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127-459: Half-Life was critically acclaimed for its storytelling and level design. At the time, the integration of narrative in the form of interactive cutscenes and NPCs was considered groundbreaking for a first-person shooter . In "Black Mesa Inbound", the player controls Gordon Freeman as he enters the facility on a monorail . After noticing the G-Man on a different train, Gordon departs and enters

254-449: A level (also referred to as a map , mission , stage , course , or round in some older games) is any space available to the player during the course of completion of an objective. Video game levels generally have progressively increasing difficulty to appeal to players with different skill levels. Each level may present new concepts and challenges to keep a player's interest high. In games with linear progression, levels are areas of

381-425: A loading screen while the game loaded level information from storage. With more advanced computing hardware with faster input/output data transfer rates, such as optical drives, hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and larger amounts of memory, game developers have been able to take advantage of continuously loading new level assets – models, textures, and audio – into

508-435: A video game . An individual involved with the development of game levels is a level designer or mapper. In some cases, the developer of a video game includes built-in level editing tools; for example, a track editor for a racing game. Other times they may release an official level editor for the game as a separate application. Sometimes players of the game develop fan-made level editors. Developing level editors will allow

635-439: A "visual narrative instance". And unlike narratives found in other performance arts such as plays and musicals, film narratives are not bound to a specific place and time, and are not limited by scene transitions in plays, which are restricted by set design and allotted time. The nature or existence of a formative narrative in many of the world's myths, folktales, and legends has been a topic of debate for many modern scholars; but

762-440: A character, for example whether they empathize with a character or not, feeling for them as if they were real. The audience's familiarity with a character results in their expectations about how characters will behave in later scenes. Characters who behave contrary to their previous patterns of behavior (their characterization ) can be confusing or jarring to the audience. Narratives usually have main characters, protagonists , whom

889-408: A coherent story or narrative explaining how they believe the event was generated. Narratives thus lie at the foundations of our cognitive procedures and also provide an explanatory framework for the social sciences, particularly when it is difficult to assemble enough cases to permit statistical analysis. Narrative is often used in case study research in the social sciences. Here it has been found that

1016-415: A different environment. Level designers sometimes make hidden rooms and areas that usually require more effort for the player to reach or to notice. These usually give some additional rewards, such as ammo or powerups. They serve to induce players to explore. Sometimes, they serve as easter eggs , containing messages such as the level designers' names or pictures, or political or humorous messages. One of

1143-404: A different level each time, until he finally confronts Kong. 1983's Lode Runner was one of the first titles to ship with a level editor. Its designer, Doug Smith , reputedly paid neighborhood children to design levels for the game. The same year, the multiplayer dungeon crawl Dandy was released, and it also shipped with a level editor which was documented in the manual. ZZT (1991)

1270-490: A different ontological source, and therefore has different implications within a civilization. Frazer states: "If these definitions be accepted, we may say that myth has its source in reason, legend in memory, and folk-tale in imagination; and that the three riper products of the human mind which correspond to these its crude creations are science, history, and romance." Janet Bacon expanded upon Frazer's categorization in her 1921 publication— The Voyage of The Argonauts . In

1397-466: A dramatic work may also include narrative speeches). A narrative consists of a set of events (the story) recounted in the process of narration (or discourse ), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot , which can also mean "story synopsis"). The term " emplotment " describes how, when making sense of personal experience, authors or other storytellers structure and order narratives. The category of narratives includes both

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1524-452: A further digraph where the actions are depicted as nodes and edges take the form "action a co-determined (in context of other actions) action b ". Narratives can be both abstracted and generalised by imposing an algebra upon their structures and thence defining homomorphism between the algebras. The insertion of action-driven causal links in a narrative can be achieved using the method of Bayesian narratives. Developed by Peter Abell ,

1651-505: A game than simply adding new levels, a software development kit (SDK) is sometimes needed. In the early years of video gaming, some games came with a utility called a "construction set". This was similar in many ways to a level editor. Some games used them to make extra levels, whereas others (like the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit ) used them as a means to develop a game rather than be a game in itself. Maps' design can significantly impact

1778-400: A larger world, such as Green Hill Zone . Games may also feature interconnected levels, representing locations. Although the challenge in a game is often to defeat some sort of character, levels are sometimes designed with a movement challenge, such as a jumping puzzle, a form of obstacle course . Players must judge the distance between platforms or ledges and safely jump between them to reach

1905-500: A leading consciousness researcher, writes, "Evidence strongly suggests that humans in all cultures come to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form. We are inveterate storytellers." Stories are an important aspect of culture. Many works of art and most works of literature tell stories; indeed, most of the humanities involve stories. Stories are of ancient origin, existing in ancient Egyptian , ancient Greek , Chinese , and Indian cultures and their myths. Stories are also

2032-407: A level. Sometimes, professional 3D editing software , such as 3D Studio Max , Blender , AutoCAD , Lightwave , Maya , Softimage XSI or Grome is used, usually customized with a special plugin developed for the specific game. A level editor (also known as a map , campaign or scenario editor ) is a game development tool used to design levels, maps, campaigns and virtual worlds for

2159-445: A multitude of folklore genres , but there is a significance in distinguishing the various forms of folklore in order to properly determine what narratives constitute as mythological, as anthropologist Sir James Frazer suggests. Frazer contends that there are three primary categories of mythology (now more broadly considered categories of folklore): Myths, legends, and folktales, and that by definition, each genre pulls its narrative from

