Video games are incredible. They transport us to new worlds, allow us to partake in otherwise impossible situations, and empower us in our every day lives. Games can make us feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves, permitting us to connect with total strangers in a way never before seen in human history.

視頻 游戲是不可思議的。 它們將我們帶到了新世界，使我們能夠參與原本不可能的情況，并賦予我們日常生活的力量。 游戲可以使我們覺得自己比自己更重要，可以讓我們以人類歷史上從未有過的方式與陌生人建立聯系。

Whether we’re wrangling horses and robbing banks in Red Dead Redemption 2 or scoring a clinch goal in Rocket League, experiencing video games is a special and wholly modern adventure. It’s easy to forget, but every encounter we have in our virtual worlds is made up of code. Every bank we rob is made of numbers, every goal scored dictated by a set of rules. These regulations are set in place by people, and — naturally — things aren’t exactly as they seem. Making a game is incredibly difficult, with a AAA title taking an average of 5 years to develop. Due to this, sometimes thinking outside of the box is necessary in order to get the product out the door and give people the brain-food they desire. Some of these tricks are extremely technical, exploiting screen clears to get rid of bugs or utilizing oversized End User License Agreements (really) to launch games correctly. Other tricks, however, sit right under a player’s nose, without them realizing they’ve been fooled at all. While the initial reaction may be that of animosity — who likes to be deceived? — in reality the artifices at play are ingenious and a testament to humankind’s unique ability to adapt and evolve past a problem with insightful and distinctive prowess.

無論我們是在Red Dead Redemption 2中爭吵，搶劫銀行，還是在Rocket League中取得進球，體驗視頻游戲都是一種特殊而又完全現代的冒險。 容易忘記，但是我們在虛擬世界中遇到的每一次相遇都是由代碼組成的。 我們搶劫的每一家銀行都是由數字組成，每個進球目標都是由一套規則決定的。 這些規定是由人們制定的，并且-自然-事情并不完全像它們看起來的那樣。 制作游戲非常困難，AAA冠軍平均需要5年的開發時間。 因此，有時需要跳出框框進行思考，以便將產品拿出門，并為人們提供他們想要的大腦食物。 其中一些技巧是非常技術性的，利用屏幕清除功能來消除錯誤或利用超大的最終用戶許可協議( 確實 )來正確啟動游戲。 但是，其他技巧就擺在玩家的鼻子下面，而他們卻沒有意識到自己已經被愚弄了。 最初的React可能是敵意，誰愿意被欺騙？ —實際上，發揮作用的技巧是獨創性的，并且證明了人類具有洞察力和獨特能力的適應和發展問題的獨特能力。

牙齒的皮膚 (Skin of the teeth)

We’ve all been there — caught out in the open while enemies rain hellfire down around us with a flurry of lead and grenades, watching our health bar slowly chunk away as our character is pelted with an impossible amount of bullets and debris. Every pained grunt of our character reminds us that we’re one step closer to death and being launched back to the checkpoint. As we rush to find cover, we see our health bar at its lowest, meaning that one more hit would send us to the grave. Thankfully, we barely make it out alive, behind cover, able to heal our character and collect ourselves as we plan for a counter attack, our heart thumping in our chest. That exhilarating feeling of barely making it through an attack is no accident, however. Many of the biggest titles in the industry such as Doom, Assassin’s Creed, and Bioshock all utilize this mechanic to make those encounters feel that much more tense. Developers will intentionally extend the last few drops of health your character has to allow you to feel as though you made it by the skin of your teeth. In reality, if hit point percentages always stayed consistent, it’s very likely you would have died minutes earlier and would have had to redo the confrontation.

