足球可以完全避免这种情况：电脑版可以完全避免这一点：它可以简单地让“抱人”成为不可能。当然，如果一场比赛中从未出现过“抱人”判罚，就会让人感觉不切实际。另一方面，如果比赛中随意出现抱人判罚，则可能会让玩家感到沮丧。这也是另一个可以通过前面描述的裁判变量控制的问题。

Competition Modes 比赛模式

Sports games are just about the only games that allow all possible modes of competition, depending on the sport: single-player, competitive, cooperative, and in teams, if the platform supports enough input devices. People love to play sports games competitively, and if several people play together, they like to do it in teams as well. Sports games are far more successful on console machines than they are on PCs because console machines allow so many people to play at once and are attached to a TV (usually with a 19-inch screen or better) instead of a monitor, so all the players can see clearly. Because many real sports are played by teams of people, they naturally offer opportunities for multi-player action.

体育游戏是唯一可以根据运动项目提供所有可能的竞技模式的游戏：单人模式、竞技模式、合作模式以及团队模式（如果平台支持足够多的输入设备）。人们喜欢玩体育竞技游戏，如果几个人一起玩，他们还喜欢组队。体育游戏在游戏机上的成功率要比在个人电脑上高得多，因为游戏机可以让很多人同时进行游戏，而且游戏机连接着电视（通常是 19 英寸或更大的屏幕）而不是显示器，这样所有玩家都能看得很清楚。由于许多真正的体育运动都是由多人组队进行的，因此自然也提供了多人游戏的机会。

One other competition mode you should consider including is one with no players at all: the computer versus itself. Few other games besides chess games ever implement this mode; after all, people play computer games to interact, not to watch. However, with sports games, people do occasionally like to let the game play itself and watch the results, just as if they were watching a real match on TV. Another good reason for doing this is to allow the computer to play simulated matches that the player doesn't want to play. This is explained in the section, "Simulating Matches Automatically," later in this chapter.

你应该考虑加入的另一种竞赛模式是完全没有玩家的模式：电脑与自己的对战。除了国际象棋游戏之外，很少有其他游戏采用这种模式；毕竟，人们玩电脑游戏是为了互动，而不是观看。不过，在体育游戏中，人们偶尔会喜欢让游戏自己玩，然后观看比赛结果，就像在电视上观看真正的比赛一样。这样做的另一个很好的理由是，可以让电脑进行玩家不想进行的模拟比赛。本章后面的“自动模拟比赛”一节将对此进行解释。

Victory and Loss Conditions 胜利和失败条件

The victory and loss conditions for a match are the same as in the real sport. However, many sports played in leagues or by seasons can be simulated in a variety of game modes:

比赛的胜负条件与真实体育比赛中的胜负条件相同。不过，许多以联赛或赛季为单位进行的体育运动可以用多种游戏模式进行模拟：

• Season mode. The player selects a single team (or athlete, for individual sports such as skiing) from all those available and plays a series of matches throughout a season, trying to make it into the championships. The schedule of play for the season and the rules for moving into and up the championship bracket are adopted from the real sport. Some season modes allow a player to play not just one team's matches, but every single match played throughout an entire season.\

  赛季模式。 玩家从所有可用的运动项目中选择一支队伍（或一名运动员，如滑雪等单项运动），在整个赛季中进行一系列比赛，力争进入锦标赛。赛季的比赛日程和晋级规则均采用真实运动的规则。有些赛季模式不仅允许玩家参加一支球队的比赛，还允许玩家参加整个赛季的所有比赛。

• Exhibition mode. In this mode, the players play one single match, but it has no long-term consequences, just like exhibition matches played by real teams. Whoever wins the match, wins the game.\

  表演赛模式。 在这种模式下，玩家只进行一场比赛，但不产生长期影响，就像真实球队进行的表演赛一样。谁赢得了比赛，谁就赢得了比赛。

• Sudden death. As a variant of exhibition mode, players play a match only until the first score is made. Whoever makes the first score wins the match. This is handy for very quick games, although it means that luck plays a much greater role in determining the outcome.\

  突然死亡。 作为表演赛模式的一种变体，玩家只进行一场比赛，直到取得第一分为止。谁先得分，谁就赢得比赛。这对于速度很快的比赛非常方便，但这意味着运气在决定比赛结果时起着更大的作用。

• Round robin. Players in a group each take a team and play each other's team a fixed number of times, sometimes just once. Whoever has won the most matches at the end is the winner.\

  循环赛。 一个小组中的玩家各带一支队伍，与对方的队伍进行固定次数的比赛，有时只进行一次。最后谁赢得的比赛最多，谁就是赢家。

• Tournament mode. In this single-elimination tournament, any player who loses any match is dropped, and the winner goes on to play the winner of another match. This requires that the number of players be a power of two.\

  锦标赛模式。 在这种单场淘汰赛中，输掉任何一场比赛的玩家都会被淘汰，获胜者将与另一场比赛的获胜者对战。这要求玩家人数是 2 的幂。

• Franchise mode. The player controls a team over the course of several seasons, trying to build its strength through the years. This mode is often found in games that include mechanisms for hiring athletes and trading them among teams. For games such as tennis, in which most athletes play alone, the equivalent mode is called career mode—that is, the player controls the athlete over the course of several years of his or her career.\

  特许经营模式。 玩家在几个赛季中控制一支球队，试图通过几年的努力增强其实力。这种模式通常出现在包含运动员雇佣和球队间交易机制的游戏中。在网球等游戏中，大多数运动员都是单打独斗，因此相应的模式被称为职业生涯模式，即玩家控制运动员在其职业生涯的若干年中进行比赛。

Setting 设置

The game's setting is the normal venue for the sport, usually a stadium or an arena. It adds a great deal of verisimilitude to present these accurately. Players enjoy being able to recognize the architectural details of their favorite stadiums. The shape of the actual playing areas in American football and basketball is fixed, but different baseball fields are famous for having different effects on gameplay. Some sports, such as skiing and bobsledding, have venues that vary enormously and require a great deal of practice to learn.

比赛场地是运动的正常场所，通常是体育场或竞技场。准确地呈现这些场馆能增加游戏的真实性。玩家喜欢能够辨认出他们喜爱的体育场馆的建筑细节。美式足球和篮球的实际比赛场地的形状是固定的，但不同的棒球场地会对游戏产生不同的影响。有些运动，如滑雪和雪橇，其场地变化很大，需要大量练习才能掌握。

Outdoor fields are also subject to changes in the weather, which can significantly affect the game. Rain hampers traction on a grass field, and snow makes it worse still. Players have to run more slowly and carefully. Wind affects the flight of balls and the accuracy with which they can be thrown. These factors all add enjoyable variety to a game.

室外场地也会受到天气变化的影响，从而对比赛产生重大影响。下雨会影响草地的附着力，而下雪则会使情况更糟。玩家必须跑得更慢、更小心。风会影响球的飞行和投掷的准确性。这些因素都为比赛增添了乐趣。

The crowd also contributes significantly to the setting. Although you won't want to devote a lot of graphical resources to spectators, the sounds they make add greatly to the atmosphere. The volume should go up at tense moments. If there are any commonly used chants at different times, the players should hear them; there should be cheering after a score by the home team and a sudden silence after a score by the visitors. Horns, whistles, and vendors calling out "Ice-cold beer here!" are all part of the experience.

人群也对比赛环境有很大的影响。虽然你不想在观众身上投入大量的图形资源，但他们发出的声音会大大增加游戏的气氛。在紧张时刻，音量应该提高。如果在不同时刻有任何常用的喊声，玩家们应该能听到；主队得分后应该有欢呼声，而客队得分后应该突然安静下来。喇叭声、口哨声和小贩叫卖声“冰镇啤酒在这里！”都是体验的一部分。

Interaction Model 互动模式

The interaction model in sports games varies considerably depending on the sport, but in most cases, the player is controlling an avatar who is one of the athletes in the match. In one-on-one sports such as tennis, this is straightforward, but in team sports, the player's control usually switches automatically from one athlete to another as the focus of play changes. In basketball games, for example, control normally switches to the athlete who has the ball. If the player's team is on defense, most games let the player choose which athlete to control and to switch quickly from one to another as conditions change. This often requires significant changes to the user interface as play progresses.

体育游戏中的互动模式因运动项目的不同而有很大差异，但在大多数情况下，玩家控制的是一个化身，而这个化身就是比赛中的一名运动员。在网球等一对一的运动中，这种模式很简单，但在团队运动中，玩家的控制权通常会随着比赛焦点的变化而自动从一名运动员切换到另一名运动员。例如，在篮球比赛中，控制权通常会转交给持球的运动员。如果玩家所在的球队正在防守，大多数游戏都会让玩家选择控制哪名运动员，并在情况发生变化时迅速从一名运动员切换到另一名运动员。这通常需要在游戏过程中对用户界面进行重大改动。

Perspective 视角

In one-on-one sports games, the perspective is seldom difficult to manage. Choose a spot where you have a clear view of the athletes and where their movements and activities will map neatly onto the machine's input devices. As a general rule, you shouldn't do sports games in the first person. A lot of the fun of watching a sport is in seeing the athletes exercise their skills, and in first person, you can't see your avatar doing that. For example, you could make a tennis game in the first person, but you wouldn't get to see your athlete playing tennis, and you might not even get to see your racket hit the ball. An overhead perspective, with your tennis player at the bottom of the screen and your opponent at the top, presents a much more natural view and lets you see both athletes running, jumping, serving, and so on.