2286-429: A narrating voice". Still others have argued that narrative is a semiotic enterprise that can enrich musical analysis. The French musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez contends that "the narrative, strictly speaking, is not in the music, but in the plot imagined and constructed by the listeners". He argues that discussing music in terms of narrativity is simply metaphorical and that the "imagined plot" may be influenced by

2413-402: A narrative subject; these devices include cinematography , editing , sound design (both diegetic and non-diegetic sound), as well as the arrangement and decisions on how and where the subjects are located onscreen—known as mise-en-scène . These cinematic devices, among others, contribute to the unique blend of visual and auditory storytelling that culminates to what Jose Landa refers to as

2540-427: A narrative through a spoken or written commentary are examples of a technique called narration, which is required only in written narratives but optional in other types. Though narration is a narrower term, it is occasionally used as a synonym for narrative mode in a very broad sense. The plot is the sequence of events that occurs in a narrative from the beginning to the middle to the end. It typically occurs through

2667-403: A narrative, as Schmid proposes; the act of an author writing his or her words in text is what communicates to the audience (in this case readers) the narrative of the text, and the author represents an act of narrative communication between the textual narrator and the narratee. This is in line with Fludernik's perspective on what's called cognitive narratology—which states that a literary text has

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2794-467: A nuclear silo. After successfully destroying the tentacle with a rocket engine , in "Power Up", Freeman must kill a Gargantua alien by baiting it into a room with giant Tesla coils . He then navigates a series of underground rail tunnels in "On a Rail", culminating in the rocket launch of a satellite that can determine the scope of the disaster. In "Apprehension", Freeman fights through flooded rooms filled with aquatic aliens called Icthyosaurs. However, he

2921-492: A number of voices to several characters in addition to narrator's, created a possibility of narrator's views differing significantly from the author's views. With the rise of the novel in the 18th century , the concept of the narrator (as opposed to "author") made the question of narrator a prominent one for literary theory. It has been proposed that perspective and interpretive knowledge are the essential characteristics, while focalization and structure are lateral characteristics of

3048-476: A pivotal role in narrative structure; an analysis of the historical and cultural contexts present during the development of a narrative is needed in order to more accurately represent the role of narratology in societies that relied heavily on oral narratives. Narrative is a highly aesthetic art. Thoughtfully composed stories have a number of aesthetic elements. Such elements include the idea of narrative structure , with identifiable beginnings, middles, and ends, or

3175-456: A pre-rendered map of the level (or entire game world) for the player. Level design is necessary for two primary purposes: providing players with a goal and providing players with enjoyable play experience. Good level design strives to produce quality gameplay, provide an immersive experience, and sometimes, especially in story-based games, to advance the storyline. Levels are generally constructed with flow control in mind; that is, directing

3302-465: A process of cause and effect , in which characters' actions or other events produce reactions that allow the story to progress. Put another way, plot is structured through a series of scenes in which related events occur that lead to subsequent scenes. These events form plot points, moments of change that affect the characters' understandings, decisions, and actions. The movement of the plot forward often corresponds to protagonists encountering or realizing

3429-400: A restoration or a return to equilibrium—a conclusion that brings the narrative back to a similar space before the events of the narrative unfolded. The school of literary criticism known as Russian formalism has applied methods that are more often used to analyse narrative fiction, to non-fictional texts such as political speeches. Other critiques of literary theory in narrative challenge

3556-477: A sequence of events is presented. Several art movements, such as modern art , refuse the narrative in favor of the abstract and conceptual . Narrative can be organized into a number of thematic or formal categories: nonfiction (such as creative nonfiction , biography , journalism, transcript poetry , and historiography ); fictionalization of historical events (such as anecdote , myth , legend, and historical fiction ) and fiction proper (such as literature in

3683-540: A specific spot where they do not have to move to gain experience , because monsters are constantly spawned but can be easily and immediately killed. In multiplayer maps, a player may be able to reach areas of the map designed to be inaccessible; for example, reaching an advantageous rooftop position and camping other players. A player might be able to fall out-of-bounds of a map where other players cannot reach them. Invisible walls are cited to be level design bugs, and might be "left-over geometry" from an earlier version of

3810-448: A starting base, but will have resource distribution and terrain features designed to draw players out of their base and engage each other. Teamplay maps can provide noticeable advantages to one team over another, when designed poorly. Commonly on older hardware, most games would load a single level and all of its assets at one time, and when the player completed the level, the next level would be loaded. The player would be presented with

3937-599: A story. Many additional narrative techniques , particularly literary ones, are used to build and enhance any given story. The social and cultural activity of sharing narratives is called storytelling , and its earliest form is oral storytelling . During most people's childhoods, these narratives are used to guide them on proper behavior, history, formation of a communal identity, and values from their cultural standpoint, as studied explicitly in anthropology today among traditional indigenous peoples . With regard to oral tradition , narratives consist of everyday speech where

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4064-483: A team of scientists who manipulated magnetic fields to enter the fourth dimension. The monorail sequence that introduces the player to the Black Mesa facility was initially intended as a tech demo . Laidlaw stated that when a programmer implemented a new type of game object called "func_tracktrain", which allowed trains to branch onto different tracks, as well as bank and pivot into turns, he decided to incorporate

4191-458: A total high data throughput can eliminate the need for any loading tunnels in a seamless world game. A level designer is a game designer who makes environments and scenarios using a level editor and other tools. Level designers will usually work on a level from pre-production to completion – working with both incomplete and complete versions of the game. Video game programmers usually produce level editors and design tools for