我們都去過那里-陷入空曠之中，而敵人則用一連串的鉛和手榴彈向周圍灑下地獄火，看著我們的健康吧慢慢塊狀消失，因為我們的角色被大量子彈和碎片擊碎。 對角色的每一次痛苦的抱怨都使我們想起，我們離死亡更近了一步，并被送回了檢查站。 當我們急于尋找掩護時，我們看到我們的健康條處于最低點，這意味著再遭受一擊將把我們送到墳墓。 值得慶幸的是，當我們計劃反擊時，我們幾乎無法活下來，在被掩蓋的情況下能夠治愈自己的性格并自我救贖，我們的心臟在胸口th動。 然而，那種勉強通過攻擊來使人振奮的感覺并非偶然。 業內許多最大的頭銜，例如 《毀滅戰士》，《刺客信條 》和《 生化奇兵》都利用這種機制使這些遭遇更加緊張。 開發人員將有意延長您角色的最后幾滴健康狀況，使您感覺仿佛是由牙齒的皮膚造成的。 實際上，如果命中率百分比始終保持一致，則很可能您會在幾分鐘前死亡，并且不得不重做對抗。

隱形指導 (Invisible guidance)

This isn’t the only developer deception at play when you’re participating in a hostile encounter. Naughty Dog’s adventure epic Uncharted — known for its waist-high wall cover shooting sections — utilizes enemy A.I. to make a player feel like they’re in one of the adventure movies the game is trying to emulate. When a player leaves cover, the enemy accuracy shifts to 0% for 3.5 seconds (around two rounds,) giving the player a few precious moments to fire their shot without tearing away the illusion of being fired at. This also allows the developers to curtail the enemies to their specifications. The lighter class soldiers will have a slower firing rate as well as have an extended period of 0% accuracy as compared to medium and heavy soldiers, giving them an air of being more difficult with something as simple as a few behind the scenes number tweaks. The way Nathan Drake moves throughout the world during those firefights in Uncharted isn’t even left completely to player agency. Uncharted, as well as many other third person games like Red Dead Redemption 2, employ what’s known as “thumbstick correction” in order to create smooth animations. Thumbstick correction is responsible for maneuvering players around objects they’re about to collide with, as well as stop players from running off of ledges and plummeting to their deaths. It’s often heavily employed when a character has to push their way through large crowds, especially during interactive cinematics. The way the character sidesteps the NPCs (non-playable characters) in frame — without the player’s input to do so — is thumbstick correction at work. While it may not create the same tense feelings the health mechanic will, it subtly guides players through worlds without fully stripping agency from them and is imperative in making the playable character and their allies feel real.

當您參加敵對的遭遇時，這并不是唯一的開發者騙局。 調皮狗的冒險史詩《 神秘海域》(Uncharted)以其高腰圍墻射擊部分而著稱，它利用敵方AI使玩家感到自己就像在游戲試圖模仿的一部冒險電影中。 當玩家離開掩體時，敵人的準確性會在3.5秒內(大約兩回合)轉移到0％，這為玩家提供了一些寶貴的時間來射擊，而不會破壞被射擊的幻想。 這也使開發人員可以減少敵人的規格。 與中型和重型士兵相比，輕型士兵的射擊速度較慢，并且精度提高了0％，這使他們感到更加困難，因為一些幕后數字調整很簡單。 內森·德雷克(Nathan Drake)在《 神秘海域》(Uncharted )的那些戰斗中在全球范圍內移動的方式甚至還沒有完全留給玩家代理。 《神秘海域 》以及許多其他第三人稱游戲(如《荒野大鏢客：救贖2》 )都采用所謂的“ 指尖校正 ”來創建流暢的動畫。 指尖校正負責操縱玩家要撞到的物體，并阻止玩家逃離壁架并墜落至死亡。 當角色必須穿過大量人群時，尤其是在交互式電影中，它通常被大量使用。 在沒有玩家輸入的情況下，角色回避幀中NPC(不可玩角色)的方式是在工作中進行指尖校正。 盡管它可能不會產生健康機械師會產生的那種緊張感，但它巧妙地引導玩家穿越世界，而又沒有完全剝奪他們的吸引力，并且必須使可玩角色和他們的盟友感到真實。

思維世界 (Thinking worlds)

