"experiential density" — the amount of "things" that happen to and are done by the player per unit of time and area of a map. Our goal was that, once active, the player never had to wait too long before the next stimulus, be it monster, special effect, plot point, action sequence, and so on. player acknowledgment. This means that the game world must acknowledge players every time they perform an action.

Previous Posts The Game Entity – Part I, A Retrospect The Game Entity – Part II, The Life Cycle and Processing Architecture The Game Entity – Part III, Components The Game Entity – Part IV, Game Systems

There are buckets of great articles out there explaining the entity/component game design paradigm from different perspectives, and it’s the kind of concept where your understanding really benefits from a broad exposure. Below is just a handful of the ones I’ve found useful in my adventures. You can, of course, find plenty more by Googling “entity component game”.

This is the online version of the first edition of the book Programming in Lua, a detailed and authoritative introduction to all aspects of Lua programming written by Lua's chief architect.

SLUDGE (standing for Scripting Language for Unhindered Development of a Gaming Environment) is a system by which anyone (within reason) can make an adventure game. It runs in any recent version of Windows and now also on Mac OS X and Linux. It's high-res (any resolution you want) and uses 32-bit colour. To make your own SLUDGE games you'll be needing the SLUDGE Development Kit; to play the games, the SLUDGE Engine is required (it's included in the development kit download and should typically be distributed along with the games).