4318-416: A train into the game's story. The path of the monorail itself is made up of six different map files without individual loading screens, adding hallways as transition areas to give the illusion of level streaming . The disaster sequence in the test chamber was created in a single weekend by developers John Guthrie and Kelly Bailey, who worked for 48 hours straight without sleep, ultimately exciting everyone in

4445-537: A tree, while a fox-like animal stands below. This scene bears resemblance to the story of The Fox and the Crow in the Panchatantra . On a miniature jar, the story of the thirsty crow and deer is depicted, of how the deer could not drink from the narrow mouth of the jar, while the crow succeeded by dropping stones into the jar. The features of the animals are clear and graceful. Owen Flanagan of Duke University,

4572-400: A ubiquitous component of human communication, used as parables and examples to illustrate points. Storytelling was probably one of the earliest forms of entertainment. As noted by Owen Flanagan, narrative may also refer to psychological processes in self-identity, memory, and meaning-making . Semiotics begins with the individual building blocks of meaning called signs ; semantics is

4699-440: Is a first-person narrative , in which some character (often the main one) refers openly to the self, using pronouns like "I" and "me", in communicating the story to the audience. Contrarily, in a third-person narrative , such pronouns are avoided in the telling of the story, perhaps because the teller is merely an impersonal written commentary of the story rather than a personal character within it. Both of these explicit tellings of

4826-503: Is a later game with user-accessible mapping and scripting. A game genre that required significant amounts of time to design areas were text-based games, such as MUDs . Often, promoted users were assigned to make new paths, new rooms, new equipment, and new actions, often using the game interface itself. 3D first-person shooters Doom (1993) and Doom II (1994) were two of the first games to attract focused game modding activity, and many WAD level files were made for them. One of

4953-544: Is any of the methods used for telling stories, and narrative poetry is the class of poems (including ballads, epics, and verse romances) that tell stories, as distinct from dramatic and lyric poetry. Some theorists of narratology have attempted to isolate the quality or set of properties that distinguishes narrative from non-narrative writings; this is called narrativity . Certain basic elements are necessary and sufficient to define all works of narrative, including, most well-studied, all narrative works of fiction . Thus,

5080-503: Is any tension that drives the thoughts and actions of characters. Narrowly speaking, the conflict is the major problem a protagonist , or main character, encounters across a story. Often, a protagonist additionally struggles with a sense of anxiety, insecurity, indecisiveness, or other mental difficulty as result of this conflict, which can be regarded as a secondary or internal conflict. Longer works of narrative typically involve many conflicts, or smaller-level conflicts that occur alongside

5207-501: Is at times beneath the surface, forming a plotted narrative, and at other times much more visible, "arguing" for and against various positions; relies substantially on the use of literary tropes (see Hayden White , Metahistory for expansion of this idea); is often intertextual with other literatures; and commonly demonstrates an effort toward Bildungsroman , a description of identity development with an effort to evince becoming in character and community. Within philosophy of mind ,

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5334-450: Is being narrowly defined as fiction-writing mode in which the narrator is communicating directly to the reader. Until the late 19th century, literary criticism as an academic exercise dealt solely with poetry (including epic poems like the Iliad and Paradise Lost , and poetic drama like Shakespeare ). Most poems did not have a narrator distinct from the author. But novels, lending

5461-478: Is caught by the HECU Marines and dumped in a trash compactor . He escapes, and infiltrates a waste processing facility. In "Questionable Ethics", Freeman stumbles upon a secret part of Black Mesa that studies aliens. In "Surface Tension", Freeman crosses a hydroelectric dam , evading a Boeing AH-64 Apache . In "Forget About Freeman!", Freeman makes his way past a battle between aliens and the military to reach

5588-575: Is centered on the interplay of institutional discourses (big stories) on the one hand, and everyday accounts (little stories) on the other. The goal is the sociological understanding of formal and lived texts of experience, featuring the production, practices, and communication of accounts. In order to avoid "hardened stories", or "narratives that become context-free, portable, and ready to be used anywhere and anytime for illustrative purposes" and are being used as conceptual metaphors as defined by linguist George Lakoff , an approach called narrative inquiry

5715-478: Is commonly done using a level editor, a game development software designed for building levels; however, some games feature built-in level editing tools. In the early days of video games (1970s–2000s), a single programmer would develop the maps and layouts for a game, and a discipline or profession dedicated solely to level design did not exist. Early games often featured a level system of ascending difficulty as opposed to progression of storyline. An example of

5842-620: Is it emphasizes that even apparently non-fictional documents (speeches, policies, legislation) are still fictions, in the sense they are authored and usually have an intended audience in mind. Sociologists Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein have contributed to the formation of a constructionist approach to narrative in sociology. From their book The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World (2000), to more recent texts such as Analyzing Narrative Reality (2009) and Varieties of Narrative Analysis (2012), they have developed an analytic framework for researching stories and storytelling that

5969-568: Is its narrative mode , the set of methods used to communicate the narrative through a written or spoken commentary (see also " Aesthetics approach " below). A narrative is a telling of some actual or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, sometimes recounted by a narrator to an audience (although there may be more than one of each). A personal narrative is a prose narrative relating personal experience . Narratives are to be distinguished from descriptions of qualities, states, or situations and also from dramatic enactments of events (although