Playable characters interacting with NPCs and enemy A.I. aren’t the only time these tricks are applied however. Sometimes the world building itself is left to contrivance. Bethesda’s legendary Skyrim employed what’s known as “Radiant Questing” to organically flesh out their incredible landscape. Radiant Questing refers to the “Radiant System” present in Bethesda’s game engine, which recognizes a player’s individual skills and progress. The system then rolls out quests appropriate to the player’s actions. Radiant Questing is a two-fold trick. One; it’s able to mold quests to the player character and their play style without them ever realizing the game is changing, and two; it assigns quests based on areas the player hasn’t been to yet. When the player is set to find an ancient sword, the game will (more than likely) direct the player to a cave or stronghold they hadn’t previously discovered. By forcing the player into unknown areas, Bethesda both extends playtime as well as guarantees that the player will see every inch of their envisioned environment.

與NPC和敵方AI互動的可玩角色并不是這些技巧的唯一應用。 有時，世界建筑本身也要保持創新。 貝塞斯達(Bethesda) 富有傳奇色彩的天際(Skyrim)采用了所謂的“輻射搜尋”(Radiant Questing) ，有機地充實了他們令人難以置信的風景。 “輻射任務”指的是貝塞斯達游戲引擎中的“輻射系統”，它可以識別玩家的個人技能和進步。 然后，系統推出適合玩家行為的任務。 輻射任務有兩個竅門。 之一; 它能夠根據玩家的角色和他們的游戲風格塑造任務，而無需他們意識到游戲的變化，并且有兩個； 它根據玩家尚未去過的區域分配任務。 當玩家準備尋找一把古老的劍時，游戲將(很有可能)將玩家引導到他們之前未發現的洞穴或要塞。 通過迫使玩家進入未知區域，貝塞斯達既可以延長游戲時間，又可以確保玩家看到自己所設想的環境的每一英寸。

你看不到的東西不存在 (What you don’t see doesn’t exist)

Envisioning an environment is a monumental task in and of itself. Game worlds have become colossal landscapes, full continents filled to the brim with content to explore and discover. Gone are the polygonal, gray, sparsely populated cities in games like Grand Theft Auto III, replaced by the luscious mainlands of the likes of The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn. Rendering these massive terrains can be a logistical nightmare; Horizon Zero Dawn’s map is somewhere to the tune of 4 miles wide, while The Witcher 3’s map is an unbelievable 86 square miles (136 square KMs). Displaying something that huge presents some obvious problems due to software limitations, and the way developers work around this is pretty incredible. Games such as Horizon Zero Dawn use all kinds of interesting workarounds to run as glamorously as it does. For example, as the player pans the camera in Horizon Zero Dawn, the game derezzes the terrain previously viewable and only renders what’s viewable in the camera field. This drastically negates the load on the system’s RAM and allows those beautiful vistas to be viewed with little to no chugging or frame drops. It does so nearly instantaneously, so the player has no idea the ground they were on just a minute ago no longer exists. Horizon — along with most open world games — also employs countless texture trickeries to conserve memory. If the player were to zoom in indefinitely in Horizon, they would find the beautifully textured 3D assets of the numerous trees littering the landscape would change from a hyper realistic vision of a tall tree swaying in the wind to an ugly, flat, 2D texture. This process can be called “LOD’ing”, or “Level of Detail”. It’s an incredibly complex process, as there’s a very thin line between “optimizing performance by utilizing distance” and “that bush is jarring and distracting.” Most games utilize LOD’ing in some fashion, but open world games take it to the most extreme. Without LOD’ing, games would chug to a grinding halt as most gaming consoles aren’t powerful enough to fully render miles of 3D assets and terrain. Still, the player will be mostly oblivious to the quality of this rendering.

