The Importance of a Good Interface Without a fluid and effective control scheme,
the best game feature is reduced to an unplayable source of frustration
Without displaying proper information, the player becomes a helpless victim of circumstance
The interface is the designer’s sole means of communicating with the player – in a sense, it defines the game
The Importance of a Good Interface In some genres, the interface is the game –
sometimes mastering intricate keystroke combinations is the heart of the gameplay
A bad interface can ruin a great game – e.g. if reaching a state in which gameplay can occur takes up a measurable share of the total game session, the UI is flawed
Games are holistic – The experience is diminished if the UI clashes with the visual style or rhythm of the game
The interface requires significant resources – Flight sims can have half the screen taken up by the interface – verbal UIs may need dedicated hardware
Visual Display Rules (P&A)
Stimuli away from the center of focus should be based on variations of luminance instead of color, and vice versa
The larger the display, the higher the frame rate that you need
Only 25% of the display should be devoted to significant information
Visual Display Rules (P&A)
The eye is most sensitive to changes in the upper-right quadrant of the screen, least sensitive to lower-right.
Different screen layout for rookies and veterans of games using keyboard interfaces
The eye can quickly process up to 5 different colors, 4 bars of different length, and 24 different angles
Input Sequences
A computer keyboard has over 100 keys, a typical console controller, ~12
PC games can support many different commands, but requires a great deal of hand movement
Console games are more likely to require multiple-key commands, context-sensitive commands, or both
For a game with a large control set, initiating the command will take longer on the PC, but completing the command will be faster
The Six Most Important Things to Know 1 – Consistency
Frame rate, art style, sound style, model/texture quality, object silhouettes, and lighting/shadows should all be consistent throughout the gaming experience
People are very good at noticing things that are out of place, which hurts, if not kills, the illusion of immersion
The Six Most Important Things to Know 2 – Rhythm
Rhythmic patters often emerge during gameplay – DDR exploits this directly
Attack patterns in Doom Can you play Donkey Kong with your eyes
closed? Design the control timing to match aural and
visual cues in the game Flying a dragon
The Six Most Important Things to Know 3 – Expressiveness
Humans have a need for self-expression Try to allow players to express themselves Custom player names, clan affiliations, logos,
preset phrases, colors, model type, taunts, salutes, weapons, and chat
The Sims takes this to an extreme, and is one of the key features that led to its success
The Six Most Important Things to Know 4 – Orthogonality
Distinct actions should be kept separately controllable without interfering with each other
On a control pad, the Up and Right buttons are orthogonal, but the Up and Down buttons are not
i.e. “fire” and “dodge” bad, “jump” and “crawl” good
Be sure to map non-orthogonal commands to non-orthogonal control states
The Six Most Important Things to Know 5 – Context
If your control scheme is limited, you may need to have one button do multiple actions based on context
In Hubie, Up will climb when there’s a wall nearby, otherwise Up will jump
Max Payne overloads the “use” key with the “zoom” key when the sniper rifle is equipped
In Eternal Darkness, the B button both shoots the gun and opens doors - problem!
The Six Most Important Things to Know 6 – Fluidity
As games become more complex, it becomes more and more important to keep the interface fluid and natural
How best to implement an item selection screen when the list becomes huge?
Most players like the “flower” layout in The Sims, which would map well to a directional controller
A Fork in the Tale
Released January 1997 Written by Advance Reality Published by AnyRiver Entertainment Distributed by Electronic Arts Hired UI expert Jeff Johnson as consultant to
solve UI design problems reported in playtesting
A Fork in the Tale
First-person FMV game Follows “web” design of a Choose Your Own
Adventure (as opposed to “tree” design) Real-time – icons appear briefly every few
seconds for player to make choice before a default is chosen automatically
The Problem
The symbols for controlling the movie action were much to complex for players
Symbols were non-intuitive, unsystematic, and numerous
Players needed to choose symbol quickly, so there had to be near-instant recognition
The Assignment
Devise a new control scheme Organize and represent protagonist actions Keep the game’s mysteries and puzzles
challenging, but make operating the game as simple as possible
The Initial Analysis
Too many symbols – set into color, shape, and texture categories – over 200 total!
More semantic resolution than necessary – each action situation was different
Similar representation of different actions – hindered recognition of type of action
Flawed implementation – different editors used only symbols they liked, and added more
Requirements/Constraints
Keep clickable action symbols that appear at the bottom of the screen during choice points in the game
All available actions are presented simultaneously
No text 3D look for icons – artistic integrity
First Recommendations
Categorize protagonist actions into six categories: navigate, look, interact, speak, think, memorize
Group into superordinate classes – physical movements and speech/thought actions
Physical actions would be represented by semitransparent icons that “float” over the scene
Speech/thought would be represented by cartoon speech balloons containing a symbol representing specific action
Redesign Speech and Thought
12 speech actions: statement, question, accept, refuse, offer help, aggressive/insult, sarcastic, humorous, frustrated/needing help, flatter/praise/thank, grovel/beg/plead, remember
For thought balloons, use a ‘?’ for Question, comedy mask for Humorous, and a shaking fist for Aggressive
Designer preferred common visual theme for speech symbols
Compromise was to use human figures making mime gestures
The Moral of the Story
Finding the right picture to convey a verbal concept can be very hard. Some verbal concepts are best expressed verbally!
If symbols in a set depict their meanings well, users can discriminate and recognize them even if the set is large
A universal emotion scale may not exist – designs that map color to emotion are risky
The Future of Interface
Lately, we have force feedback technology, steering wheels, flight sticks, Mech suits (sort of), dance pads, fake snowboards, etc.
Better speech recognition and NLP Better speech synthesis, with changes in
tone, rhythm, modulation, and prosody (metrics)
What would you think if a synthetic character wouldn’t make eye contact with you, and repeatedly scratched his nose?
Homework #4
Design a specific interface for your game Visual layout General “button” commands Due Thursday 11/20
Final Project
Due Thursday 12/4
Either:
Instruction manual for a board game, at least equal to the
complexity of Clue. Include board diagram
or:
Design a digital, rule-based structured game. Explain
what you think the emergent properties would be. 3-4
pages
or:
6-8 page Design doc for a story/character based game.
Same restrictions as Homework #3