6096-428: Is no hope of returning to normal life. The third major type, the quest narrative , positions the illness experience as an opportunity to transform oneself into a better person through overcoming adversity and re-learning what is most important in life; the physical outcome of the illness is less important than the spiritual and psychological transformation. This is typical of the triumphant view of cancer survivorship in

6223-480: Is no qualitative or reliable method to precisely trace exactly where and when a tale originated; and since myths are rooted in a remote past, and are viewed as a factual account of happenings within the culture it originated from, the worldview present in many oral mythologies is from a cosmological perspective—one that is told from a voice that has no physical embodiment, and is passed down and modified from generation to generation. This cosmological worldview in myth

6350-792: Is one reason why narratives are so powerful and why many of the classics in the humanities and social sciences are written in the narrative format. But humans can read meaning into data and compose stories, even where this is unwarranted. Some scholars suggest that the narrative fallacy and other biases can be avoided by applying standard methodical checks for validity (statistics) and reliability (statistics) in terms of how data (narratives) are collected, analyzed, and presented. More typically, scholars working with narrative prefer to use other evaluative criteria (such as believability or perhaps interpretive validity ) since they do not see statistical validity as meaningfully applicable to qualitative data: "the concepts of validity and reliability, as understood from

6477-429: Is the 'juridical' part of the sovereign function." This implies that gods of the first function are responsible for the overall structure and order of the universe, and those gods who possess juridical sovereignty are more closely connected to the realm of humans and are responsible for the concept of justice and order. Dumèzil uses the pantheon of Norse gods as examples of these functions in his 1981 essay—he finds that

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6604-406: Is what provides all mythological narratives credence, and since they are easily communicated and modified through oral tradition among various cultures, they help solidify the cultural identity of a civilization and contribute to the notion of a collective human consciousness that continues to help shape one's own understanding of the world. Myth is often used in an overarching sense to describe

6731-404: Is yet to be said regarding narratives in music, as there is still much to be determined. Unlike most forms of narratives that are inherently language based (whether that be narratives presented in literature or orally), film narratives face additional challenges in creating a cohesive narrative. Whereas the general assumption in literary theory is that a narrator must be present in order to develop

6858-650: The breast cancer culture . Survivors may be expected to articulate a wisdom narrative , in which they explain to others a new and better view of the meaning of life . Personality traits, more specifically the Big Five personality traits , appear to be associated with the type of language or patterns of word use found in an individual's self-narrative. In other words, language use in self-narratives accurately reflects human personality. The linguistic correlates of each Big Five trait are as follows: Human beings often claim to understand events when they manage to formulate

6985-415: The social sciences , and various clinical fields including medicine, narrative can refer to aspects of human psychology. A personal narrative process is involved in a person's sense of personal or cultural identity , and in the creation and construction of memories ; it is thought by some to be the fundamental nature of the self . The breakdown of a coherent or positive narrative has been implicated in

7112-503: The Ancient Greek tale of Icarus refusing to listen to his elders and flying too close to the sun), explaining forces of nature or other natural phenomena (for example, the flood myth that spans cultures all over the world), and providing an understanding of human nature, as exemplified by the myth of Cupid and Psyche . Considering how mythologies have historically been transmitted and passed down through oral retellings, there

7239-748: The Anomalous Materials Lab. He explores the area, donning his Hazardous Environment Suit, and then enters the test chamber. After the Anti-Mass Spectrometer power is turned up to 105%, the Resonance Cascade disaster occurs, and Freeman must escape the destroyed chamber. In "Unforeseen Consequences", Freeman returns to the Anomalous Materials Lab, fighting his way through the aliens that have started appearing from warps in space. He then makes his way through an office complex. In "We've Got Hostiles", Freeman encounters

7366-468: The Bayesian likelihood ratio of the link. Subjective causal statements of the form "I did b because of a " and subjective counterfactuals "if it had not been for a I would not have done b " are notable items of evidence. Linearity is one of several narrative qualities that can be found in a musical composition. As noted by American musicologist Edward Cone , narrative terms are also present in

7493-601: The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU), a special forces unit of the United States Marine Corps sent to cover up the disaster by killing all of the surviving Black Mesa personnel. He travels through a series of Cold War-era storage rooms to reach the surface. Escaping an Osprey helicopter, he goes back underground in a different location. In "Blast Pit", he must destroy an alien tentacle that has appeared from beneath

7620-491: The Lambda Complex. In "Lambda Core", Gordon floods the facility's nuclear reactor with coolant, fighting off aliens along the way. Navigating through a maze of teleporters in a teleportation lab, he is finally allowed by scientists into a giant teleportation chamber that sends him to Xen, ending the Black Mesa portion of the game. It is revealed in "Friendly Fire" that government black operators have been sent into

7747-471: The Latin verb narrare ("to tell"), which is derived from the adjective gnarus ("knowing or skilled"). The formal and literary process of constructing a narrative—narration—is one of the four traditional rhetorical modes of discourse , along with argumentation , description , and exposition . This is a somewhat distinct usage from narration in the narrower sense of a commentary used to convey

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7874-481: The Norse gods Odin and Tyr reflect the different brands of sovereignty. Odin is the author of the cosmos, and possessor of infinite esoteric knowledge—going so far as to sacrifice his eye for the accumulation of more knowledge. While Tyr—seen as the "just god"—is more concerned with upholding justice, as illustrated by the epic myth of Tyr losing his hand in exchange for the monster Fenrir to cease his terrorization of