構想環境本身就是一項艱巨的任務。 游戲世界已經變成了巨大的景觀，充滿了探索和發現的內容的大洲遍布了整個世界。 在《 俠盜獵車手3》 ( Grand Theft Auto III)等游戲中，多邊形，灰色，人煙稀少的城市已經消失，取而代之的是《巫師3》和《 地平線零黎明 》等甜美的大陸。 渲染這些巨大的地形可能是后勤上的噩夢。 地平線零黎明(Horizo??n Zero Dawn)的地圖寬約4英里，而巫師3(The Witcher 3)的地圖令人難以置信的是86平方英里(136平方公里) 。 由于軟件的局限性，顯示巨大的內容會帶來一些明顯的問題，開發人員解決此問題的方式令人難以置信。 諸如《 HORIZON Zero Dawn》之類的游戲使用各種有趣的變通辦法來像它一樣迷人地運行。 例如，當玩家在水平零黎明時搖攝相機時，游戲會撤消先前可見的地形，只渲染在相機字段中可見的地形。 這極大地消除了系統RAM上的負載，并使觀看這些美麗的遠景時幾乎不會出現顫動或掉落幀的情況。 它幾乎是瞬間完成的，所以玩家不知道他們在一分鐘前的地面已經不存在了。 Horizo??n (與大多數開放世界游戲一起)也采用了無數的紋理技巧來節省內存。 如果玩家無限期地在Horizo??n中放大，他們會發現亂拋垃圾的無數樹木的精美紋理3D資產將從風中搖曳的高大樹木的超現實感變為丑陋，平坦的2D紋理。 此過程可以稱為“ LOD'ing”或“詳細程度”。 這是一個非常復雜的過程，因為“通過利用距離來優化性能”與“灌木叢正在震撼和分散注意力”之間的界限很窄。 大多數游戲都以某種方式利用LOD'ing，但開放世界游戲將其發揮到了極致。 如果沒有LOD，大多數游戲機的功能將不足以完全渲染3D資產和地形的里程，因此游戲將停滯不前。 盡管如此，玩家仍然會忽略該渲染的質量。

不可能跳 (Impossible jumping)

The unconscious nature of these developer tricks are key to their execution. If the player is able to easily see through the facade, it becomes that much more difficult to keep them invested. Part of the draw of video games are their ability to make it feel like you’re doing the impossible, exploring unimaginable places and completing unfeasible actions. These actions, however, are often not entirely our own. Platformers enable us to make incredible leaps, use problem solving to navigate environments, and utilize level design to progress within the game. It feels incredible when a jump is performed precisely, the player character landing exactly where needed, especially when a game has incredible controls like Castlevania or Super Meat Boy. Unsurprisingly, developers have multiple ploys to delude players into thinking they’re just that good at platformers. One of these ploys is “Coyote Time.” Coyote time, named after Wile E. Coyote as he stays suspended in the air for a few seconds before falling, is exactly that. Most platformers employ coyote time to curb the difficulty of jumps. If the player is a few frames too late as their character approaches the edge of a ledge, coyote time allows for them to hover for a frame or two before falling, giving the player the ability to make the jump in time. To the player, it feels as though they timed the jump perfectly, but in all actuality they were a split second too late. Another popular way to cheese jump mechanics is what’s known as “jump buffering” or “input buffering.” Basically, jump buffering gives the player a small buffer (a few frames) to hit a button early, but still complete the jump as intended. If a player is falling and knows they have to leap off the ground as soon as they land, some platformers allow for a split second of early input to still complete the instruction. It makes the player feel like their timing is impeccable, as well as create a satisfying mechanic, despite the fact that they jumped the gun early on their second leap.

