《星球大战：旧共和国》百科介绍Introducing the Codex

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Introducing the Codex
百科介绍

There are clearly many games that have deep, engaging back stories that designers and writers have worked tirelessly to develop, but in the game, the player only sees what their character sees. Often times, the rich back story is used only for the context of quests, and players never really get the bird’s eye view of the narrative. The ‘big picture’ can become even more confusing and incomplete if the player misses a quest or discovers key plot points out of order. A lot of times, what ends up happening, is that the player just gives up on understanding the overarching storyline, and just focuses on enjoying other parts of the gameplay experience.
许多游戏都有设计者和作家孜孜不倦地设计的深层次、有吸引力的背景故事。但在这个游戏里，玩家只会看到他们的角色所能看到的。通常情况下，丰富的背景故事只会作为任务的说明，而玩家从不会去仔细了解这些故事。如果玩家错过了一个任务或是发现关键节点的顺序有误时，这种“全景画面”会变得更加混乱和破碎。许多时候，玩家最终会放弃去了解庞大的故事线，而只会专注于享受其它的游戏体验。

Obviously, this was a matter of some concern to us. Star Wars™ is one of the richest, most engaging fictional settings in all of pop culture. We have an exceptional team of writers working hard to build and expand the Star Wars universe in the Old Republic era. As you may have heard, story is kind of a big deal to BioWare and to The Old Republic™, and that story is a lot better if you understand the context for what’s going on around you and how your actions fit in.
很显然，这是我们需要注意的问题之一。《星球大战》是所有流行文化中最丰富、最有吸引力的架空设定之一。我们有一个特别的作者团队倾力打造并扩展旧共和国时期的星球大战延伸宇宙。你可能也了解了，故事对于B社和《旧共》来说是件大事。如果你能够了解你身边将会发生的事以及你如何能够融入其中，故事就会变得更加完美。


The Genesis of the Codex
百科的起源

When we encounter design problems in The Old Republic, we like to first look at other BioWare games for a solution. In this case, we really appreciated the codex used in Dragon Age, which allows players to collect pieces of the story that eventually coalesce into a collected whole. We also looked at the codex in Mass Effect. The focus was slightly different, instead providing an encyclopedic view of the universe as a whole.
当我们遇到《旧共》的设计难题时，我们会首先在其它B社的游戏中寻找解决方案。在这种情况下，我们很欣慰能够拥有在《龙腾世纪》中使用的百科，其让玩家搜集故事的片断，最终整合成一个完成的故事。我们也会参考《质量效应》的百科。它的关注点则明显不同，提供的不是一本百科全书，而是一个完整的世界。

For The Old Republic, we took the best of both systems, using our codex to not only elaborate on the settings you fight in and the creatures you kill, but also to plant seeds of knowledge relating to key personages and concepts from your class story and long-lost lore meant to give more feedback at large. We sketched out what we wanted, and told the writers to get to work.
在《旧共》中，我们结合了两个系统的优点，不仅在阐述你的战斗的设置和你所击杀的怪物的设定时，同时在设置与关键人物、你的职业故事的概念、及失传已久但会提供极大回报的学识的线索时使用我们的百科。我们会简述一下我们所想要的，然后让作者去继续描述。

How much work? Current estimates of our codex are around 120,000 words of text. By comparison, the average Star Wars novel comes in at around 100,000 words.
工作量有多少？现在估计我们的百科有12万字。比较一下，平均一本《星球大战》小说大概有10万字。



The Mechanics of Discovery
探索的机制

This feature isn’t just about being another way to deliver story to the player. As Lead Systems Designer, I’m mostly concerned about bringing the fun. Delivering story and context isn’t enough for me – I also want to be sure that we add new activities for players to do and goals for him to achieve. In particular, we saw the codex as a way to reward exploration
这个功能不只是另一种向玩家介绍剧情的方式。作为系统设计主管，我主要关注的是能带来乐趣。仅仅是剧情和内容的介绍对我来说还不够——我也需要确定我们为玩家提供了新活动以及新的目标。说得明白点，我们将百科视作奖励探索的一种方式。

