Quests

Quests
Author: Jeff Howard
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2022-04-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000576450

Combining theory and practice, this updated new edition provides a complete overview of how to create deep and meaningful quests for games. It uses the Unity game engine in conjunction with Fungus and other free plugins to provide an accessible entry into quest design. The book begins with an introduction to the theory and history of quests in games, before covering four theoretical components of quests: their spaces, objects, actors, and challenges. Each chapter also includes a practical section, with accompanying exercises and suggestions for the use of specific technologies for four crucial aspects of quest design: • level design • quest item creation • NPC and dialogue construction • scripting This book will be of great interest to all game designers looking to create new, innovative quests in their games. It will also appeal to new media researchers, as well as humanities scholars in the fields of mythology and depth-psychology that want to bring computer-assisted instruction into their classroom in an innovative way. The companion website includes lecture and workshop slides, and can be accessed at: www.designingquests.com

Assassin's Quest

Assassin's Quest
Author: Robin Hobb
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 769
Release: 1998-01-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553565699

“An enthralling conclusion to this superb trilogy, displaying an exceptional combination of originality, magic, adventure, character, and drama.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) King Shrewd is dead at the hands of his son Regal. As is Fitz—or so his enemies and friends believe. But with the help of his allies and his beast magic, he emerges from the grave, deeply scarred in body and soul. The kingdom also teeters toward ruin: Regal has plundered and abandoned the capital, while the rightful heir, Prince Verity, is lost to his mad quest—perhaps to death. Only Verity’s return—or the heir his princess carries—can save the Six Duchies. But Fitz will not wait. Driven by loss and bitter memories, he undertakes a quest: to kill Regal. The journey casts him into deep waters, as he discovers wild currents of magic within him—currents that will either drown him or make him something more than he was. Praise for Robin Hobb and Assassin’s Quest “Fantasy as it ought to be written . . . Robin Hobb’s books are diamonds in a sea of zircons.”—George R. R. Martin “Superbly written, wholly satisfying, unforgettable: better than any fantasy trilogy in print—including mine!”—Melanie Rawn

Agents for Games and Simulations II

Agents for Games and Simulations II
Author: F. Dignum
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2011-01-14
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642181805

While today's game engines and multi-agent platforms cross-fertilize each other to some extent, the technologies used in these areas are not readily compatible due to some differences in their primary concerns. Where game engines prioritize efficiency and central control, multi-agent platforms focus on agent autonomy and sophisticated communication capabilities. This volume gives an overview of the current state of the art for people wishing to combine agent technology with (serious) games. This state-of-the-art survey contains a collection of papers presented at AGS 2010; the Second International Workshop on Agents for Games and Simulations, held on May 10, 2010, in Toronto, as well as extended versions of papers from other workshops and from the AAMAS conference. The 14 papers are organized in three topical sections focusing on architectures combining agents and game engines, on the training aspects of the games, on social and organizational aspects of games and agents, respectively.

Passion and Play

Passion and Play
Author: Michelle Clough
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2022-04-14
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1000570568

Hoping to add some steam and sex to your next game? Then this book is for you. This practical guide provides you with the foundational tools needed to write, design, and create healthy sexual content in video games in ways that are narratively compelling, varied, and hot! Challenging the assumptions that sex in games is superfluous, exploitative, or only of interest to straight guys, this book encourages designers to create meaningful, enjoyable sexual content for all audiences. Using examples from well-known AAA games (and some standout indie content!), each chapter provides a framework to guide game writers, designers, and developers through the steps of creating and executing sexual content in their games – from early concept, to setting it up in larger game narrative, and finally to executing specific sexual scenes and sequences. It also lays out a host of details and considerations that, while easily missed or forgotten, can have a major impact on the quality or theme of the scene. Offering expert insight and ideas for creating sex scenes in games, this book is vital reading for game designers, writers, and narrative designers who are interested in making games with sexual content. It will also appeal to artists, cutscene directors, audio engineers, composers, and programmers working on these games – or really, any game developer with an interest in the topic!

Storyplaying

Storyplaying
Author: Sebastian Domsch
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110272458

Incontestably, Future Narratives are most conspicuous in video games: they combine narrative with the major element of all games: agency. The persons who perceive these narratives are not simply readers or spectators but active agents with a range of choices at their disposal that will influence the very narrative they are experiencing: they are players. The narratives thus created are realizations of the multiple possibilities contained in the present of any given gameplay situation. Surveying the latest trends in the field, the volume discusses the complex relationship of narrative and gameplay.

Quest's End

Quest's End
Author: Richard Pini
Publisher: Wolfrider Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1999-02
Genre: Comic books, strips, etc
ISBN: 9780936861586

All the known tribes of elves - Wolfriders, Sun Folk, Gliders, Go-Backs - Clash with the trolls to win Quest's End.

Roads of Her Own

Roads of Her Own
Author: Alexandra Ganser
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9042029145

Reading Jack Kerouac’s classic On the Road through Virginia Woolf’s canonical A Room of One’s Own, the author of this book examines a genre in North American literature which, despite its popularity, has received little attention in literary and cultural criticism: women’s road narratives. The study shows how women’s literature has inscribed itself into the American discourse of the Whitmanesque “open road”, or, more generally, the “freedom of the road”. Women writers have participated in this powerful American myth, yet at the same time also have rejected that myth as fundamentally based on gendered and racial/ethnic hierarchies and power structures, and modified it in the process of writing back to it. The book analyzes stories about female runaways, outlaws, questers, adventurers, kidnappees, biker chicks, travelling saleswomen, and picaras and makes theoretical observations on the debates regarding discourses of spatiality and mobility—debates which have defined the so-called spatial turn in the humanities. The analytical concept of transdifference is introduced to theorize the dissonant plurality of social and cultural affiliations as well as the narrative tensions produced by such pluralities in order to better understand the textual worlds of women’s multiple belongings as they are present in these writings. Roads of Her Own is thus not only situated in the broader context of a constructivist cultural studies, but also, by discussing narrative mobility under the sign of gender, combines insights from social theory and philosophy, feminist cultural geography, and literary studies. Key names and concepts: Doreen Massey – Rosi Braidotti – Literary Studies – Spatial Turn – Gendered Space and Mobility – Nomadism – Road writing – Transdifference – American Culture – Popular Culture – Women’s Literature after the Second Wave – Quest – Picara.

The Quest for the Grail

The Quest for the Grail
Author: Christine Poulson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1999
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780719055379

This comprehensive account of Arthurian in British art in the 19th century offers fresh insights into the significance of the legends.