8001-445: The ability to manifest itself into an imagined, representational illusion that the reader will create for themselves, and can vary greatly from reader to reader. In other words, the scenarios of a literary text (referring to settings, frames, schemes, etc.) are going to be represented differently for each individual reader based on a multiplicity of factors, including the reader's own personal life experiences that allow them to comprehend

8128-447: The absence of a known author or original narrator, myth narratives are oftentimes referred to as prose narratives . Prose narratives tend to be relatively linear regarding the time period they occur in, and are traditionally marked by its natural flow of speech as opposed to the rhythmic structure found in various forms of literature such as poetry and haikus . The structure of prose narratives allows it to be easily understood by many—as

8255-500: The analytical language about music. The different components of a fugue — subject, answer, exposition, discussion, and summary — can be cited as an example. However, there are several views on the concept of narrative in music and the role it plays. One theory is that of Theodore Adorno , who has suggested that "music recites itself, is its own context, narrates without narrative". Another, is that of Carolyn Abbate , who has suggested that "certain gestures experienced in music constitute

8382-419: The author or creator selects in framing their story: how the narrative is told. It includes the scope of information presented or withheld, the type or style of language used, the channel or medium through which the story is presented, the way and extent to which narrative exposition and other types of commentary are communicated, and the overall point of view or perspective. An example of narrative perspective

8509-459: The center of everyday life. These "functions", as Dumèzil puts it, were an array of esoteric knowledge and wisdom that was reflected by the mythology. The first function was sovereignty —and was divided into two additional categories: magical and juridical. As each function in Dumèzil's theory corresponded to a designated social class in the human realm; the first function was the highest, and

8636-518: The computer hardware sufficient time to load the assets for the next area. The player's speed may be reduced, while story cues are presented to draw the player's attention. The player may be required to enter areas in which their view of the world is plausibly restricted, sometimes referred to as "loading tunnels". With newer consoles, such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S , special SSD arrays alongside software libraries that have

8763-428: The computer or console's memory as the player approaches the edge of one level and the start of a new one. This can effectively make the transition from one level to another level appear to be seamless and avoid the use of loading screens. This is known as level streaming or in-game streaming, and is often used for open world games to give the perception of a fully-interconnected space. There are often tricks used to give

8890-463: The conflict, and then working to resolve it, creating emotional stakes for the characters as well as the audience. (The audience's anxious feeling of anticipation due to high emotional stakes is called suspense .) The setting is the time, place, and context in which a story takes place. It includes the physical and temporal surroundings that the characters inhabit and can also include the social or cultural conventions that affect characters. Sometimes,

9017-543: The dense, contextual, and interpenetrating nature of social forces uncovered by detailed narratives is often more interesting and useful for both social theory and social policy than other forms of social inquiry. Research using narrative methods in the social sciences has been described as still being in its infancy but this perspective has several advantages such as access to an existing, rich vocabulary of analytical terms: plot, genre, subtext, epic, hero/heroine, story arc (e.g., beginning–middle–end), and so on. Another benefit

9144-440: The designers to use. This eliminates the need for designers to access or modify game code . As opposed to the level editing tools sometimes available to the community, level designers often work with placeholders and prototypes aiming for level consistency and clear layout before required artwork is produced by game artists. Many level designers have skills as both a visual artist and game designer , although in recent years

9271-418: The development of psychosis and mental disorders , and its repair said to play an important role in journeys of recovery . Narrative therapy is a form of psychotherapy . Illness narratives are a way for a person affected by an illness to make sense of his or her experiences. They typically follow one of several set patterns: restitution , chaos , or quest narratives. In the restitution narrative,

9398-404: The facility to not only kill any Black Mesa personnel and HECU Marines remaining, but also to detonate a thermonuclear weapon inside the facility, thereby destroying the entire base and everyone in it. Corporal Shephard (whom the player controls), then defuses the weapon after a firefight with a few black operators. The warhead is later reactivated by the G-Man , and it detonates at the end of

9525-483: The first games with a 3D engine to feature hidden features was Wolfenstein 3D , where certain walls could be pushed to reveal hidden passages. Sometimes, a whole level may be designed as a secret level. A bonus stage (also known as a bonus level or bonus round) is a special level within a video game designed to reward the player or players, and typically allows the player to collect extra points or power-ups . Bonus stage either have no enemies or hazards, or replace

9652-469: The following essential elements of narrative are also often referred to as the elements of fiction. Characters are the individual persons inside a work of narrative; their choices and behaviors propel the plot forward. They typically are named humans whose actions and speech sometimes convey important motives. They may be entirely imaginary, or they may have a basis in real-life individuals. The audience's first impressions are influential on how they perceive

9779-409: The form of prose and sometimes poetry , short stories , novels, narrative poems and songs , and imaginary narratives as portrayed in other textual forms, games, or live or recorded performances). Narratives may also be nested within other narratives, such as narratives told by an unreliable narrator (a character ) typically found in the genre of noir fiction . An important part of many narratives

9906-491: The former approach is the arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders (1978), where each level looks the same, repeating endlessly until the player loses all their lives . An example of the latter approach is the arcade platform game Donkey Kong (1981), which uses multiple distinct levels to progress a storyline; as Mario (originally called Jumpman) tries to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong , each level ends with Kong fleeing with Pauline and then Mario having to complete

10033-415: The game because of their limited replay value. A minigame (also spelled mini-game or mini game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short video game often contained within another video game, and sometimes in application software or on a display of any form of hardware. A minigame contains different gameplay elements than the main game, may be optional, and is often smaller or more simplistic than

