Developing a New Major

big questions - main components of game interface, diff between passive/active interface, between manual/visual interface, importance of usability, questions from the end of the ch - #10 - define the visual interface style of a fave game, #6 - choose a game and suggest at least 3 changes to the interface to make it more usable. we need to bring in the buzz game and look at the interface

interface is what connects the player to your game

player centered design - gotta focus on the player and what they need to play your game, how the interface can help them succeed, can’t always have cutting edge interface if that isn’t understandable by the player - game is interactive - players hve to have something to interact with - and that’s the interface - with no interface - game is just a tv show that player watches

interface has to let player do actions (like navigating the world, pick up stuff, shoot gun) and get info (like player status)

gameplay + interface = interactivity

interface must reflect story, must have visual style that matches the mood, time period, environment of the game, if it doesn’t it breaks the immersion, can’t just plunk a standard interface down on top of every game

interface has to take into account character aspects, must support all the things character is able to do, interface gives them access to weapons, to clothes/objects

some people consider music/game audio part of the interface - it can give the player info about upcoming actions

interface and the world - needs to give the player info about where they are in the world and how to navigate, maps

types of interface - manual (hardware input devices, dance pads, bongos, driving wheel, control triggers, keys, mouse buttons, things used to slecct weapons, move, communicate) and visual (software based onscreen, health bars) interfaces

arcade games never developed standards for either manual or visual interfaces - all kinds of different hardware - joysticks and trackballs, one or two buttons, has example of the “brave firefighter” game where you put out the fire with a fire hose, karaoke games with microphones, sub games with periscopes, manual interface usually built into hte cabinet; visual interfaces simple, focused on functionality not pretty looks because processors simple, didn’t want to read a lot of instructions so games had to be simple enough to understand with minimal amount of instructions, maybe 1 instruction screen, mostly passive interface, little active because of processing nad hardware limitation

text adventures - 2 word commands: go north, take book

point and click manual interface of computer (home pc) games let user start to be more directly involved in the game, also had the near standard wasd movement keys, joysticks, steering wheels, airplane controller sticks, visuals - passive HUDs, active menu series

consoles - manual interface - new is the Wii, lots of peripherals like guns and joysticks, fishing rods, pics of controllers for next gen consoles on p. 236, now controllers have rumble packs to give player additional feedback; visual - if multiplayer then no hidden info since everyone looking at hte same screen and everyone can see everybody’s info

handhelds - interface has to be flexible since some handhelds are also wireless devices and/or phones, small screen so tough to fit interface in, might take a series of menus to get info instead of real estate eating buttons on teh screen, DS - you can put theinterface (passive) stuff on the top screen

online games - if mmo then people in a guild need to be able to access status info about everyone they’re playing with, need communication (public and private) interfaces

some genres seem better suited to one kind of interface over others - they say rts seem to work best with keyboard  + mouse input and not so good iwth console controller. some standards are developing tho to move rts to consoles - started with pikmin

visual interface

• active interface = stuff ya click on in the interface, things player can manipulate, menus, action interface where player pts in choices, like The Sims radial system (circle on teh ground around the target character/object
• passive - not directly manipulated by player, status items, heads up displays, small boxes in a corner, info the player needs to enjoy the game

things to put in the interface - score (numbers, letter grades, sometimes ongoing score, sometimes just levels and number of missions completed), lives & power (remaining lives especially in arcade games where you couldn’t save and power = health bar which could be shown as a percent or a color change bar and when color is gone the player is dead), map (macro and micro views of hte world, might sow what’s going on in another part of the world), character creation interface (lots of things to change about a character, usually used during initial play of hte game but could be accessed at any time, inventory interface here too)

start screen - started in arcade games - choose play   mode, now iwht pc and console games - might get a high res pic from teh game and a start button, could have options to load game, tutorial, instructions, select a character, play mode, setup

section about interface specifics for different kinds of genres  - not so interested in this at this point - like with adventure they mention that interface can break the immersive illusion

usability - interface is supposed to be functional and to be that it has to be usable, need to think like an engineer than an artist - interface can’t be cryptic or unintuitive or have obscure graphics, cant be too complex, cant be too simplistic either so that it limits the player’s choices, can’t be inefficient (make player go thru too many menus to get to what htey want to do), can’t be too cluttered or take up too much of hte screen

elegant interface - efficient, consistent, clear, function

companies do usability testing - do it early on with just placeholder art so can focus on functions and not art style - get input from real users and sometimes it can be really shocking and you have to make a lot of changes

interface is sort of in the way - it’s the way player does stuff, the tools they have to get the job done but they sometimes are too obvious and make the player very aware that they’re playing a game

section on accessibility for people with handicaps - not too interested in that right now

lots of ways to save the game - quick save as you play, a one button manual interface option without it being mentioned in teh visual interface, auto save or save at check points, save to a file - interrupts the game to do the save, there’s an option on the active interface, can save versions as ou go so you can back up if ya want - really breaks the immersiveness because you have to pick a file name and location - like saving a word processing file

big debate in the industry about “save game” options - lets players solve puzzles by trial and error (just keep trying, die, restart, try again) instead of by skill. Breaks the designer-planned uninterrupted action sequence. If you can save at any time then there’s nothing at stake in a game since any disaster can be wiped away by just reloading a saved game. some games reward palyer for not saving

colossal cave - http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/gallery/adventure/index.html

• add this next time - text file with rules, description of narrative, character creation, room descriptions - gets them to think about hte objects in the game and what those objects do and how they interact with the player - think of verbs that players in your 3d game would do - you can “talk” thru the game - http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt
• look at the text game - don’t have the distractions of interface or graphics or 3d models - can focus on the interaction, on the story, with the limited interaction - like doing an analog prototypejava window but the text entering seems the same, some nice hints on the side like using verbose, also check out the hints at http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/d_hints/index.html
• can talk about dictionary, total lack of cues as to what to do first, next
• look at the depth of description, what would help make it more “visual” while staying text
• one activity - try lots of words/verbs - what works/what doesn’t? What verbs do you want to add and why?
• notice how it’s different from a novel - still don’t know what order player will do stuff, don’t know if they’ll pick up things, store things and come back
• after playing text game - look at this grapic adventure game - http://www.albartus.com/motas/ - moment of time and space - still very limited “vocabulary”, things have to be done in certain order, no way to back up or learn without restarting

some interesting rules for games from the early days some of which still seem to apply

1.  Not to be killed without warning
2.  Not to be given horribly unclear hints
3.  To be able to win without experience of past lives
4.  To be able to win without knowledge of future events
5.  Not to have the game closed off without warning
6.  Not to need to do unlikely things
7.  Not to need to do boring things for the sake of it
8.  Not to have to type exactly the right verb
9.  To be allowed reasonable synonyms
10.  To have a decent parser
11.  To have reasonable freedom of action
12.  Not to depend much on luck
13.  To be able to understand a problem once it is solved (even if ya solve it by luck it should make sense)
14.  Not to be given too many red herrings
15.  To have a good reason why something is impossible (arbitrray reasons are not funny)
16.  Not to need to be American (british spelling of common words should be accepted)
17.  To know how the game is getting on (if hte end is getting near

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