Long-time players of MMOs are probably, on some level, familiar with the work of Richard Bartle. He wrote what is considered a seminal work on MMO design, describing the types of players that play in virtual worlds (wondering what sort of player you are? Take one of the many Bartle’s tests out on the web and find out). He divided up the player base into killers, achievers, socializers and explorers, allowing for the fact that most players are actually some mixture of the categories. He posited that, in truth, games needed to appeal to all four quadrants to be successful. Building off his work—we see the codex as a way to enhance the gameplay for explorers.
MMO的老玩家们可能对Richard Bartle的作品有某种程度的了解。他的作品介绍了在虚拟世界中遨游的各种玩家，被视作MMO设计中的一个具有开创性意义的作品（想知道你是哪种玩家？去做一个网上的Bartle的测试你就知道了）。他将玩家分为杀手、成就者、社交者、及探索者，并认为多数玩家实际上是某几种类型的混合型。他指出，实事上，游戏需要满足所有4种类型的需求才能成功。基于他的观点——我们认为百科是一种能够提高探索者的游戏性的方式。

We give away some codex entries for free. For example, we think that it’s important that players have basic background about the locations they are visiting, and key people in their class story arcs will almost always merit a codex entry. For the rest, though, we want people to explore the planets a little more, and take on some challenges a little ways off the beaten path.
我们免费赠送了一些百科的条目。例如，我们觉得让玩家了解一些他们正处其中的地点的基础背景是很重要的，而他们的职业故事线则总是值得作为一个百科条目。不过对于其它的，我们想让大家更深入地了解星球，并稍稍走点小路来进行一些挑战。

Wandering to distant locations on the map will unlock codex entries about those far flung corners of the globe. Unlocking the codex entry for the k’lor’slug, for example, involves killing a hard to find, tougher k’lor’slug deep in one of Korriban’s tombs. Additionally, exploring the artifacts in the Academy’s library can reveal ancient bits of lost lore, and doing quests for various alien species can unlock their entry in the codex.
探索地图上的偏远地点将会解锁这些星球上的遥远角落的百科。例如，想要解锁凯洛蛞蝓的百科条目，需要杀死一只位于柯瑞班墓穴深处，难以发觉的强悍凯洛蛞蝓。另外，研究学院图书馆中的古器可以发觉失落的古代学识的片断，而为各种外星种族执行任务则可以解锁他们的百科条目。

Currently, none of these are locked behind a serious challenge – our codex unlocking k’lor’slug is a challenge for its level, to be sure, but not a ‘OMGPWN3D go bring back 3 friends in epics!’ challenge – and that’s intentional. Explorer gameplay should, first and foremost, reward exploring.
目前，没有一个百科条目需要进行严格的挑战才能解锁——解锁凯洛蛞蝓确实是在那个等级下的一项挑战，但也并非一个“草尼马坑爹啊！得回去再找3个强力队友来！”这样的挑战——我们是有意为之的。探索性游戏应该首先奖励探索。



The Datacrons Challenge
数据核心的挑战

That’s not to say that some codex entries shouldn’t be challenging. Quite the opposite, we want some codex entries to be worthy challenges – but we want those challenges to be centered on exploration. Enter the datacrons. In-game datacrons will be a sub-set of the codex entries. The world builders had been kicking around the idea of these little world gizmos for a while now. These unique objects are placed throughout the world for the player to find, usually in hard to reach places. If you successfully reach one and interact with it, one of your stats will be increased -- permanently. The codex gave us a way to increase the visibility of these devices, and offer a player an easy way to track his progress finding them.
并不是说就不应该有通过挑战才能解锁的百科条目。正相反，我们希望一些百科条目能够物有所值——但我们希望这些挑战能够集中在探索中。数据核心登场。游戏内的数据核心将会是一组百科条目。世界设计师已经对这个小型世界装置深思熟虑了一段时间。这种特殊的物品会被放置在整个世界的各个地点等待被玩家发现。通常这些地点都难以到达。如果你成功地到达并与之进行了互动，你的一项属性将会增加——永久性地增加。百科为我们提供了一种方法来增加这些装置的可视距离，并为玩家提供了一条方便的方法来追踪进度并找到它们。