在一对一的体育游戏中，视角很少难以控制。选择一个你能清楚看到运动员的位置，他们的动作和活动也能清晰地映射到机器的输入设备上。一般来说，你不应该以第一人称进行体育游戏。观看体育比赛的很多乐趣在于看到运动员锻炼自己的技能，而在第一人称视角下，你无法看到你的化身在做这些。例如，你可以用第一人称来制作网球游戏，但你看不到你的运动员在打网球，甚至可能看不到你的球拍击球。采用空中俯视视角，你的网球运动员在屏幕下方，你的对手在屏幕上方，这样呈现的视角要自然得多，你可以看到双方运动员的奔跑、跳跃、发球等动作。

Team games are more tricky, particularly when the focus of attention moves from place to place. With most soccerlike games, an end view or a side view, from a somewhat elevated position, works best. American football, however, is almost unplayable from a side view because too many athletes are behind other athletes and you can't see gaps in the line.

团队游戏则比较棘手，尤其是当注意力的焦点在不同地方移动时。对于大多数类似足球的运动，从稍微高一点的位置看端视图或侧视图效果最好。然而，美式足球几乎无法从侧视图进行，因为太多的运动员被其他运动员挡住了，你看不到阵线上的空隙。

User Interface Design 用户界面设计

In most other genres, the user interface changes infrequently and only in response to explicit actions by the player. Sports games are unusual in this regard; the user interface changes on a second-by-second basis, depending on conditions in the match itself. American football is a particularly complex example. On each play, the player on offense selects the formation and play to be run, then calls signals and makes adjustments at the line of scrimmage, and then takes the snap and either hands off the ball, passes it, or runs with it himself. If he passes it, control switches to the athlete for whom the pass is intended, and a whole series of new options for running, jumping, diving, and dodging defenders comes into play. Each of these different states requires that certain moves or choices be assigned to buttons on the controller, and these assignments change rapidly as play progresses.

在大多数其他类型的游戏中，用户界面的变化并不频繁，而且只有在玩家做出明确操作后才会发生变化。体育游戏在这方面则不同寻常；用户界面每秒都在变化，这取决于比赛本身的情况。美式足球就是一个特别复杂的例子。在每场比赛中，进攻方玩家要选择阵型和战术，然后呼叫信号并在争球线上做出调整，然后开球，要么交出球，要么传球，要么自己带球跑。如果他传球，控制权就会转到传球对象的运动员手中，一系列新的跑动、跳跃、俯冲和躲避防守的选择就会出现。每种不同的状态都要求将某些动作或选择分配给控制器上的按钮，而这些分配会随着游戏的进行而迅速变化。

The hardest thing about sports game user interface design is that you have to map athletic activities—complex motions of the whole human body—onto a game machine's input device, typically a handheld controller with binary buttons. Think about what kinds of things the player will want to do at each stage of the game and how best to make them available. Whenever possible, make sure that similar actions in different modes are assigned to similar buttons; for example, if you have a "jump" action in both offensive and defensive modes, assign it to the same button in both cases.

体育游戏用户界面设计的最难点在于，你必须将体育活动——整个人体的复杂动作——映射到游戏机的输入设备上，通常是一个带有二进制按钮的手持控制器。想想玩家在游戏的每个阶段会想做哪些事情，以及如何最好地实现这些事情。在可能的情况下，确保将不同模式下的类似动作分配到相似的按钮上；例如，如果你在进攻和防守模式下都有“跳跃”动作，那么在两种情况下都将其分配到相同的按钮上。

In team games, the player will normally be controlling one athlete at a time. This is usually indicated by displaying a circle or star under the athlete's feet. A good many games also draw symbols on the field to help the player overcome the lack of depth perception—the spot where a flying ball is due to land, for example.

在团队游戏中，玩家通常一次控制一名运动员。这通常会在运动员脚下显示一个圆圈或星星。很多游戏还会在球场上画出一些符号，帮助玩家克服深度知觉不足的问题——例如，飞来的球将落在哪里。

When the player is on defense, include a button to automatically change control to the most appropriate defending athlete (in soccerlike games, this is usually the one nearest to the ball). Another useful pair of buttons allows the player to cycle control forward and backward through all the athletes on the team.

当玩家处于防守状态时，可通过一个按钮自动将控制权切换到最合适的防守运动员（在类似足球的游戏中，通常是离球最近的运动员）。另一对有用的按钮可以让玩家前后循环控制队中的所有运动员。

Most sports games avoid pull-down menus and anything else that resembles a computer's desktop, so as not to interfere with the fantasy. Pop-up windows and semitransparent overlays are common, particularly if they can be styled to look like the graphics seen on TV. These are subject to style variations from year to year. We suggest that you watch matches on TV for examples of how the overlay graphics are handled.

大多数体育游戏都避免使用下拉菜单和其他类似电脑桌面的东西，以免干扰玩家的幻想。弹出式窗口和半透明覆盖层很常见，特别是如果它们的样式可以看起来像电视上的画面。这些样式每年都会有所不同。我们建议你观看电视上的比赛，以了解如何处理叠加图形。

Unless you're simulating archery or bowling, don't forget that a sports game is essentially an action game. No matter how complex the sport is, the user interface must be as smooth and intuitive as you can make it.

除非是模拟射箭或保龄球，否则不要忘记体育游戏本质上就是动作游戏。无论这项运动有多复杂，用户界面都必须尽可能地流畅和直观。

Player Roles 玩家角色

The player's role is most commonly that of an athlete, but not one particular athlete. In a team sport, the player's focus of control usually follows the action rather than being tied to a single individual. Thus, the player's role shifts rapidly, especially if some athletes play specialized positions such as catcher or goalie.

玩家的角色最常见的是运动员，但不是某个运动员。在团队运动中，玩家的控制重心通常是跟着动作走，而不是绑在某个人身上。因此，玩家的角色转换很快，尤其是当一些运动员担任专门的位置（如捕手或守门员）时。

Another common role is that of coach, again seen chiefly in team sports. The coach selects the starting players for the team, sets offensive and defensive strategies, and makes player substitutions during the match. The player usually switches to the coach role during timeouts or other pauses in the action.

另一个常见的角色是教练，同样主要出现在团队运动中。教练为球队挑选首发球员，制定进攻和防守策略，并在比赛中替换球员。玩家通常在暂停或其他比赛暂停时转换为教练角色。

Finally, there's the role of general manager of the team. The general manager is responsible for hiring and firing decisions and trying to recruit the best players within the limitations of the budget. See Figure 12.1 for an example. A few sports games are about only this aspect of the sport and don't include live simulations of the sport itself. These are occasionally called manager games and are particularly popular in Europe.

最后是球队总经理的角色。总经理负责做出聘用和解雇的决定，并努力在预算范围内招募最好的球员。示例见图 12.1。少数体育游戏只涉及体育运动的这一方面，而不包括体育运动本身的现场模拟。这些游戏有时被称为经理人游戏，在欧洲特别流行。

Figure 12.1. EA's Madden NFL 2002 athlete-trading screen, a management function. 图 12.1. EA 的《疯狂橄榄球 2002》运动员交易屏幕，这是一种管理功能。

Structure 结构

The structure of a sports game is typically simple. Its main play mode is match play, simulating the sport itself as it is played. You can usually pause the game and bring up a pause menu. While the game is paused, you can substitute athletes, change the camera view, adjust the AI if it can be adjusted, and perform other sorts of coaching tasks. You can also save the game for later or abandon it.

体育游戏的结构通常很简单。它的主要游戏模式是比赛，模拟运动本身的比赛过程。你通常可以暂停比赛并调出暂停菜单。在比赛暂停时，你可以替换运动员、改变摄像机视角、调整人工智能（如果可以调整的话）以及执行其他各种教练任务。你还可以保存比赛以备后用，或者放弃比赛。

Outside of match play, most of the game's modes relate to other aspects of the sport: studying the athletes' ratings and performance statistics, hiring and trading them, establishing a depth chart, and following the sport's playing schedule on a calendar. The screen layouts tend to reflect the bookkeeping nature of these activities, often resembling tables or graphs.

在比赛之外，游戏的大部分模式都与体育运动的其他方面有关：研究运动员的评级和表现统计、雇佣和交易运动员、建立深度表，以及在日历上关注运动的比赛日程。屏幕布局倾向于反映这些活动的记账性质，通常类似于表格或图表。

Special Design Issues for Sports Games 体育游戏的特殊设计问题

Sports games face a number of design issues that are either rare or irrelevant in other kinds of games.