10160-407: The game creator to use the same load- and rendering routines as the game itself, and may make it easier and more pleasant to create levels. Developers of FOSS -games may argue that a game is not complete until other users easily can add new levels. One of the first 3D games which became popular partially due to level editors and fan-made maps, other game addons, and other works related to the game,

10287-428: The game in which it is contained. Minigames are sometimes also offered separately for free to promote the main game. Some minigames can also be bonus stages or secret levels. They are distinguishable from levels in that a level is an environment bound to a set of mechanics and rules that all defines all other normal levels in a game, whereas a minigame can use different rules and playstyles but may not necessarily be set in

10414-494: The game is usually designed to get players to explore the mechanics of the game, notably in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. Cut scenes may be triggered by events in a level, but require distinctly different skills, and may be produced by a different person or team. The level design process may be iterated several times before achieving the desired outcome. Level designers and concept artists may also be required to provide

10541-648: The game, destroying a significant portion of the facility and any survivors still trapped inside. Series writer Marc Laidlaw initially conceived of Black Mesa, and brainstormed numerous potential names before arriving on the final one, including "Black Butte Missile Base", "Diablo Plains", and "Diablo Mesa". In Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar , he professed that he was glad his final choice was Black Mesa Research Facility, rather than "Black Butte". Black Mesa's themes of science and horror were partially inspired by " The Borderland ", an episode of The Outer Limits that focused on

10668-597: The gameplay. For example, the gameplay may be shifted towards a platformer (by careful placement of platforms) or a puzzle game (by extensive use of buttons, keys, and doors). Some FPS maps may be designed to prevent sniping by not including any long hallways, while other maps may allow for a mix of sniping and closer combat. Gimmick maps are sometimes developed to explore selected features of gameplay, such as sniping or fist fighting. While they are briefly useful to level designers and interesting to experienced players, they are usually not included in final list of levels of

10795-473: The genre. Narrative A narrative , story , or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional ( memoir , biography , news report , documentary , travelogue , etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale , fable , legend , thriller , novel , etc.). Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from

10922-448: The god Freyr —a god who was closely connected to acts of debauchery and overindulging. Dumèzil viewed his theory of trifunctionalism as distinct from other mythological theories because of the way the narratives of Indo-European mythology permeated into every aspect of life within these societies, to the point that the societal view of death shifted away from a primal perception that tells one to fear death, and instead death became seen as

11049-459: The gods. Dumèzil's theory suggests that through these myths, concepts of universal wisdom and justice were able to be communicated to the Nordic people in the form of a mythological narrative. The second function as described by Dumèzil is that of the proverbial hero or champion . These myths functioned to convey the themes of heroism, strength, and bravery and were most often represented in both

11176-420: The human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms, and registers" (Lodge The Art of Fiction 97; see also the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin for expansion of this idea); a narrator or narrator-like voice, which "addresses" and "interacts with" reading audiences (see Reader Response theory); communicates with a Wayne Booth -esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of interpretation, which

11303-461: The human world and the mythological world by valiant warriors. While the gods of the second function were still revered in society, they did not possess the same infinite knowledge found in the first category. A Norse god that would fall under the second function would be Thor —god of thunder. Thor possessed great strength, and was often first into battle, as ordered by his father Odin. This second function reflects Indo-European cultures' high regard for

11430-407: The literary text in a distinct manner from anyone else. Film narrative does not have the luxury of having a textual narrator that guides its audience toward a formative narrative; nor does it have the ability to allow its audience to visually manifest the contents of its narrative in a unique fashion like literature does. Instead, film narratives utilize visual and auditory devices in substitution for

11557-401: The main one. Conflict can be classified into a variety of types, with some common ones being: character versus character, character versus nature, character versus society, character versus unavoidable circumstances, and character versus self. If the conflict is brought to an end towards the end of the story, this is known as resolution . The narrative mode is the set of choices and techniques

11684-475: The most common consensus among academics is that throughout most cultures, traditional mythologies and folklore tales are constructed and retold with a specific narrative purpose that serves to offer a society an understandable explanation of natural phenomena—oftentimes absent of a verifiable author . These explanatory tales manifest themselves in various forms and serve different societal functions, including life lessons for individuals to learn from (for example,

11811-603: The narrative generally starts at the beginning of the story, and ends when the protagonist has resolved the conflict. These kinds of narratives are generally accepted as true within society, and are told from a place of great reverence and sacredness. Myths are believed to occur in a remote past—one that is before the creation or establishment of the civilization they derive from, and are intended to provide an account for things such as humanity's origins, natural phenomenon, and human nature. Thematically, myths seek to provide information about oneself, and many are viewed as among some of

11938-452: The narrator. The role of literary theory in narrative has been disputed; with some interpretations like Todorov's narrative model that views all narratives in a cyclical manner, and that each narrative is characterized by a three part structure that allows the narrative to progress. The beginning stage being an establishment of equilibrium—a state of non conflict, followed by a disruption to this state, caused by an external event, and lastly

12065-422: The next area. These puzzles can slow the momentum down for players of fast action games ; the first Half-Life 's penultimate chapter, "Interloper", featured multiple moving platforms high in the air with enemies firing at the player from all sides. Level design or environment design , is a discipline of game development involving the making of video game levels—locales, stages or missions. This

