#critical path

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It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate. You can deceive others, you can deceive your brain-self, but you can't deceive your mind-self — for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible. Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate.

—R Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (1981)

Environments, like everything else we build for a game, are subject to prioritization. We spend more time on the more important areas of the environment, and we spend less time on the less important areas of the environment. Typically, the metric by which we make those decisions is how much engagement with that area we expect from players. The more players we expect to engage with the environment, the higher priority it is to look good. 

The most important part of any environment is the critical path - the route and areas that we expect (almost) all players to go through in order to progress through the game. The critical path gets the most attention because it gets the most play - every player must go through it. Less important areas would be the optional side content - the more obscure the content, the less important it tends to be. Optional quests and objectives where we expect players to visit are less important than the critical path, but still important because we expect many players to engage. The least important areas are those where we don't place any content for the player to find - the edges of the map, the tops of unclimbable rocks, behind the blocked-off alleys in towns, and so on.

The amount of detail put into each area is also subject to its own prioritization. The placement of environment objects for important gameplay purposes (e.g. this area is a designated boss fight arena, that is where the environmental damage zones are supposed to be, here is where the boss's reinforcements will spawn, etc.) will take priority over most other forms of environmental detail. Equal to or perhaps slightly below gameplay needs are the needs for theming and the general environment - this area must have enough major props placed to make it feel like it is consistent with the rest of the office - this is the cubicle farm, these are the meeting rooms, that is the kitchen, those are the bathrooms. Then, once we have the important layout and areas designated, we can start filling in the individual area details - this cube belongs to Neelo who adores her pet cat, that one is Desmal's so it is very depressed-looking, and Bayn's cube is has lots of little action figures because she loves them so.

As you can see, this tends to fall out in a fairly intuitive descending hierarchy. Making the area where all of the players will have to visit look good is more important than making the part where few players will see. Making the office look like an office in general is more important than making making the cubicles look perfect at the expense of the rest of the office. Making all of the cubicles look like cubicles is more important than making one cubicle look great. And, if there’s still time left after we do the heavy lifting, we can spend it tweaking the details and making it pretty.

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Trying out Critical Path for an hour

Task Name Duration Predecessors ES EF LS LF SLACK

Task Name Duration Predecessors ES EF LS LF SLACK for $5 Only (Instant Download)

Sample Answer Given Below

The project will be completed on 8th January, 2016The project will take a year and 6 days to complete. Based on the TABLE 1, the Critical path is 2,3,5,8,9,11,12,13,15,16,17 (activities with 0 slack)

Based on Table 1: The activity that has the greatest amount of slack is…