体育游戏面临着许多设计问题，这些问题在其他类型的游戏中很少见或无关紧要。

Physics for Sports Games 体育游戏的物理学

During play, your game will be running a physics engine that determines the behavior of moving bodies in the match. The physical behavior of an inanimate object such as a baseball is comparatively easy to implement. The physical behavior of humans, however, is much more complicated. Early sports games tended to treat a running athlete rather like a rocket: She had a velocity vector that gave the speed and direction of her movement, and an acceleration vector that gave the force and direction with which she was pushing. Modern sports games have much richer simulations with a great many variables, taking into account such things as the friction coefficient of the playing surface—for example, rain and snow make fields slippery and reduce traction.

在比赛过程中，你的游戏将运行一个物理引擎，它将决定比赛中运动物体的行为。无生命物体（如棒球）的物理行为比较容易实现。但人类的物理行为则要复杂得多。早期的体育游戏往往把奔跑中的运动员当作火箭：她有一个速度矢量，表示她运动的速度和方向，还有一个加速度矢量，表示她推动的力量和方向。现代体育游戏的模拟要丰富得多，变量也非常多，会考虑到比赛场地的摩擦系数等因素，例如，雨雪天气会使场地变得湿滑，降低附着力。

Designing the physics simulation for a sports game is a highly technical problem and is beyond the scope of this book. However, we offer one caveat: Because a sports game is a simulation of the real world, it is a common error to think that the physics in a sports game should be as realistic as possible. They shouldn't be, for two reasons:

为体育游戏设计物理模拟是一个技术性很强的问题，超出了本书的范围。不过，我们还是要提醒大家注意一点：由于体育游戏是对现实世界的模拟，因此认为体育游戏中的物理仿真应该尽可能逼真是一个常见的错误。其实不然，原因有二：

First, the player is not actually running around on the playing field herself; she is sitting in a chair, watching a screen, and controlling an athlete through a handheld controller. She has neither the immediate experience of being on the field nor the precise control over her movements that a real athlete does.

首先，玩家本人实际上并没有在赛场上奔跑；她只是坐在椅子上，看着屏幕，通过手持控制器控制一名运动员。她既没有在赛场上的直接体验，也不能像真正的运动员那样精确控制自己的动作。

Second, the player is not a professional athlete. There is a good reason why only a small number of people are capable of hitting a baseball pitched at 95 miles per hour. The length of time that the ball is within reach of the bat is about 0.04 seconds. It's simply not realistic to expect that an ordinary person, looking at a video screen without the benefit of depth perception, could react that fast.

第二，玩家不是职业运动员。只有少数人才能打中时速 95 英里的棒球，这是有道理的。球在球棒触及范围内的时间大约为 0.04 秒。指望一个普通人在没有深度知觉的情况下看着视频屏幕做出那么快的反应是不现实的。

For both of these reasons, it's necessary to fudge the physics to make the game playable. We slow the pitch so that the batter has a reasonable chance of hitting it, and we artificially adjust the position of the bat so that it intersects the path of the ball. It doesn't matter whether the physics perfectly copy the real world as much as whether they seem to be producing a reasonable simulation of the sport as it is played by professionals. Even in a highly realistic game, your objective is to provide an enjoyable experience, not a mathematical simulation of nature.

基于这两个原因，我们有必要在物理上做一些手脚，让游戏具有可玩性。我们放慢投球速度，让击球手有合理的机会击中球；我们人为地调整球棒的位置，让它与球的轨迹相交。物理原理是否完美地复制了真实世界并不重要，重要的是它们是否合理地模拟了专业人士所从事的这项运动。即使在高度逼真的游戏中，你的目标也是提供令人愉悦的体验，而不是对自然的数学模拟。

Rating the Athletes 给运动员评级

One of the biggest tasks you have in designing a sports game is developing a rating system for the skills and athletic abilities of all the athletes in the game. The rating system provides the raw data that the physics engine needs to simulate the behavior of the athletes accurately. As your programming team develops the physics engine and game AI, you should work with them to determine what ratings are needed. Researching the athletes' performance and setting the ratings for them is a task that can take many months, and you will probably want to delegate it to junior designers or assistant producers.

在设计体育游戏时，你最大的任务之一就是为游戏中所有运动员的技能和运动能力开发一个评级系统。评级系统为物理引擎提供准确模拟运动员行为所需的原始数据。当你的编程团队开发物理引擎和游戏人工智能时，你应该与他们一起确定需要哪些评级。研究运动员的表现并为他们设定评级是一项可能需要花费数月时间的工作，你很可能希望将这项工作委托给初级设计师或助理制作人。

In most team games, the athletes have one set of ratings common to all of them, plus specialized ratings that apply only to athletes playing a particular position.

在大多数团队游戏中，运动员都有一套通用的评分标准，另外还有只适用于担任特定位置的运动员的专门评分标准。

Common Ratings 通用评级

These are examples of the kinds of ratings that might be common to all the athletes in a game:

下面举例说明游戏中所有运动员通用的评级：

• Speed. The athlete's maximum moving (running or skating or swimming) speed under ideal conditions. 速度。 运动员在理想条件下的最大移动（跑步、滑冰或游泳）速度。

• Agility. A measure of the athlete's ability to change directions while moving. 敏捷。 衡量运动员在移动过程中改变方向的能力。

• Weight. Simply the athlete's weight, which affects the force he transmits in a collision and the inertia he has when struck by someone else. 体重。 简单地说就是运动员的体重，它会影响他在碰撞中传递的力量以及被他人撞击时的惯性。

• Acceleration. The rate at which the athlete can reach top speed. 加速度。 运动员达到最高速度的速率。

• Jumping. The height to which the athlete can jump. 跳跃。 运动员能跳到的高度。

• Endurance. The rate at which the athlete gets tired during the course of the game. 耐力。 运动员在比赛过程中的疲劳速度。

• Injury resistance. The probability that an athlete will be injured. 抗伤能力。 运动员受伤的概率。

Specialized Ratings 专业评级

These ratings apply to a specific position—in this case, the quarterback in American football:

这些评级适用于特定位置——这里举例用的是美式足球中的四分卫：

• Passing strength. The distance that the quarterback can throw the ball. 传球力量。 四分卫投球的距离。

• Passing accuracy. The precision with which the quarterback can throw the ball. 传球准确性。 四分卫投球的精确度。

• Dexterity. The quarterback's general dexterity in handling the ball. This affects his chances of dropping the snap or fumbling a handoff. 灵巧性。 四分卫处理球的一般灵巧性。这将影响四分卫丢球或失误的几率。

• Awareness. The quarterback's ability to sense that he's about to be tackled and to try to get out of the way. 意识。 四分卫察觉到自己即将被擒抱并试图躲开的能力。

Athlete AI Design 运动员人工智能设计

The AI in most computer games is rather crude. In action games and first-person shooters, the player's AI-driven opponents typically have a small number of behaviors triggered by specific events (appearance of the player on the scene, being shot at, and so on). When they're together in a group, they very seldom act in concert or assign special roles to particular individuals, nor do they help each other. It's every monster for itself. When there are no stimuli, they go into a simple idle loop, walking aimlessly around or standing still.

大多数电脑游戏中的人工智能都相当粗糙。在动作游戏和第一人称射击游戏中，玩家的人工智能对手通常只具有少量由特定事件（玩家出现在场景中、遭到射击等）触发的行为。当它们组成一个群体时，它们很少协同行动或为特定个体分配特殊角色，也不会互相帮助。每个怪物都是为自己而战。当没有刺激时，它们就会进入简单的闲置循环，漫无目的地走来走去或站着不动。

These kinds of actions aren't acceptable in a sports game. People don't mind if a monster in a first-person shooter wanders randomly around, but the athletes in a sports game must behave like humans, and that means deliberate, intelligent action. Particularly in team games, each athlete is working with the others on the team to accomplish particular goals. The position the athlete plays dictates behavior to some extent, but within those boundaries, the athlete still has to respond intelligently to a number of possible events. In a relatively simple sport such as tennis, there might not be many of these events, but in a highly complex sport such as American football, with 22 players on the field at a time, there can be hundreds.

这种行为在体育游戏中是不能接受的。人们不会介意第一人称射击游戏中的怪物随意走动，但体育游戏中的运动员必须表现得像人一样，这就意味着要有深思熟虑的智慧行动。特别是在团队游戏中，每个运动员都要与团队中的其他人合作完成特定的目标。运动员所处的位置在一定程度上决定了运动员的行为，但在这些范围内，运动员仍然必须对许多可能发生的事件做出明智的反应。在网球等相对简单的运动中，这类事件可能并不多，但在美式足球等高度复杂的运动中，场上同时有 22 名球员，可能就有数百个这样的事件。

Defining the State Space 定义状态空间

The best way to design sports-game AI is to map out a game's states as a giant flowchart. There could be far more states than you realize at first. Corner kick in soccer is not just one state, but several. There is the period before the ball is kicked, after it has been kicked but has not yet touched another athlete, after it has been touched by another athlete, and so on. See Figure 12.2 for a partial example.

