Contents 1 Problem Summary 2 Use When 3 Solution 4 Recommendations 5 Rationale 6 Examples

Problem Summary

The player has to watch the game progress in real time and have to wait for something to complete.

Use When

This is typical to simulation games, where the player has to wait for something to complete, such as building a house, getting additional resources, etc.

Solution

Allow the player to speed up the game

Speeding up has to be activated either by a key press or by an interface element. Usually one can present some time manipulation controls such as a pause, play, and fast forward key. If the game has been sped up and an event happens, one should automatically set the game speed to normal so the player has time to respond to such events.

An alternative approach to speeding up a game is to allow the user to set the simulation speed. A slider control can be provided which allows the player to set speed of the simulation in the game. The advantage of this approach is that the user can speed up the game based on his playing expertise and comfort level.

One can decide to implement fast forward with different speeds, such as 2x\4x\8x. This speedup may have some significant impact on existing game design. Letting the underlying model run at increased speed will have an effect on the rendering/visualization of the game.

Recommendations

• Make use of parallelization of code when increasing the simulation speed. If the game simulates hundreds of units, then the increase in simulation speed can have a negative effect on the frame rate, consequently affecting the user experience. Supreme Commander is an example of a game which supports multi-core processing. Tasks are allocated to specific cores, such as AI computations.
• Incorporate a speed control in the interface of the game. Games such as Dawn of War and Company of Heroes allow a player to change the simulation speed, but this has to be done by entering commands in the game's console, which can make it difficult and intimidating for a player to change.

Rationale

Speeding up the game improves efficiency and satisfaction as the player does not have to watch activities in tedious real time.

Examples

• Sims
• Lemmings
• Lincity-NG
• Simcity Series
• StarCraft
• Dawn of War
• Company of Heroes
• Civilization IV/Revolution
• Supreme Commander

Lemmings	Sims	Company of Heroes
Supreme Commander