While most codex entries can be obtained with the players stretching their legs (searching the whole map, killing obvious targets you don’t normally need to kill), finding datacrons typically requires a little extra exploration and a even little ingenuity. While some are hidden, many are in plain sight – the trick is often in figuring out how to get to that datacron that you see on a ledge off in the distance.
虽然大多数的百科条目可以通过迈步长征取得（搜查整个地图，杀死通常不需要杀死的特殊目标），不过想找到数据核心则需要更深入的探索并需要多花点心思。有些数据核心是隐藏的，而别的则显而易见——问题通常是如何到达数据核心所在的遥远地点。

The inspiration for datacrons comes from a similar game mechanic in one of my earlier projects. These items spawn in predictable locations, but are only usable by each character once. Over time, the locations of these become known, and shared lore. In this other project, the unique nature of finding these items resulted in an interesting social dynamic, where intrepid explorers, eager to prove their world mastery, organized hunting parties for groups of new players to explore these worlds and find these hidden nooks and crannies. We would not be surprised to see a similar pattern emerge in The Old Republic.
数据核心的灵感来自于我的一个早期项目中的类似的游戏机制。这些物品出现在可预见的位置，但每个角色只能使用一次。随着时间流逝，这些地点会广为人知，并被互通有无。在这个早期的项目中，寻找这些物品的天性产生了一个有趣的社会动力，让热衷于证明自己的世界掌控力的勇敢探索者们为成群的新玩家们组织起狩猎团队，以探索这些星球并找出这些隐藏的角落和物资。如果在《旧共》中出现了雷同的设计，我们可不会因此感到惊讶。



Wrapping Up
包扎

All of these features combine to make a nice little collection game for the player, where the reward for the act of collecting is more lore and context offering insights and depth into the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the codex user interface, players can not only see the entries they’ve discovered so far, but also the progress they’ve made towards finding all there is to find on a planet or in a category.
这些特色组合在一起为玩家提供了一个很好的小型收集游戏，而进行收集的回报就是可以获得更多的能够深入明晰地了解《旧共》世界的学识和文献。在百科的UI中，玩家不公可以看到他们目前已经发现的条目，还能看到他们是如何在某个星球或者某个分类中发现这些条目的整个进程。

Overall, the codex system has been successful at meeting our two design goals of providing more fictional context to the player, and providing an explorer mini-game with meaningful rewards. One nice thing about the system is that it’s also designed to be easily expandable – an important consideration when building a game likely to have a long lifespan through patches and expansions. We expect the codex to become continually richer and more involved throughout the life of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
总的来说，百科系统已经成功地完成了我们的两个设计目标，即为玩家提供更多的剧情内容，和提供一个能够获取有意义的奖励的探索小游戏。这个系统有一点非常好，即其设计成能够很容易进行扩展——这点对于一个会有经由补丁和资料片提供很长的生命周期的游戏来说非常重要。我们期待百科能够在《旧共》的一生中不断丰富并包含更加广泛的内容。


Damion Schubert
Principal Lead Systems Designer
系统设计主管

urda

顶楼主，期待未来能有像龙腾世纪，质量效应一样的星战大作

Kenobi

TOR沒有我想像中的畫質,不過作為網遊已經是上等之作

MONSTER

这游戏感觉不妙 实在对不起2011年才发布的网游质量

Kenobi

回复 4# MONSTER

畢竟這個遊戲已經在n年前籌備啊

soloz_cn

画面党退散吧

Dr.Crazy

回复 2# urda


    旧共和国武士不就是质量效应之前的么，当时用的U2引擎。众多的程序bug也无法掩盖其经典的地位。

Dr.Crazy

BIOWARE的游戏一向注重的是游戏体验和整体感觉。人物都是写实的。况且又是网游，如果做成质量效应的画面，RAID的时候没几个人的机器跑得动了。