设计体育游戏人工智能的最佳方法是将游戏状态绘制成一个巨大的流程图。状态可能远比你一开始意识到的要多。足球比赛中的角球并非只有一种状态，而是有多种状态。有球被踢出之前的状态，有球被踢出但尚未触及其他运动员之后的状态，有球被其他运动员触及之后的状态，等等。部分示例见图 12.2。

Figure 12.2. A flowchart detailing part of the "corner kick" situation in soccer. 图 12.2. 详细说明足球比赛中“角球”情况的流程图。

Consult the official rules of the sport as you construct the flowchart: They will often describe states in detail, with special rules applying to each. However, the rules alone are not enough; they describe game states for the purposes of listing legal and illegal actions, but not for tactics or strategy. Whenever something changes that requires the athletes to adopt a different tactic, the game has moved into a different state.

在绘制流程图时，请参考体育运动的官方规则：这些规则通常会详细描述各种状态，每种状态都有适用的特殊规则。然而，仅有规则是不够的；规则描述比赛状态的目的是列出合法和非法行为，而不是战术或战略。每当有什么变化要求运动员采取不同的战术时，比赛就进入了不同的状态。

Setting Collective and Individual Goals 设定集体和个人目标

After you define the game states, you can start thinking about what the team should do in that state—where each athlete should be trying to go and what he should be trying to do to support the team's collective goal at that moment. In some cases, these activities are defined with reference to a specific individual on the opposing team, trying to prevent him from doing his job. The software must have a way of matching up athletes with their opponents, just as the real athletes do.

在定义了比赛状态后，你就可以开始考虑球队在该状态下应该做些什么——每个运动员应该努力去哪里，他应该努力做些什么来支持球队在那一刻的集体目标。在某些情况下，这些活动的定义是针对对方团队中的特定个人，试图阻止他完成自己的工作。软件必须有办法将运动员与对手匹配起来，就像真正的运动员那样。

When you have defined what the team should be trying to accomplish in a particular state and have assigned each athlete a role, you then must define exactly how the athlete is to perform that role: what direction he moves, what other movements he makes, which animations should be displayed, and so on. If the role is a defensive or supportive one, such as covering an opposing athlete, the individual AI for it might still be fairly complex. For example, a soccer player dribbling the ball might make a feint, trying to fool his opponent into thinking he's passing the ball. The software knows perfectly well that this is a feint, but sometimes the defender should be fooled and sometimes he shouldn't, depending on his awareness rating and, in either case, how he responds.

当你定义了球队在特定状态下应努力完成的任务，并给每个运动员分配了一个角色后，你就必须准确定义运动员应如何完成该角色：他朝哪个方向移动、做出哪些其他动作、应显示哪些动画等。如果角色是防守或辅助性的，例如掩护对方运动员，那么其单独的人工智能可能仍然相当复杂。例如，一名足球运动员在运球时可能会做出假动作，试图让对手误以为他在传球。软件很清楚这是一个假动作，但有时防守者会被骗，有时则不会，这取决于他的意识等级，以及在这两种情况下他的反应。

An athlete with nothing to do shouldn't just stand still. Most sports games include fidgets, short animations in which the athlete shifts his weight, stretches his arms, or makes some other neutral action every few seconds. Even if play is underway but the athlete is not closely involved—the third baseman on a fly ball to right field, for example—he at least should turn and watch the action.

无事可做的运动员不应该只是站在原地一动不动。大多数体育游戏都包含小动作，即运动员每隔几秒钟就会移动重心、伸展手臂或做出其他中性动作的简短动画。即使比赛正在进行，但运动员并没有密切参与其中——例如，三垒手正在处理一个飞向右外野的球——他至少也应该转过身来观看比赛。

Injuries 受伤

Injuries are a sad but common side effect of sports, and serious simulations take them into account. Because they occur somewhat randomly, they're outside the player's control and can be frustrating. Most sports games allow the players to turn off injuries if they don't like the effect that they have on the game.

受伤是体育运动中令人痛心但又常见的副作用，严肃的模拟比赛会考虑到这一点。由于受伤是随机发生的，玩家无法控制，因此会令人沮丧。如果玩家不喜欢受伤对比赛造成的影响，大多数体育游戏都允许玩家关闭受伤功能。

Although it's possible for an athlete to injure herself simply by running or jumping, this doesn't provide the player with any visible explanation for why the injury occurred. A lot of sports games therefore limit injuries to cases in which there has been a collision of some kind, usually between two athletes. To determine whether an injury has occurred, you should include such factors as the relative speed of the two athletes, their weights, their respective susceptibilities to injury, and a random factor. The heavier an athlete is, the more force she imparts in a collision, and it is the force that does the damage to the other athlete.

虽然运动员有可能仅仅因为奔跑或跳跃而受伤，但这并不能为运动员提供任何关于受伤原因的明显解释。因此，很多体育比赛都将受伤限定为发生了某种碰撞，通常是两名运动员之间的碰撞。要确定是否发生了受伤，你应该把两个运动员的相对速度、体重、各自对受伤的易感性以及随机因素等因素考虑在内。运动员的体重越重，在碰撞中产生的力就越大，而对另一名运动员造成伤害的正是这种力。

Some positions, such as the pitcher in baseball, are simply so stressful that they can result in injuries without a collision, especially the longer the pitcher stays in the game. You can compute the probability of an injury on every pitch and raise it slightly with each one.

有些位置，如棒球的投手，压力非常大，不发生碰撞也会导致受伤，尤其是投手在比赛中停留的时间越长。你可以计算每次投球时受伤的概率，并在每次投球时将概率略微提高。

You can also decide which part of the body sustained the injury and the length of time for which it will disable the athlete. Study reports of injuries and recovery times for the sport you are simulating. If your game tracks athletes over a period of time, you will have to consider the cumulative effect of injury and recovery time on their careers.

你还可以决定受伤的部位和运动员伤残的时间。研究你所模拟的运动项目的受伤报告和恢复时间。如果你的游戏对运动员进行了一段时间的跟踪，你就必须考虑受伤和恢复时间对运动员职业生涯的累积影响。

Arcade Mode Versus Simulation Mode 街机模式与模拟模式

Arcade mode versus simulation mode is a realism switch that lets the player adjust the behavior of the game to suit his tastes. Arcade mode makes the game more exciting at the expense of realism; simulation mode makes it a more accurate simulation of the real sport at some expense in fun. For example, in baseball, an athlete is doing well if he has a .333 batting average—that is, gets a hit only one time in three. Some players might find that a little dull. Switching the game to arcade mode could let the player get a hit 50 percent of the time or even more. It skews the play toward lots of action and relatively few strikeouts or walks. In American football, you could artificially increase the number of completed passes by improving the quarterback's throwing accuracy and the receiver's catching skills.

街机模式与模拟模式是一个逼真度开关，可让玩家根据自己的喜好调整游戏行为。街机模式使游戏更刺激，但牺牲了真实感；模拟模式使游戏更准确地模拟真实运动，但牺牲了一定的趣味性。例如，在棒球比赛中，如果一名运动员的击球率是 0.333，即三次击球中只有一次击中，那么他的表现就很好。有些玩家可能会觉得这有点无聊。将游戏切换到街机模式，可以让玩家在 50% 甚至更高的几率击中。这将使游戏偏向于大量动作，而相对较少的三振出局或保送。在美式足球中，你可以通过提高四分卫的投球准确性和接球手的接球技巧，人为地增加完成传球的次数。

To implement arcade mode, you'll have to decide what sort of changes to the real game would make it more exciting. If you want your game to have both arcade and simulation modes, we recommend that you start with the serious simulation first and then design the "fudges" that make it arcadelike. Serious simulations are much more difficult to tune, and it's important to get them right first. If you start with an arcadelike design and then try to make it serious, you might never get it right.

要实现街机模式，你必须决定对真实游戏进行什么样的改动才能使其更加精彩。如果你希望你的游戏同时有街机和模拟模式，我们建议你先从严肃的模拟开始，然后再设计使其成为街机模式的“修改”。严肃模拟的调整难度要大得多，因此首先做好严肃模拟非常重要。如果你一开始设计的是街机模拟，然后再试图将其变为严肃模拟，那么你可能永远也做不到。

Simulating Matches Automatically 自动模拟比赛

Sports games that can play an entire season for a whole league of teams often provide a means of simulating matches automatically, without the player having to play them. For example, each team in professional baseball plays 162 matches in a season. With 30 teams and 2 teams in each match, this is a total of 2,430 matches—only the most rabid fan would want to play them all personally. To generate results for matches that the player doesn't play, you need a way of simulating a match. Of course, you'll want the resulting scores to accurately reflect the relative strengths of the teams: A bad team should be able to beat a good team occasionally, but not often.