12192-534: The normal penalties for being struck by enemies or hazards with simply being thrown out of the bonus stage. Many bonus stages need to be activated or discovered in some manner, or certain conditions must be satisfied to access them. Otherwise, they appear after the player has completed a certain number of regular stages. There are many map bugs that level designers try to avoid, but sometimes go unnoticed for some time. A player might get stuck in map geometry with no way to escape or to die. A player might be able to find

12319-703: The office when they discovered and played it the following Monday. The starting monorail sequence became well-known for allowing the player to walk freely around the train and look at whatever they chose, rather than be locked in place. Other scripted events that were notable for allowing the player to retain full control include the Resonance Cascade disaster. The design of Black Mesa was characterized by critics as "mundane", and representing "workaday normality", however, its designers also gave its corporate environments "terrifying potential" by making it possible for aliens to spawn even in apparently empty areas. This allows for numerous potential places of ambush. Its visual design

12446-569: The oldest forms of prose narratives, which grants traditional myths their life-defining characteristics that continue to be communicated today. Another theory regarding the purpose and function of mythological narratives derives from 20th Century philologist Georges Dumézil and his formative theory of the " trifunctionalism " found in Indo-European mythologies. Dumèzil refers only to the myths found in Indo-European societies, but

12573-562: The penultimate act of heroism—by solidifying a person's position in the hall of the gods when they pass from this realm to the next. Additionally, Dumèzil proposed that his theory stood at the foundation of the modern understanding of the Christian Trinity , citing that the three key deities of Odin, Thor, and Freyr were often depicted together in a trio—seen by many as an overarching representation of what would be known today as "divinity". Level streaming In video games ,

12700-632: The performer has the licence to recontextualise the story to a particular audience, often to a younger generation, and are contrasted with epics which consist of formal speech and are usually learned word for word. Narrative is found in all mediums of human creativity, art, and entertainment, including speech , literature , theatre , music and song , comics , journalism , film , television , animation and video , video games , radio , game -play, unstructured recreation , and performance in general, as well as some painting , sculpture , drawing , photography , and other visual arts , as long as

12827-402: The person sees the illness as a temporary detour. The primary goal is to return permanently to normal life and normal health. These may also be called cure narratives . In the chaos narrative, the person sees the illness as a permanent state that will inexorably get worse, with no redeeming virtues. This is typical of diseases like Alzheimer's disease : the patient gets worse and worse, and there

12954-417: The placing of game specific entities (actors), usually with the aid of a level editor. A level editor may be distributed as a complete stand-alone package, at times, rivaling commercial 3D modelling software. There are various steps involved in laying out a map and these steps may vary dramatically across the many different game genres that exist as of the 2020s. General steps include: The first level of

13081-418: The player towards the correct path. Similarly, clearly marked choke-points can be introduced. Another method is strategic placement of obstacles and aesthetic environment props that direct the player's attention to "clear" paths instead. This is often used in closed, "stuffed" environments. Levels may be designed to force the players to explore the map and advance. Most Real-Time Strategy maps give each player

13208-469: The player towards the goal of the level and preventing confusion and idling. This can be accomplished by various means. Often the level layouts feature power-ups and items positioned so that collecting them inevitably makes the player move in the correct direction. This is one of the basic player direction techniques and is most often seen in platformers. Lighting and illumination, as well as distinctly-coloured objects, are often used to unambiguously guide

13335-490: The plots used in traditional folk-tales and identified 31 distinct functional components. This trend (or these trends) continued in the work of the Prague School and of French scholars such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes . It leads to a structural analysis of narrative and an increasingly influential body of modern work that raises important theoretical questions: In literary theoretic approach, narrative

13462-412: The positivist perspective, are somehow inappropriate and inadequate when applied to interpretive research". Several criteria for assessing the validity of narrative research was proposed, including the objective aspect, the emotional aspect, the social/moral aspect, and the clarity of the story. In mathematical sociology, the theory of comparative narratives was devised in order to describe and compare

13589-485: The primary assertion made by his theory is that Indo-European life was structured around the notion of three distinct and necessary societal functions, and as a result, the various gods and goddesses in Indo-European mythology assumed these functions as well. The three functions were organized by cultural significance, with the first function being the most grand and sacred. For Dumèzil, these functions were so vital, they manifested themselves in every aspect of life and were at

13716-399: The process of exposition-development-climax-denouement, with coherent plot lines; a strong focus on temporality including retention of the past, attention to present action, and future anticipation; a substantial focus on character and characterization, "arguably the most important single component of the novel" ( David Lodge The Art of Fiction 67); different voices interacting, "the sound of

13843-450: The reasons was a clear separation between the level files and game engine itself. Half-Life , Quake 3 , and many other games have notable mapping tools and communities focusing on user-generated content . Level design for each individual level in a modern game typically starts with concept art, sketches, renderings, and physical models. Once completed, these concepts transform into extensive documentation, environment modeling, and

13970-505: The responsibility for visual-, structural- and gameplay-related tasks has been increasingly divided among several specialists. A wide variety of tools may be used by someone designing and making a level. Although it is faster to design models and textures with general-purpose multimedia development tools, games usually require the data to be in a unique format suited for that game's engine . For this, specific compilers and converters of models, textures, and audio data may be required to lay out

14097-498: The same, except that some authors encode their texts with distinctive literary qualities that distinguish them from other forms of discourse. Nevertheless, there is a clear trend to address literary narrative forms as separable from other forms. This is first seen in Russian Formalism through Victor Shklovsky 's analysis of the relationship between composition and style, and in the work of Vladimir Propp , who analyzed

