A useful user interface, part 1: Play controls

As a professional "web guy," I have more than a passing interest in user interfaces. The most brilliant concept or the most beautiful design means nothing if people can't accomplish their desired tasks on the web. The same is true, of course, for any kind of application, serious or silly.

For SPUDZOOKA to appeal a wide audience, its play controls and graphical interface must be simple, intuitive, and easy to master. Frustration is the opposite of fun. I don't know yet if I've succeeded in delivering the fun, but here's a look (in two parts) at the basic process I used to design the game's various interface elements.

Play controls
SPUDZOOKA is primarily a target-shooting game, but it borrows a lot of its play controls from first-person shooters. The challenge is to keep the controls as streamlined as possible. Here's what the player needs to be able to do, and the reasoning behind the control scheme I chose for each task:

• Aim and fire the cannon -- The goal of each level is to destroy as many targets as possible within a set time limit, so aiming and firing is kind of important. Thankfully, as anyone who ever played a first-person shooter will know, the mouse provides a perfect interface for this: move the mouse to aim; click to shoot. Easy enough.
• Switch weapons -- Lots of target-shooting games stop there, but SPUDZOOKA lets you carry more than one potato cannon at a time, so there has to be a way to switch between them. Another first-person shooter convention fits well here: using the number keys to switch weapons.
• Switch ammo -- Yes, more switching. Clearly everyone knows that different spud cannons shoot different kinds of ammunition, so I had to work that into the game. The number keys are out for this one (even the higher numbers), since they are being used to switch weapons. I could map several letter keys to various ammo types, but that still seemed redundant and possibly confusing. Instead I decided to use a single button (tab) to cycle through all the available ammo types for the active cannon. The disadvantage here is that it could take a bit longer to select the desired ammo. However, because each cannon will only be able to shoot a few types of ammo, a cycling control seemed to work well enough (let me know if you disagree).

That's it. Seasoned FPS gamers (who made it this far) may have noticed that one important control is missing: the ability to walk around. Seems like a big omission, I know, but I have decided for the time being that the player will be stationary. I'm sure it seems limiting, but there are a couple of reasons for it.

1. The levels are small and potato cannons shoot a long way. If you can run around and shoot things, it might be too easy. Enabling really slow movement would probably irritate people. Better not to risk it.
2. I don't want to complicate things. A lot of the skill in FPS games comes from the player's ability to move and aim at the same time. I know this because I am quite inept at jumping while shooting in Halo, which seems to be necessary for survival in multiplayer mode. While plenty of people certainly possess these skills (they have all killed me in Halo), I don't want those skills to be a requirement for my game. I want to focus the player's attention on choosing the right cannon and ammunition for clearing obstacles and hitting targets, not on maneuvering quickly and dexterously through space.

Once you play through a few levels, you can tell me whether you're completely bored standing in place. In part 2, a look at the graphical user interface.

Good progress...and a long way to go

SPUDZOOKA is coming along pretty nicely now. I've got the backbone of the game working, which means that it's possible to play through several levels and edit your potato cannon in between. You can also change cannons and ammunition on the fly. Everything fits together, and I don't get any code errors when I play through it. All things considered, that's pretty good.

The bulk of the work now is in two places:

• The graphical interface. I need to make it prettier and, I hope, completely intuitive. The goal is for people to be able to play with minimal instructions. I figure a casual game like this can't survive more than a few seconds of, "What am I supposed to do?"
• Level design. I've got a couple test levels built, just to get the flow of the game set up, but they will need to be completely redone. Thankfully I set things up so building new levels shouldn't be too hard.
  
• Ok, three places. I also need to polish up the sound effects and come up with some music. Naturally I plan to compose and record it myself (I've gotten this far, why bring in anyone else now?) That could take a while, but it'll be fun.
• Well...maybe four (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). The whole point of building this thing is for people to play. So I have to put the game out there. At the moment the plan is to publish it on a web site, which I have to build. I don't envision anything too complicated, but it'll take a little time.

My goal is to have the game itself finished by the end of March. I doubt I can get the web site done by then as well, but who knows. I'm hoping to have something for you all to play test in another week.

A virtual haircut

Check this out, folks. One of my friends pointed me to a really cool YouTube video containing some amazing sound design.

WAIT: Before you press play, put on some headphones. It won't be as cool otherwise.



Yeah, ears are funny looking, but they're pretty cool, right?

EA and TakeTwo

A quick news post today to let everyone know (I was a little slow to find out) that EA has made a bid to purchase TakeTwo, owners of Rockstar Games and makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. TakeTwo has refused the bid, but the folks at EA apparently aren't backing down; they have published this open letter to TakeTwo and the rest of the gaming public. Thanks to Screen Play (an Australian game news blog that I read) for covering the story.

As a huge fan of the GTA series, I don't quite know what to make of this. Certainly the series will continue regardless of what happens with these two companies, but I hope GTA IV won't be delayed too much because of it.

The similarities between EA's offer and Microsoft's rebuffed offer to buy Yahoo are pretty obvious here. All we need is EA's chief rival to come out publicly condemning the acquisition as hazardous to gaming public's right to virtual entertainment. Get on it, Vivendi.

I dream of GDC

One of these years I'll actually go to GDC. It would be nice of course not to foot the bill myself, but that may be my only option. There seems to be a lot going on at this year's show, including a keynote address by the guy I wrote my master's thesis about, Ray Kurzweil.