体育游戏可以为整个联盟的球队进行整个赛季的比赛，通常提供了一种自动模拟比赛的方法，玩家无需进行比赛。例如，每个职业棒球队在一个赛季中要进行 162 场比赛。以 30 支球队、每场比赛 2 支球队计算，总共要进行 2430 场比赛——只有最狂热的球迷才愿意亲自上阵。要为玩家没有参加的比赛生成结果，你需要一种模拟比赛的方法。当然，你会希望生成的分数能准确反映球队的相对实力：差的队伍应该偶尔能击败好的队伍，但不能经常这样。

Computer Versus Computer 计算机对计算机

The simplest way to simulate matches automatically is to let the computer play out the match in computer versus computer mode, as described in the section, "Competition Modes," earlier in this chapter, and record the results. If the game's simulation model is good, it should produce scores that reflect the real abilities of the competitors. Unfortunately, this is a slow way to do it. If the player wants to generate results for a match that she doesn't really care about, she probably wants it done quickly.

自动模拟比赛的最简单方法是让电脑在电脑对电脑模式下进行比赛，如本章前面 “比赛模式 ”一节所述，并记录比赛结果。如果游戏的模拟模型很好，它产生的分数应该能反映出选手的真实能力。遗憾的是，这样做的速度很慢。如果玩家想要生成一场她并不关心的比赛的结果，她可能希望尽快完成。

Simulation Without Graphics 无图形模拟

One solution is to simulate the whole match exactly as in computer versus computer mode, but to turn off the graphics so that nothing is displayed. Because displaying the graphics often takes up the majority of the computer's time, an entire match can be simulated in a few seconds. Electronic Arts' Earl Weaver Baseball game did this successfully. It makes the programming more complicated, however, because throughout the whole program, there have to be checks to see if the game is in simulation mode or display mode. When you do this, test the game to be sure that the results without graphics are the same as those with graphics.

一种解决方案是完全按照计算机对计算机模式模拟整场比赛，但关闭图形，不显示任何内容。由于显示图形通常会占用计算机的大部分时间，因此可以在几秒钟内模拟整场比赛。电子艺术公司的 Earl Weaver 棒球游戏就成功地做到了这一点。不过，这使编程变得更加复杂，因为在整个程序中，必须检查游戏是处于模拟模式还是显示模式。当你这样做时，要对游戏进行测试，以确保无图形的结果与有图形的结果相同。

Faking It 伪造

The alternative many games adopt is to fake it—in effect, to roll dice to generate game scores. The dice are loaded somewhat so that good teams get high scores and bad teams get low ones, and whichever team rolls the highest score wins the match. You will need to devise a suitable algorithm for generating point values: In games such as American football and rugby, in which different numbers of points are awarded for different kinds of scores (touchdown, field goal, and so on), certain score values are much more common than others. It's extremely rare, for example, for a team to end an American football game with a score of 2. You'll also need to make sure that your algorithm creates a reasonable random distribution; no professional soccer game should ever end with a score over about 15.

许多游戏采用的另一种方法是“伪造”，即通过掷骰子产生游戏分数。骰子的装载方式是好队得高分，坏队得低分，哪支队伍掷出的分数最高，哪支队伍就赢得了比赛。你需要设计一种合适的算法来生成分数值：在美式足球和橄榄球等游戏中，不同的得分（达阵、射门得分等）会获得不同的分数，因此某些分数值比其他分数值更常见。例如，一支队伍在美式足球以2分结束比赛是极其罕见的。你还需要确保你的算法能产生合理的随机分布；任何职业足球比赛得分都不应该以超过 15 分。

One disadvantage of this dice-rolling technique is that it doesn't generate any other statistics besides the scores themselves. In a particularly statistics-rich sport such as baseball, if you don't generate performance data for each individual player, some fans will consider your game to be a lightweight, not a serious, simulation. It's up to you to decide just how important that market is to you and how much effort you're prepared to exert to meet their expectations.

这种掷骰子技术的一个缺点是，除了分数本身，它不会生成任何其他统计数据。在棒球这种统计数据特别丰富的运动中，如果你不为每个球员生成表现数据，一些球迷就会认为你的游戏是轻量级的，而不是严肃的模拟游戏。至于这个市场对你来说有多重要，你准备付出多少努力来满足他们的期望，这都取决于你。

Licenses, Trademarks, and Publicity Rights 许可证、商标和宣传权

Many years ago, small developers could make and sell computer games using names such as "NFL" and get away with it, because the National Football League never knew it was happening. You can't do this now. Interactive entertainment is big business, and you have to be scrupulously careful to avoid violating trademarks or personal publicity rights.

许多年前，小型开发商可以使用“NFL”等名称制作和销售电脑游戏，而且不被追究，因为美国橄榄球联盟从不知道有这种事发生。现在你不能这样做了。互动娱乐是一门大生意，你必须慎之又慎，避免侵犯商标权或个人宣传权。

Team and League Trademarks 球队和联盟商标

The exact details vary from league to league and country to country, but generally in America, the name, logo, uniform design, and other indicia of all the teams in a league, plus the name and logo of the league itself, are licensed for use by the league. You, or your publisher, will have to negotiate an agreement with the league to use these symbols in your game. Before Electronic Arts signed an agreement with the NFL, early versions of John Madden Football referred to teams only by their town names (such as San Francisco or Chicago) rather than by their team names (the 49ers and the Bears) and did not show any logos. The colors of the uniforms were similar but not exactly the same. You can pull this trick, too, if you dare, but you're risking a lawsuit if you get too close.

具体细节因联赛和国家而异，但一般来说，在美国，联赛中所有球队的名称、标志、制服设计和其他标志，以及联赛本身的名称和标志，均由联赛授权使用。你或你的发行商要在游戏中使用这些标志，必须与联盟协商达成协议。在 Electronic Arts 与 NFL 签订协议之前，早期版本的《约翰·麦登橄榄球》仅以城市名称（如旧金山或芝加哥）而非球队名称（49 人队和熊队）来称呼球队，并且不显示任何徽标。队服的颜色相似，但并不完全相同。如果你有胆量，也可以使出这一招，但如果太过接近，就有可能惹上官司。

Individual sports, such as gymnastics or figure skating, are often governed by a variety of bodies in different countries around the world. The names and indicia of particular events, such as the Kentucky Derby, are owned by the organizations that produce them—in this case, the Churchill Downs racetrack. In recent years, these groups have begun to exploit their intellectual property rights in a variety of ways, so they tend to come down hard on anything that seems to be an infringement. Don't assume that just because an event has been around for decades, you can freely use its name.

体操或花样滑冰等单项运动通常由世界不同国家的各种机构管理。肯塔基德比等特定赛事的名称和标志归赛事组织方所有——这里指的是丘吉尔唐斯赛马场。近年来，这些组织开始以各种方式利用其知识产权，因此他们往往会严厉打击任何看似侵权的行为。不要以为某个赛事已经存在了几十年，你就可以随意使用它的名称。

Personal Publicity Rights 个人宣传权

You cannot use the name or photograph of a real athlete without permission. An athlete's name and likeness are part of his personal publicity rights, and, of course, famous athletes sell the rights to use their names for millions of dollars when they endorse a particular product as an individual. You might need to negotiate with an organization that licenses the rights to use all the players' names collectively. This might be the league, in some cases; in others, however, including the NFL and Major League Baseball, you have to contact the athletes' unions. And unless you have the endorsement of a specific athlete, you must make sure that your game displays all athletes in approximately the same way, or endorsement could be implied. You can't make it look as if an athlete has endorsed your game when that's not the case.

未经许可，你不能使用真正运动员的姓名或照片。运动员的姓名和肖像是其个人宣传权的一部分，当然，著名运动员在以个人身份代言某种产品时，会以数百万美元的价格出售其姓名使用权。你可能需要与授权使用所有球员姓名的组织进行谈判。在某些情况下，这可能是联盟；但在其他情况下，包括美国橄榄球联盟和美国职业棒球大联盟，你必须与运动员工会联系。除非你得到了特定运动员的代言，否则你必须确保你的游戏以大致相同的方式展示所有运动员，否则可能会暗示代言。你不能让它看起来好像运动员代言了你的游戏，而实际上并非如此。

Photographs present further difficulties. You must obtain a license from the person in the photograph and also from the person who took the photograph: the photograph's copyright holder. Again, some governing bodies have special clearinghouses for these kinds of things: NFL Photos is a special department of the NFL that licenses still photos for all the photographers who are accredited to take pictures at NFL matches. The license, however, does not grant you the personal publicity rights of the athlete in the picture; you have to obtain those separately. You can also license photos from the trading card companies, as well as from journalistic bodies such as the Associated Press, and from private photo libraries.

照片会带来更多困难。你必须从照片中的人物以及照片的拍摄者（即照片的版权持有者）那里获得许可。同样，一些管理机构有专门的信息交换中心来处理此类事宜：NFL Photos 是 NFL 的一个特殊部门，负责为所有获准在 NFL 比赛中拍照的摄影师颁发静态照片许可证。不过，许可证并不授予你照片中运动员的个人宣传权，你必须另外获得这些权利。你也可以从交易卡公司、美联社等新闻机构以及私人图片库获得照片授权。

In short, the whole issue of rights in sports games is a legal minefield. Nowadays, even the stadiums might claim special rights, and many stadium owners auction the name of the stadium to the highest bidder, as with 3Com Park in San Francisco. As a designer, you probably won't have to deal with obtaining all these licenses yourself, but you should know that it's not safe to specify simply that a game will use all the team and player names and photos. Obtaining them and the right to use them is a very costly and time-consuming business. It's best to design the game in such a way that it doesn't depend on having these things, unless you're certain that they will be available.

