To test player and NPC interactions, we are obviously going to need an NPC.
However, simply using one of the Half Life 2 NPC characters for our own will not be sufficient for our needs, as our testers may have preconceptions of that NPC if they have played HL2 before. The solution is obvious: we must make our own NPC.
Building an NPC from the ground up will be extremely time consuming, and making it fit into the visual style of HL2 would be difficult, so the best way to go is to take an existing NPC and modify it to match our NPC design.
The first step is to choose which NPC is best suited for this modification, and the method of choosing the NPC is discussed here.
This piece of research involves the background and characters of the popular tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. The research document can be downloaded here.
In the second part of NPCs and Visual Information, I use the methods described in Part 1 to create four NPC characters for a post-apocalypse setting. Due to the number of images this article has and the image per post limit, it can be downloaded here.
As part of the team's research, I examined methods of visual character design using the book The Art of Game Characters by Leo Hartas, which features many interviews with industry developers and character designers, and wrote a short essay on why I think it will be useful when we come to design our own NPCs for the testing product. You can read it here.
This week, I researched the methods developers use to make NPC characters stand out and memorable, going into detail about use of colour, shape and distinguishing features, with examples from many different videogames. Due to the number of images this article has and the image per post limit, it can be downloaded here.
