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Game interfaces
Peewi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
People talk about games all the time, but I don't see people talking about their interfaces very often. Maybe I'm just weird, but when I see a new game I tend to think "what does the menus look like?" and the menus of a game is something that is rarely shown before release.
Let's talk about some game menus, shall we?
These are the main menus of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii:
As you can see, these two games have very different menus. Brawl focuses on game modes and Mario Kart Wii focuses on the amount of players.
People familiar with Brawl will know that with the exception of Tourney and Rotation, the modes found within the Group option is actually playable with just a single player. Likewise most modes found within Solo can be played with two players. In all cases, the amount of players can be changed in between matches without leaving the character select screen. Also of note is that the Vault, Options and Data menu items, while smaller than Group, Solo and Nintendo WFC are still pretty big, even though the buttons do not lead to gameplay (with the exception of the coin launcher minigame found within the vault).
Offhand, the only complaint that I have with the menus in Brawl is that GameCube controllers are always assigned to the player slot corresponding to the port they're connected to and no Wii controller can use this spot without unplugging the controller.
Mario Kart Wii, on the other hand, has single and multiplayer strictly seperated. It even has the number of players in multiplayer seperated. This means that if the amount of players change, you have to back out all the way to the main menu. If you're playing online with one local player and wish to switch to two local players (or vice versa), you have to disconnect from Nintendo WFC completely and then reconnect again.
Let's talk about something not Nintendo now: Valve makes some absolutely fantastic games, but I must admit to hating the window based interface used in all their recent games. Originally, your friends list was accessed through the game menu and the window based interface allowed for having multiple chats going at once. However, the ingame friends list and chat has been replaced by the Steam overlay, so the window based interface is no longer needed for the ingame menu. I don't see any benefit from the ability of having the server browser, achievement list and options open all at once.
Even if your interface isn't that great, I still say that consistency should be maintained, something that haven't been done in Team Fortress 2 with the weapon loadout/stats screen taking up the entire screen.
A game whose menus I've heard complaints about is Unreal Tournament 3, which certainly is easier to navigate with the keyboard than the mouse.
A thing that is horrible in all PC games is if the keyboard can't be used for text input. Granted, this doesn't happen that often, but there certainly are examples of bad ports of console games that features this. Examples I can name offhand are Rayman 2 and 3. When naming your save file in those games, you can't just type it, but have to use decidedly console-ish text input.
So, let's all talk about game interfaces. I've mostly talked about menus, but we could also have it include stuff like HUDs.
Let's talk about some game menus, shall we?
These are the main menus of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii:
As you can see, these two games have very different menus. Brawl focuses on game modes and Mario Kart Wii focuses on the amount of players.
People familiar with Brawl will know that with the exception of Tourney and Rotation, the modes found within the Group option is actually playable with just a single player. Likewise most modes found within Solo can be played with two players. In all cases, the amount of players can be changed in between matches without leaving the character select screen. Also of note is that the Vault, Options and Data menu items, while smaller than Group, Solo and Nintendo WFC are still pretty big, even though the buttons do not lead to gameplay (with the exception of the coin launcher minigame found within the vault).
Offhand, the only complaint that I have with the menus in Brawl is that GameCube controllers are always assigned to the player slot corresponding to the port they're connected to and no Wii controller can use this spot without unplugging the controller.
Mario Kart Wii, on the other hand, has single and multiplayer strictly seperated. It even has the number of players in multiplayer seperated. This means that if the amount of players change, you have to back out all the way to the main menu. If you're playing online with one local player and wish to switch to two local players (or vice versa), you have to disconnect from Nintendo WFC completely and then reconnect again.
Let's talk about something not Nintendo now: Valve makes some absolutely fantastic games, but I must admit to hating the window based interface used in all their recent games. Originally, your friends list was accessed through the game menu and the window based interface allowed for having multiple chats going at once. However, the ingame friends list and chat has been replaced by the Steam overlay, so the window based interface is no longer needed for the ingame menu. I don't see any benefit from the ability of having the server browser, achievement list and options open all at once.
Even if your interface isn't that great, I still say that consistency should be maintained, something that haven't been done in Team Fortress 2 with the weapon loadout/stats screen taking up the entire screen.
A game whose menus I've heard complaints about is Unreal Tournament 3, which certainly is easier to navigate with the keyboard than the mouse.
A thing that is horrible in all PC games is if the keyboard can't be used for text input. Granted, this doesn't happen that often, but there certainly are examples of bad ports of console games that features this. Examples I can name offhand are Rayman 2 and 3. When naming your save file in those games, you can't just type it, but have to use decidedly console-ish text input.
So, let's all talk about game interfaces. I've mostly talked about menus, but we could also have it include stuff like HUDs.
Peewi on
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Posts
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows was traditional, but minimalistic.
Fable II had minimal HUD and disappearing portions depending on what needed to be shown at the time. It's interface was horrible.
Dead Space integrates the HUD with the game, and puts the interface into the game. Works well.
Saints row 2 had a nice weapon selection circle.
should i rotate this ammo and lose the old pistol? or should i wait and sell it?
and i'll never forget that time i accidently tossed out my infinite rocket launcher (quick restart of course, but made my blood run cold for .5 seconds)
Generally developers would really benefit from hireing competent interaction designers. Occationally you do find a good example or two, like the aforementioned BG&E's spiral menus, but most often the quality, usability and efficiency of game interfaces range from "ok, I guess" to "abysmal" IMO.