总之，整个体育比赛的权利问题是一个法律雷区。如今，就连体育场馆也可能要求特殊权利，许多体育场馆的所有者会将体育场馆的名称拍卖给出价最高的人，旧金山的 3Com 公园就是如此。作为一名设计者，你可能不必亲自处理获得所有这些许可证的问题，但你应该知道，简单地指定游戏将使用所有球队和球员的名字和照片是不安全的。获得这些名称和照片的使用权既费钱又费时。最好的办法是在设计游戏时不依赖于这些东西，除非你确定可以获得这些东西。

Audio Commentary 音频解说

Most sports games try to reproduce the experience of watching the sport on television. An important part of that experience is hearing the announcers' commentary, or play-by-play. Most TV and radio sports broadcasts include at least two people, the play-by-play man and the color commentator. The play-by-play man describes the play on a moment-by-moment basis. The color commentator, usually a retired coach or player, offers insights about strategy and tactics, as well as background material on the teams or individual players. A third voice that you occasionally hear is that of the stadium announcer over the public address system. His remarks tend to be quite formulaic, although they do occasionally include requests to move misparked cars, retrieve found children, and so on.

大多数体育游戏都试图再现在电视上观看体育比赛的体验。这种体验的一个重要部分就是听到播音员的解说或实况解说。大多数电视和广播体育转播至少包括两个人，即解说员和评论员。解说员逐刻描述比赛过程。评论员通常是退役教练或球员，提供有关战略和战术的见解，以及有关球队或球员个人的背景材料。你偶尔会听到的第三个声音是球场广播系统中的播音员。他的讲话往往比较固定，不过偶尔也会要求移走停错的汽车、找回走失的小孩等等。

Defining the Events to Describe 定义要描述的事件

A good way to size up the job of duplicating the audio experience is to record a TV broadcast of a real match and then transcribe everything that is said and by whom. Do this for two or three matches, and you will begin to notice patterns in the play-by-play: The announcers tend to announce the score at particular times, they use certain repetitive language, and so on. As you watch the match on videotape, take note of the different kinds of events that occur and the different remarks they elicit from the commentators. The color commentator's events aren't the same as the play-by-play man's. The color commentator speaks at more dramatic moments, or when an athlete has done something particularly spectacular (or particularly bad). For example, in tennis, you might have a color comment like, "She's having a terrible time with those double faults" when an athlete commits four double faults in a single game. Be sure you play it only once, however—not on every subsequent double fault.

评估复制音频体验工作的一个好方法是录制一场真实比赛的电视直播，然后抄录下每一个人说的每一句话。这样做两三场比赛，你就会开始注意到旁白的模式：解说员往往在特定的时间宣布比分，他们使用某些重复的语言，等等。当你观看比赛录像时，注意发生的不同类型的事件以及它们引起解说员的不同言论。评论员解说的事件与解说员解说的事件不同。评论员会在更戏剧性的时刻或运动员做出特别精彩（或特别糟糕）的表现时发言。例如，在网球比赛中，当运动员在一场比赛中出现四个双误时，你可能会有这样的彩色解说：“她的双误太糟糕了”。但要确保只使用一次，而不是在随后的每次双误中使用。

When you have a set of match events that you want to create commentary for, sit down with the programmers and discuss them to make sure they are detectable. Some, such as a strikeout in baseball, will be uncomplicated, but a lot of them will be judgment calls. For example, a dropped pass in football that the player really should have caught is not so easily detectable; you can detect the dropped pass, but what determines whether he should have caught it? It must be calculated from such things as the receiver's dexterity rating and the accuracy with which the pass was thrown in the first place—provided that it wasn't tipped away by a defender. It's always best to err on the side of caution in these cases: Don't design judgment calls that the player is likely to disagree with, or he'll think your game is stupid. As the saying goes, "保持沉默被认为愚蠢，比开口说话消除所有怀疑要好."

当你有一组想要制作解说的比赛事件时，请与程序员坐下来讨论，确保它们是可以被检测到的。有些事件，如棒球比赛中的三振出局，并不复杂，但很多都是判断性的。例如，足球比赛中球员确实应该接住的传球失误就不那么容易检测到；你可以检测到传球失误，但如何判断他是否应该接住呢？这必须根据接球者的灵巧程度和传球的准确性来计算——前提是传球没有被防守者甩掉。在这种情况下，最好谨慎行事：不要设计玩家可能不同意的判罚，否则他会认为你的游戏很愚蠢。俗话说：“与其张口结舌，消除一切疑虑，不如保持沉默，被人认为是傻瓜”。

Don't forget the introductory and wrap-up material at the beginning and end of the match—for example, "Welcome to Mile High Stadium for today's game between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos. It's a cold and windy day."

不要忘记比赛开始和结束时的开场白和总结材料——例如，“欢迎来到迈尔高地球场，观看今天新英格兰爱国者队和丹佛野马队之间的比赛。今天天气寒冷，风很大。”

Writing the Script 编写脚本

When you have established the events that need audio commentary, you can start to write the audio recording script that will implement it. For each event, you will typically want to record four or five variant comments so that the players don't hear the same thing every time the event occurs. Obviously, the more comments you can write per event, the better your game will sound. The number of comments is really limited only by the available space on the distribution medium and the number of things you can reasonably think of to say about a given event.

当你确定了需要语音解说的事件后，就可以开始编写实现这些解说的录音脚本了。对于每个事件，你通常要录制四到五个不同的解说，这样玩家就不会在每次事件发生时都听到相同的内容。显然，每个事件能写的注释越多，你的游戏听起来就越好。评论的数量实际上只受限于分发媒介上的可用空间，以及你能合理想到的关于特定事件的评论数量。

As you write the script, you will discover places where a name or number will need to be included, usually the names of athletes or teams or the current score. If the sport is one with a large number of athletes, you cannot afford to record the sentence with every possible athlete's name in it. Instead, you will need to record the sentence as a whole using a sample name and edit the resulting audio file into clips, one part before the name and one part after. Your programmers must devise a method of streaming the sound clips, inserting the correct name in the right place in such a way that they sound seamless. When you record the sentence, use a sample name that begins and ends with a T or a K sound so that it doesn't slur into the rest of the sentence and so that it can be cut cleanly. For example, "Merrick steps up to the free throw line" enables the engineer to cut between Merrick and steps, whereas "Rogers steps up to the free throw line" would produce a slur from Rogers into steps.

在编写脚本的过程中，你会发现一些地方需要加入名字或数字，通常是运动员或球队的名字或当前比分。如果是运动员人数众多的运动项目，你就不能在记录句子时把每个可能的运动员名字都写进去。相反，你需要用一个样本名称来录制整个句子，并将生成的音频文件编辑成片段，一部分在名称之前，一部分在名称之后。你的程序员必须设计出一种流式处理声音片段的方法，在正确的位置插入正确的名字，使它们听起来天衣无缝。在录制句子时，使用以 T 或 K 音开头和结尾的样本名称，这样就不会与句子的其他部分混淆，也能剪切得干净利落。例如，“Merrick steps up to the free throw line（梅里克走上罚球线）”可以让工程师在 Merrick 和 steps 之间进行切分，而 “Rogers steps up to the free throw line（罗杰斯走上罚球线）”则会产生从 Rogers 到 steps 的连音。

Whenever possible, you should try to write the script in such a way that names are at either the beginning or the end of a sentence. You can then have your voice talent record the names of all the athletes who appear in the game. Each name will need to be recorded twice, once using the voice inflection for the beginning of a sentence, and once at the end. Don't try to record the names by themselves; record a complete sentence and then throw away all but the name, for example, "Thomas takes it" and "I'll pick Thomas." Again, using the T and K sounds adjacent to the name allows a clean cut in the audio.

只要有可能，你就应该尽量把名字写在句子的开头或结尾。然后，你可以让配音员录制游戏中出现的所有运动员的名字。每个名字都需要录制两次，一次是在句首，一次是在句末。不要试图单独录下名字；先录下一个完整的句子，然后把除了名字以外的所有内容都扔掉，例如，“托马斯拿下”和“我选托马斯”。同样，使用与名字相邻的 T 和 K 音可以使音频切得干净利落。

Case Study: Madden NFL Football 案例研究：麦登橄榄球

Madden NFL Football is one of the longest-established and best-selling game franchises in the history of our industry. From its earliest beginnings on the Apple II, it has grown into a financial powerhouse that produces a new edition on several different platforms every year and makes millions of dollars for its publisher, Electronic Arts. Versions of Madden have appeared for personal computers and every major console machine ever produced.