14224-514: The setting may resemble a character in the sense that it has specific traits, undergoes actions that affect the plot, and develops over the course of the story. Themes are the major underlying ideas presented by a story, generally left open to the audience's own interpretation. Themes are more abstract than other elements and are subjective : open to discussion by the audience who, by the story's end, can argue about which big ideas or messages were explored, what conclusions can be drawn, and which ones

14351-493: The shortest accounts of events (for example, the cat sat on the mat or a brief news item) and the most extended historical or biographical works, diaries, travelogues, and so forth, as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms. In the study of fiction, it is usual to divide novels and shorter stories into first-person and third-person narratives. As an adjective, "narrative" means "characterized by or relating to storytelling"; thus, narrative technique

14478-582: The story revolves around, who encounter a central conflict, or who gain knowledge or grow significantly across the story. Some stories may also have antagonists , characters who oppose, hinder, or fight against the protagonist. In many traditional narratives, the protagonist is specifically a hero : a sympathetic person who battles (often literally) for morally good causes. The hero may face a villain : an antagonist who fights against morally good causes or even actively perpetrates evil. Many other ways of classifying characters exist too. Broadly speaking, conflict

14605-448: The structures (expressed as "and" in a directed graph where multiple causal links incident into a node are conjoined) of action-driven sequential events. Narratives so conceived comprise the following ingredients: The structure ( directed graph ) is generated by letting the nodes stand for the states and the directed edges represent how the states are changed by specified actions. The action skeleton can then be abstracted, comprising

14732-412: The theory of Bayesian Narratives conceives a narrative as a directed graph comprising multiple causal links (social interactions) of the general form: "action a causes action b in a specified context". In the absence of sufficient comparative cases to enable statistical treatment of the causal links, items of evidence in support and against a particular causal link are assembled and used to compute

14859-541: The very role of literariness in narrative, as well as the role of narrative in literature. Meaning, narratives, and their associated aesthetics, emotions, and values have the ability to operate without the presence of literature, and vice versa. According to Didier Costa, the structural model used by Todorov and others is unfairly biased toward a Western interpretation of narrative, and that a more comprehensive and transformative model must be created in order to properly analyze narrative discourse in literature. Framing also plays

14986-435: The warrior class, and explains the belief in an afterlife that rewards a valiant death on the battlefield; for the Norse mythology, this is represented by Valhalla . Lastly, Dumèzil's third function is composed of gods that reflect the nature and values of the most common people in Indo-European life. These gods often presided over the realms of healing, prosperity, fertility, wealth, luxury, and youth—any kind of function that

15113-465: The way in which signs are combined into codes to transmit messages. This is part of a general communication system using both verbal and non-verbal elements, and creating a discourse with different modalities and forms. In On Realism in Art , Roman Jakobson attests that literature exists as a separate entity. He and many other semioticians prefer the view that all texts, whether spoken or written, are

15240-508: The work's creator intended. Thus, the audience may come to different conclusions about a work's themes than what the creator intended or regardless of what the creator intended. They can also develop new ideas about its themes as the work progresses. In India, archaeological evidence of the presence of stories is found at the Indus valley civilization site, Lothal . On one large vessel, the artist depicts birds with fish in their beaks resting in

15367-425: The work's title or other programmatic information provided by the composer. However, Abbate has revealed numerous examples of musical devices that function as narrative voices, by limiting music's ability to narrate to rare "moments that can be identified by their bizarre and disruptive effect". Various theorists share this view of narrative appearing in disruptive rather than normative moments in music. The final word

15494-508: Was Doom . The development of various third-party editors led to the formation of an online community trading fan-made maps. A level editor is often limited to designing levels for only a certain game engine . Developing a level editor takes a lot of time; it is more time- and cost-efficient to release multiple games using the same engine instead of developing a new engine and level editor for each game. As level editors generally allow for limited game-development work, to make larger changes to

15621-417: Was called dystopian , featuring large amounts of solid-state hardware, much of which is malfunctioning or in disrepair even prior to the alien invasion. Scenes in Black Mesa have been described as "industrial disarray" and "bureaucracy run amok", while the facility itself was called "an amalgam of every top-secret military-scientific installation ever created or imagined". The Resonance Cascade in Black Mesa

15748-435: Was easily related to by the common peasant farmer in a society. Just as a farmer would live and sustain themselves off their land, the gods of the third function were responsible for the prosperity of their crops, and were also in charge of other forms of everyday life that would never be observed by the status of kings and warriors, such as mischievousness and promiscuity. An example found in Norse mythology could be seen through

15875-457: Was noted as being a metaphor for how the laboratory destabilizes the difference between "inside" and "outside". Its teleportation experiments caused Black Mesa's features to be reproduced upon "the planet at large". Black Mesa's design has been credited as inspiring future cinematic shooters, including the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises, being called a "revolutionary step" for

16002-445: Was proposed, resting on the epistemological assumption that human beings make sense of random or complex multicausal experience by the imposition of story structures. Human propensity to simplify data through a predilection for narratives over complex data sets can lead to the narrative fallacy . It is easier for the human mind to remember and make decisions on the basis of stories with meaning, than to remember strings of data. This

16129-469: Was reserved for the status of kings and other royalty. In an interview with Alain Benoist, Dumèzil described magical sovereignty as such, "[Magical Sovereignty] consists of the mysterious administration, the 'magic' of the universe, the general ordering of the cosmos. This is a 'disquieting' aspect, terrifying from certain perspectives. The other aspect is more reassuring, more oriented to the human world. It

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