I liked the idea of the HUD in Deus Ex: invisible War (it was curved as though an overlay on your eye) and thought it was executed reasonably well (I played it on the Xbox, in fairness), but the inventory system was stupidly hard to navigate with the Xbox controller.
The fact that Mario Kart Wii drops you back to the main screen to change characters in multiplayer is completely retarded.
Loved the No More Heroes pause screen, done all in pixels like an old 8-bit game. I think the overall usability of the screen wasn't much greater than other games, but fantastic art design made it memorable.
I really hate that when you press the pause button, it takes a second before the menu appears and the way the map would adjust when you changed zoom level, but otherwise I liked it. One thing I really like about NMH is it's behavior when you start the game the first time. The menu is limited to choosing your difficulty, then you're in control and go down to your bike before the intro movie starts playing. And if you have a save file, it shows Travis on the toilet where you last saved and pops you into the game immedietly.
edit: aw hell.
Unless you meant to write "can't", your post makes zero sense.
It's just a shame the game was so damn buggy.
doh
For any game with a grid-based inventory, the whole Temporary Space thing is one of the greatest inventions ever.
Not the devs fault, really, but it was a pain in the ass.
Note how it does not take up 1/3 the screen with useless buttons that everyone ignores in favour of hotkeys anyway.
RT has one of the greatest menus in the history of the computer game. It is phenomenal. I've thought this for a long time. And have come close to making threads about the greatness of it's menu for a long time. It's seems crazy to talk about the menu to a game, but RT proves that menus can make or break a game.
I wanted to find a video of it but I couldn't. Basically it's a very pretty checker board of boxes - each with a tiny pic that summarises the stage, whilst wonderful music plays and swirly boxes fly past in the background.
This picture is the best I could fine, it is the basic layout of the menu, but doesn't represent the screen at all well. It may well be a sprite theft or something.
The asethitic pleasure of completing a column of boxes and seeing another open up, can not be understated.
Then after that a perfect play of a level gives you a little gold medal in the corner of the box. Despite it being just a few pixels in size this little touch was enough to drive me to complete every level till I got a full
checkboard of medals.
Compared to the power of a increasing number to gamerpoint fans, a properly designed menu is far superior. If it is a) instantly responsive and b) constantly rewards your progress through the game visually.
So many games could sell their different modes and so on to such a greater extent if they stole from RT.
It's wonderful.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Pressing start at the "Press Start" screen is particularly awesome, though, and makes up for this.
One of the worst I've ever dealt with was in Makai Kingdom though.
Say you want to make a facility.
You go to make a wish, but you already have 4 facilities, so you have to go into a different menu to remove one of them.
Then, you choose the character to sacrifice, but they are in one of your facilities, so you have to go into a different menu to remove the character.
Then, you choose the same character, but you forgot to take off all of their equipment, because only naked people can sacrifice themselves for whatever reason. Different menu.
Finally, you can resummon your character, at which point you'll immediately equip them and place them in a facility.
They could have made it so much smoother. And they should have let you have more buildings in your town! I meticulously arranged all my characters, but they had nowhere cool to stand around.
Worst menu system ever.
I haven't played it myself, but it's horrible how much you have to do just to exit the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwOvuY0UbFM
EDIT: That video has annoying music. Let's try another one.
Every single time you start up the game, you see your leaderboard status on each of the six modes at one glance, and since that's the button to go into each mode, you're pretty much forced to look at it. What this means is that instead of relegating the leaderboard to a different screen, which almost no one will actively look at, your score and the score of a few people above and below you are always sitting in front of your nose. I love it because it reminds me of what modes I need to work on and which ones I can lord over other people.
What's also nice is that when you're actually playing, you'll see the high score of the person one rank above you in the top-right of the screen, silently mocking you, and if you manage to pass it it'll bump you up one rank and then display the new next person above you, until you're at the top of your friends leaderboard, at which point it'll display your own high score so you can challenge yourself. It's so simple, but so addictive.
I also agree with Echo, and originally came in to talk about the BG&E spiral text interface. It's the only interface that's actually usable with an analog stick, and I have no idea why other games haven't stolen it wholesale.
Breakdown had a nice minimal HUD.
Yes, pressing alt-f4 was such a pain in the ass. I think we can just add any game that doesn't have a quit to windows function as part of it's pause menu as being a failure in design.
As for huds, I liked metroid prime's visor, at least I think it was that game that would clear off rain spots/frost/snow as well as see samus reflected in it undercertain conditions.
Still, I enjoy playing it from time to time.
that was a cool game
In SMB2, they switched to be like a gumball machine where you use the joystick to cycle through letters one-at-a-time. And you have to watch an explanation of how to use the thing every time you get to enter letters, with no way to skip the instructions. It's really stupid, especially in light of how fun the system was in SMB1.
And in case anyone is wondering, it feels very strange to be using SMB as a game acronym that has nothing to do with Super Mario Bros.
I really don't notice it at all.
I kinda like it, and the grid wipe effect when you respawn. Reminds me of Republic Commando.
I never asked for this!
AC was a shite port overall.
GRID
DIRT
Edit: aww serious blakout? Beat'd