《麦登橄榄球》是本行业历史最悠久、最畅销的游戏系列之一。从最初的 Apple II 开始，它已经成长为一个金融巨头，每年都会在多个不同平台上推出新版本，并为其发行商电子艺界（Electronic Arts）赚取数百万美元。个人电脑和所有主要游戏机上都出现过《麦登橄榄球》的版本。

Madden is not redesigned every year, nor is its code rewritten. Its artwork and video sequences are updated, and it gets new features each year, but it undergoes a complete overhaul only every four or five years—often when a new generation of game console appears. The majority of the design work each year consists of tuning and improving the gameplay and adding more features. These features expand the "football experience" to include aspects of the sport that go beyond playing a single match against another team. Among them are the following:

《麦登橄榄球》并非每年都重新设计，其代码也不会重写。它的插图和视频片段每年都会更新，每年都会有新的功能，但每隔四五年才会进行一次彻底的修改——通常是在新一代游戏机出现的时候。每年的大部分设计工作包括调整和改进游戏玩法，并增加更多功能。这些功能扩大了“橄榄球体验”的范围，将这项运动的方方面面都包括在内，而不仅仅是与其他球队进行单场比赛。其中包括：

Ability to hire and trade players among teams, subject to the limitations of the salary cap established by the NFL.

在 NFL 规定的工资帽限制下，球队之间可以雇佣和交易球员。

• Participation in the NFL draft. 参加 NFL 选秀。

• Detailed performance statistics on players. 球员的详细表现统计。

• Season, tournament, and practice modes. 赛季、锦标赛和练习模式。

• Franchise mode, letting players take a team through several seasons in an effort to build a dynasty. 特许经营模式，让玩家带领一支球队经历多个赛季，努力建立一个王朝。

• A play editor, allowing players to customize their playbooks. 战术编辑器，允许玩家自定义战术。

• Madden University, which includes detailed tutorials about offensive and defensive strategies, commentaries on the strengths and weaknesses of each team, and historical background. 《麦登大学》，其中包括有关进攻和防守策略的详细教程、对每支球队优缺点的评论以及历史背景。

• Adjustable AI, enabling players to set the coaching stances of computer-controlled teams to aggressive, neutral, or conservative. 可调整的 AI，让玩家能够将电脑控制的球队的教练立场设置为激进、中立或保守。

• Arcade mode, a simplified and exaggerated form of the game. 街机模式，一种简化和夸张的游戏形式。

As you can see, even though the sport itself changes little from year to year, new features and details can always be added to a sports game.

正如你所看到的，尽管体育运动本身每年的变化不大，但体育游戏总能增加新的功能和细节。

By far, the largest single task in developing Madden every year is research: rating the skills of the real players who appear in the game, keeping track of which team they're playing for, finding photographs of them, and so on. In addition to researching the players, the production team must research the coaches—trying to find out what kinds of plays they like to run, whether they're aggressive or conservative, and so on. The team's playbooks must be updated every year to reflect changes in coaching practice, and the new plays must be tested to make sure that they're effective but not unstoppable.

到目前为止，每年开发《麦登橄榄球》最大的一项任务就是研究：对游戏中出现的真实球员的技能进行评级，跟踪他们所在的球队，寻找他们的照片，等等。除了研究球员，制作团队还必须研究教练——试图找出他们喜欢用什么战术，是激进还是保守等等。球队的战术手册必须每年更新，以反映教练实践的变化，而且新战术必须经过测试，以确保有效但并非不可阻挡。

In short, Madden is a highly successful sports game that offers its players a wide range of playing styles, from the quick and easy arcade game to the detailed minutiae of designing plays and adjusting rosters. As a game that tries to "do it all," it's well worth studying.

总之，《麦登橄榄球》是一款非常成功的体育游戏，它为玩家提供了多种玩法，从简单快捷的街机游戏，到设计战术和调整整容的细节琐事，应有尽有。作为一款“面面俱到”的游戏，它非常值得研究。

Other Peculiarities 其他特殊性

The following sections detail a few other issues peculiar to sports games.

下面将详细介绍体育游戏的其他一些特殊问题。

Invented Sports 发明的体育运动

From time to time, someone tries to create a sports video game of a completely invented sport, as opposed to a take-off of an existing one. Empire Interactive's Speedball 2100 was one such game. Experience shows, however, that this is a risky enterprise. Hardcore sports gamers are seldom interested in completely new sports; they'd rather play a game that simulates a sport that they're already familiar with. Other types of gamers aren't that interested in sports games anyway and aren't very likely to want to play a one-off sports game unless it appeals to them for some other reason. If you're thinking of inventing a new sport specifically for a video game, we advise you to design it as a video game, without concerning yourself with what it might be like in the real world. This is how Speedball was designed; although it was theoretically a sport, it included power-ups and other arcade-game elements to make it more interesting.

时不时地，有人会尝试制作一款完全新发明出来的体育的电子游戏，而不是对现有体育运动的模仿。Empire Interactive 的《Speedball 2100》就是这样一款游戏。然而，经验表明，这是一项冒险的事业。铁杆体育玩家很少对全新的运动项目感兴趣，他们更愿意玩模拟他们已经熟悉的运动项目的游戏。其他类型的玩家反正对体育游戏也没多大兴趣，除非有其他原因吸引他们，否则他们不太可能想玩一次性的体育游戏。如果你想专门为电子游戏发明一种新的运动项目，我们建议你将其作为电子游戏来设计，而不要考虑它在现实世界中会是什么样子。《Speedball 2100》就是这样设计的；虽然理论上它是一项体育运动，但它加入了强化道具和其他街机游戏元素，使其更加有趣。

As we said earlier, one of the trickiest aspects of sports game design is mapping real-world activities to a limited input device. Players are willing to tolerate some awkwardness in the user interface when it's a real sport because they understand the problems. With an invented sport, they're unlikely to be so generous. When designing a completely new sport, you might consider working backward from the controller to the sport itself, designing around the limitations of your hardware.

正如我们前面所说，体育游戏设计中最棘手的问题之一就是如何将真实世界中的活动映射到有限的输入设备上。如果是真实的体育运动，玩家愿意容忍用户界面上的一些笨拙，因为他们理解这些问题。而对于一项发明的运动，他们就不可能如此宽容了。在设计一项全新的运动项目时，你可以考虑从控制器倒推到运动项目本身，围绕硬件的局限性进行设计。

Instant Replay 即时回放

Instant replay is now an essential part of watching sports on television, so naturally video game players want it as well. It's not difficult to design, although it might be difficult to implement. Your game will need to keep track of the exact position and animation step of every player and other key objects on the field in each game frame. When the player requests an instant replay (usually through a pause menu), the game can play them back. Of course there is a limit to how much of this information you can keep around, and some natural boundary is likely to suggest itself—in baseball, the time since the most recent pitch; in American football, the time since the ball was snapped. In continuously flowing games such as basketball, you might have to establish an artificial time limit.

即时回放现在已经成为电视体育节目中不可或缺的一部分，因此视频游戏玩家自然也希望有这样的功能。这并不难设计，但可能很难实现。你的游戏需要在每个游戏帧中记录每个球员和场上其他关键物体的准确位置和动画步骤。当玩家要求即时回放时（通常是通过暂停菜单），游戏就可以回放。当然，你所能保留的这些信息是有限的，而且很可能会出现一些自然的界限——在棒球比赛中，自最近一次投球以来的时间；在美式足球比赛中，自开球以来的时间。在篮球等连续进行的比赛中，你可能需要人为地设定一个时间限制。

The best instant-replay mechanisms allow all the following features for maximum flexibility:

最好的即时回放机制具有以下所有功能，以实现最大的灵活性：

• Play, stop, fast-forward, rewind, and single-frame advance and reverse operations, to allow the player to see exactly what happened at every instant. 播放、停止、快进、后退以及单帧前进和后退操作，让玩家准确地看到每一瞬间发生的事情。

• The ability to move the camera in all three dimensions. 能够在所有三个维度上移动摄像机。

• The ability to pitch the camera up and down, and turn (panning) it left and right. 能够上下左右移动镜头。

• The ability to lock the camera to a given athlete or the ball, to follow something wherever it goes. This is usually done by showing a symbol on the ground that represents the camera's focus of attention. If the symbol is directly under an athlete's feet when the player stops moving the camera, the camera locks onto that athlete. 能够将摄像机锁定在某个运动员或球上，无论其移动到哪里，摄像机都会跟随其移动。这通常是通过在地面上显示一个代表摄像机关注焦点的符号来实现的。当球员停止移动摄像机时，如果该符号位于运动员脚下，摄像机就会锁定该运动员。

Instant replay lets the players see the action from perspectives that they can't use when actually playing the game. For the game's publisher and developer, it's an invaluable tool for grabbing dramatic screen shots or gameplay footage for sales and demonstrations. You should consider it an essential feature of any sports game that you design.