這些開發人員技巧的潛意識本質是其執行的關鍵。 如果玩家能夠輕松地透視立面，那么使他們保持投入變得更加困難。 電子游戲的吸引力之一就是它們具有使您感覺自己正在做不可能的事情，探索難以想象的地方并完成不可行的動作的能力。 但是，這些動作通常不完全是我們自己的。 平臺開發人員使我們能夠取得令人難以置信的飛躍，使用問題解決方案來導航環境，并利用關卡設計在游戲中發展。 當精確地執行跳躍動作時，玩家角色正好落在需要的地方，這尤其令人難以置信，尤其是當游戲具有令人難以置信的控制(例如惡魔城或Super Meat Boy)時。 毫不奇怪，開發人員有多種欺騙手段，欺騙玩家以為他們只是擅長平臺游戲。 這些策略之一就是“ 土狼時間” 。 土狼的時間，以Wile E. Coyote的名字命名，因為他在懸空之前在空中懸浮了幾秒鐘，正是這樣。 大多數平臺游戲者會利用土狼時間來控制跳躍的難度。 如果玩家由于角色接近壁架邊緣而遲了幾幀，則土狼時間允許他們在摔倒前懸停一兩幀，從而使玩家能夠及時跳躍。 對于玩家而言，感覺好像是他們完美地安排了跳躍的時間，但是實際上，他們為時已晚。 奶酪跳躍機制的另一種流行方式是所謂的“跳躍緩沖”或“輸入緩沖”。 基本上，跳轉緩沖為播放器提供了一個較小的緩沖區(幾幀)以盡早按下按鈕，但仍可以按預期完成跳轉。 如果玩家跌倒并且知道他們必須在著陸后立即跳下地面，一些平臺游戲者會在稍早的時候輸入一秒鐘以完成指令。 盡管他們在第二次飛躍的早期就把槍拔了，但它使玩家感到自己的時機無懈可擊，并創造出令人滿意的技工。

現代魔術 (Modern magic)

Many of these tricks are pretty industry standard, and the list is seemingly endless. These are just a few examples of what developers do to make our games in the best way they can. Whether a player knows it or not, they’re experiencing the combined efforts of ingenuity and problem solving. Developing a game (or anything, for that matter) is akin to mathematicians thinking divergently to solve an equation. When people engage with a video game, they are activating code, and while the worlds may be unlike anything we have seen before, sometimes even more lifelike than life itself, at the end of the day they’re an amalgamation of math, coding, engineering, and human innovation. As long as developers are creating these wonderful worlds, they will find unconventional and unexpected solutions to the obstacles that present themselves. These ingenious solutions are responsible for making gaming feel like a unique, fair, and conquerable hobby. The pioneers who devise these answers are consistently creating a stronger, more stable foundation for the industry as a whole. Despite the fact that we are being gulled into the intended experience, those who create these resolutions are experts in their craft. The hope is that we revel in their expertise and allow ourselves to be whisked away to the worlds designed for us, purposefully ignorant of the smoke and mirrors at play, instead appreciating the fact that we may never know exactly how these programming magicians achieve their tricks. With any luck, we wont dig too deep, rather permitting ourselves to just sit back, relax, and believe in the magic.

這些技巧很多都是行業標準，看似無休止。 這些只是開發人員以最佳方式制作我們的游戲的一些示例。 無論玩家是否知道，他們都在經歷著獨創性和解決問題的共同努力。 開發游戲(或其他任何事情)類似于數學家為解決方程式而發散地思考。 當人們玩電子游戲時，他們正在激活代碼，盡管世界可能與我們之前所見過的任何事物都不一樣，有時甚至比生活本身更栩栩如生，但歸根結底，他們融合了數學，編碼，工程和人類創新。 只要開發人員創造了這些美好的世界，他們就會發現非常規且出人意料的解決方案，以解決自己遇到的障礙。 這些巧妙的解決方案使游戲感覺像是一種獨特，公平且可戰勝的愛好。 提出這些答案的先驅者不斷為整個行業創造一個更強大，更穩定的基礎。 盡管事實上我們正沉迷于預期的經驗中，但創建這些決議的人都是他們的專家。 希望我們沉迷于他們的專業知識，并讓自己被帶到專為我們設計的世界中，故意無視比賽中的煙霧和鏡子，而不是欣賞我們可能永遠不確切地知道這些編程魔術師如何達到目的的事實。 。 運氣好的話，我們不會挖得太深，而是讓自己坐在那里放松，相信魔術。

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading. I have nothing but the upmost respect for the people who create the experiences I love so much, and I highly recommend looking deeper into the techniques used to hide the small cracks in gaming. The work they do is incredible! Thanks again!

大家好！ 非常感謝您的閱讀。 我對創造如此熱愛的游戲的人們表示敬意，我強烈建議您更深入地研究用于隱藏游戲中細微裂縫的技術。 他們所做的工作令人難以置信！ 再次感謝！

Jared McCarty

賈里德·麥卡蒂(Jared McCarty)