即时回放可以让玩家从实际玩游戏时无法使用的视角观看游戏过程。对于游戏发行商和开发商来说，这是一个非常有价值的工具，可以捕捉到精彩的屏幕截图或游戏画面，用于销售和演示。你应该把它视为你设计的任何体育游戏的必备功能。

Camera Difficulties in Games with Widely Separated Action 动作距离较远的游戏中的摄像困难

In most sports, the focus of the action is in one location. In a race, it's on the leaders. In any soccerlike sport (soccer, hockey, basketball, water polo, and so on), it's on the object that's supposed to go into the goal; similarly, in any tennislike sport, it's on the ball. Baseball and cricket are unusual in that the action takes place in two places at once: where the ball is and also where the runners are. In baseball, this can be as much as 400 feet away. You can't show both the runners and the ball without zooming out to a blimp view so high up that nobody can see anything clearly.

在大多数体育运动中，比赛的焦点都集中在一个地方。在比赛中，焦点集中在领先者身上。在任何类似足球的运动（足球、曲棍球、篮球、水球等）中，动作的焦点都在应该射入球门的物体上；同样，在任何类似网球的运动中，动作的焦点都在球上。棒球和板球的不同之处在于，比赛同时在两个地方进行：球在哪里，选手就在哪里。在棒球比赛中，这两个地方的距离可能长达 400 英尺。如果不把画面放大到高空视角，就无法同时显示跑垒员和球的位置，以至于没有人能看清楚任何东西。

To solve this, most baseball video games implement a picture-in-picture solution: The camera follows the ball, but a small diagram of the baseball diamond in one corner of the screen shows the positions of the runners, often as no more than colored dots (see Figure 12.3). When a runner reaches a base, his dot changes color to indicate that he is safe. The player controlling the fielders watches the main screen, and the one controlling the runners watches the diagram (keeping one eye on the main screen to see if the ball is coming). Because cricket has only two stumps instead of four bases, this arrangement is even easier.

为了解决这个问题，大多数棒球视频游戏都采用了画中画解决方案：摄像机跟着球走，但在屏幕的一角会有一个小的棒球场示意图，显示跑垒员的位置，通常只是一些彩色的小点（见图 12.3）。当跑垒员到达一垒时，他的点会变色，表示他安全了。控制外野手的玩家看主屏幕，控制跑垒手的玩家看示意图（一只眼睛盯着主屏幕，看球是否到来）。由于板球只有两个球墩而不是四个垒，因此这种安排更加简单。

Figure 12.3. 3DO's High Heat Baseball. Note the inset showing player positions. The round dots adjacent to the bases are runners taking their leads. 图 12.3. 3DO 的高热棒球。请注意显示球员位置的插图。与垒相邻的圆点是跑垒员的领先位置。

Home-Field Advantage 主场优势

Considerable debate has raged over the years about whether to build a home-field advantage into sports games. Although the home-field advantage is statistically significant in a number of sports, we recommend against it. Players like to feel that they are playing a fair game, and if they know that the odds are artificially stacked against them whenever they play an "away" game, they will resent it. It's also unclear exactly how the home-field advantage should be implemented. The phenomenon is normally observed from win-loss statistics, but, of course, the computer can't simply turn a loss into a win. It could shave off a percentage of goal-scoring attempts, but even this is likely to have odd side effects. If a scoring attempt that clearly should have succeeded fails for no visible reason, the players are bound to notice it.

多年来，关于是否在体育比赛中加入主场优势的争论不绝于耳。尽管在一些体育比赛中，主场优势在统计学上具有重要意义，但我们建议不要这样做。玩家们喜欢感觉自己在进行一场公平的比赛，如果他们知道每当他们进行一场“客场”比赛时，情况都会人为地对他们不利，他们就会反感。主场优势究竟应该如何执行，这一点也不清楚。这种现象通常可以从输赢统计中观察到，但计算机当然不能简单地将输球变为赢球。它可以减去一定比例的进球尝试，但即使这样也可能产生奇怪的副作用。如果一次明显应该成功的进球尝试无缘无故地失败了，玩家们肯定会注意到这一点。

Sports Game Worksheet 体育游戏工作表

In designing a sports game, consider the following questions as a starting point:

在设计体育游戏时，可以从以下问题入手：

1. What sport am I simulating? Is it a real sport or a made-up one? If it's real, do I want to get a license from a governing body? 我在模拟什么运动？是真实的运动还是虚构的运动？如果是真实的，我是否需要获得管理机构的许可？

2. What are the rules of my sport? If it's a real sport, can I really implement them all, or will it have to be a subset? 我的运动有哪些规则？如果是一项真正的运动，我真的能全部实现它们吗？还是只能够实现其中的一部分？

3. What competition modes am I going to offer—single-player, competitive, cooperative, teams? Which ones make sense for my sport, and which don't? 我要提供哪些竞赛模式——单人模式、竞技模式、合作模式、团队模式？哪些对我的运动有意义，哪些没有？

4. In addition to playing a single match, what other game modes will I offer? Season, tournament, franchise, career? 除了单场比赛，我还将提供哪些其他游戏模式？赛季、锦标赛、特许经营、职业生涯赛？

5. What is the best perspective for playing my sport? Directly overhead, from the sidelines, from some other angle? What intelligence needs to be built into the camera to make the game easy to play? How will I handle displaying actions at widely separated points? 我的运动的最佳视角是什么？从头顶、从场边还是从其他角度？需要在摄像机中加入哪些智能功能才能使游戏更容易进行？如何处理在相距甚远的点上显示动作？

6. How do I map the actions of an athlete, or an entire team of athletes, to the controls available to the player? Will the functions of the buttons need to change during the course of play? When and why? What additional markings should I draw on the field of play to compensate for the player's lack of depth perception? What pop-up windows over the play will the player need, and how do I prevent those from obscuring the action? When play is not in progress, how does the rest of the user interface look and work? 如何将一名运动员或整个运动员团队的动作映射到玩家可用的控制按钮上？在比赛过程中，按钮的功能是否需要改变？何时改变？我应该在赛场上画哪些额外的标记来弥补玩家深度知觉的不足？玩家需要在游戏过程中弹出哪些窗口，如何防止这些窗口遮挡游戏过程？不进行比赛时，用户界面的其他部分如何显示和运行？

7. What roles will the player play in the sport? Athlete, coach, general manager? When does the player switch from one to another and why? 玩家将在运动中扮演什么角色？运动员、教练、总经理？玩家何时转换角色，为什么？

8. What's the general structure of the game? What screens do I need, and how do they lead from one to another? Can the player trade athletes among teams in the middle of the season, for example? 比赛的总体结构是什么？我需要哪些屏幕，它们如何从一个屏幕引导到另一个屏幕？例如，玩家可以在赛季中期在不同球队之间交换运动员吗？

9. What changes will I need to make to the physics of the sport to make it playable by ordinary mortals? 为了让普通人也能玩，我需要对这项运动的物理原理做哪些改动？

10. What characteristics describe an athlete's abilities? How will they affect the way her behavior looks on the screen? Will some athletes have ratings peculiar to the positions they play? 运动员的能力有哪些特征？这些特征将如何影响她在屏幕上的表现？有些运动员会有他们所从事的位置特有的评分吗？

11. What states can the game be in, even in times between active play? How does an athlete behave in each state? What are her goals in each state, and in team play, what is the collective goal of the team in each state? How does the individual athlete's behavior contribute to meeting the team's goal? 游戏可能处于哪些状态，即使在积极比赛之间的时候？运动员在每种状态下的表现如何？她在每种状态下的目标是什么？在团队比赛中，团队在每种状态下的集体目标是什么？运动员的个人行为如何有助于实现团队目标？

12. Am I going to offer automatic simulation of matches? How will that be done? 我是否要提供自动模拟比赛？如何实现？

13. What will the audio commentary be like? What events will it cover? 语音解说会是什么样的？涵盖哪些事件？

14. How does instant replay work? 即时回放如何进行？

Putting It Together 总结

A good sports game design requires compromises. We do not yet have the computing power to simulate a real sport in all of its complexity and detail on a home computer or video game console—and even if we did, we still don't have input and output devices that allow a player to feel as if he's really down on the field. Someday, when virtual reality is perfected and home computers are as powerful as today's supercomputers, we might be able to do this. In the meantime, it's the job of the sports game designer to fit the sport to the machine. Sports game design doesn't require nearly as much raw creativity as designing an adventure game or a role-playing game. It's a more subtle process that entails endless tuning and tweaking to find the right balance between realism and playability. When you get it right, you have a product that can sell for years and years.

好的体育游戏设计需要妥协。我们还没有足够的计算能力在家用电脑或视频游戏机上模拟真实体育运动的所有复杂性和细节，即使有，我们也没有输入和输出设备让玩家感觉自己真的在赛场上。有朝一日，当虚拟现实技术日臻完善，家用电脑也能像今天的超级计算机一样强大时，我们或许就能做到这一点了。在此期间，体育游戏设计师的工作就是让体育运动与机器相匹配。体育游戏设计并不需要像设计冒险游戏或角色扮演游戏那样的原始创造力。这是一个更加微妙的过程，需要进行无休止的调整和修改，以便在逼真度和可玩性之间找到适当的平衡。当你做到这一点时，你就拥有了一款可以畅销多年的产品。