But if I can't go, at least I can read all the news that comes out of the show. This report in particular, about a game designer named Blow (not sure where he came up with that) and his ten new challenges for game design. I love reading articles about game design and the theory behind it. They get the academic side of my brain going (my inner academigeek?) and help me understand different ways of looking at games.

Faithful readers may remember that I tend to take a very analytical approach to game design, and Mr. Blow apparently bristles at that approach, calling it "sterile." Thankfully, he provides some useful (if somewhat obvious) alternative paradigms for people thinking about game design.

Aside from thought-provoking and mind-bending keynote speeches, probably the biggest news to come out of GDC this year is Microsoft's announcement that they are launching, later this year, Xbox LIVE community games, essentially a YouTube of gaming where anyone can create games (using Microsoft's XNA development tools) and publish them for people to play. Bruce Everiss gives a dramatic account of the news in which he heralds "a flowering of innovation and creativity beyond anything the game industry has ever seen before. Probably beyond what any creative industry has seen before." Whoa, there.

I doubt Microsoft's announcement will have much impact on me in the short term, since I use a Mac-based game development platform. However, this does open the door for far more indie games, and I will be shocked if Sony and Nintendo don't release a similar system for their consoles. It will certainly give me a lot more insight into my competition. Unity is already equipped for Wii development, so if that happens (and if Wii development kits become more easily available), I'll be ready.

Maybe there's hope after all

It's easy to get discouraged as a solo game developer. There's just so much to do and so many skills to learn. Indeed, I accept that I will ever be more than a hack at most of the skills involved in game development.

But this post over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote (a blog from indie developer Rampant Games) is proof that indie developers can create expansive, immersive role-playing games.

No, I've never played any of the games listed in that post. Most probably won't even run on my Mac. What gives me hope is that the list is so long. It means someone is actually publishing completed games.

SPUDZOOKA isn't an RPG, but it will be my first full game. And I will finish it. I have modest hopes for it. I hope some of you will play it. I hope some of you who play it will enjoy it. Everything else is just gravy.

What I really want to do is make games that tell stories. I have to start somewhere, but it's nice to think that maybe one day I'll publish a game that makes somebody's list.

Spore article in Newsweek

Another post about Spore today. Turns out Newsweek got an exclusive interview with Will Wright that published yesterday. Wright gives some great information about the things that delayed Spore for so long and provides a few exciting insights about the social-networking-inspired features in the game.

The interview is divided into two parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2

Here's a paragraph from the first part describing a change they made recently as a result of focus group feedback:

For instance, one of the things that we changed late last year was....We noticed universally when people were able to just drop into any editor that they wanted to and play around with it--that was a much more entertaining experience for them to start understanding what the gameplay was. The gameplay made a lot more sense to them after spending time in the editor designing something. Originally we were going to force the players to start at Cell and play their way up through every level, but we decided that we wanted to make it feel more like a toy box of the universe. So we let players drop into any level they want to, right off the bat. We have an entry path for every level, straight off the bat, where you grab somebody else's pollinated content as your starting point if you didn't play Creature for instance. We found the players enjoyed browsing the levels lightly at the beginning, and trying a little bit at each level, then they would generally go back, start a full game from the Cell level, and play the whole thing straight through.

I'm planning a more technical post later this week, so please don't fret that my blog is devolving into a run-of-the-mill video game news blog. It is still decidedly a run-of-the-mill game production blog.

Spore release date announced

Now for the most disappointing news of the day. EA has announced the release date for Spore. After months of saying that it would be released sometime this spring, a press release hit the streets today announcing a September 7 release. Yes, September.

I remember first hearing about Spore in 2005. Of course, I certainly understand that great games take a long time to develop, and few developers are allowed the leeway to take their time to develop the best possible game. Blizzard, with its golden touch, comes to mind, and Maxis. I also understand that Spore is a hugely ambitious game, and I will certainly buy it when it comes out. I may even buy a new Mac to play it on. But this game better be worth it. Three years is a long time to wait for a game.

Judging from all the screenshots and videos out on the web, the bulk of Spore has been complete for some time. To me that means the delay has either been caused by some sort of unforeseen technical problem or -- and this is what worries me -- it wasn't turning out to be much fun. It will still probably be a great game. Blizzard basically started over on Warcraft III when its original concept ended up being kind of slow. And that turned out to be a wonderfully entertaining game.

So, yes, I'd rather wait for a brilliant game than play a good one now, but sometimes it's just hard to be patient.

SPUDZOOKA update

Just a quick post tonight to give an update on SPUDZOOKA. I've gotten back into a bit of a groove this week and made some progress modeling the interchangeable components of the spud cannon.

Next week the plan is to finish up the modeling and start the process of texturing. First I need to map the UVs on all the components, and then I can play around with the textures. Texturing should be fun, though I'm still not very good at it. Thankfully PVC pipe generally isn't the most complicated object in terms of texture. Still, if I want to give the player any choices of color or paint job on their spud cannons, I'll need to play around with some different options. One paint style that seems hard to escape is camouflage, since that seems to fit well with game's the paramilitary overtones.

Once I finish modeling and texturing the cannon components, I'll need to program the cannon upgrade interface and be sure that the various cannon possibilities all behave appropriately when firing, etc. There are plenty of things left to do after that, but the main one will be designing a few basic levels so I can get some feedback from you.

So stay tuned. Things should come together pretty well in the next week or two.

New Unity resources

Last week Unity Technologies announced Unity 2.0.2, which has a few new features and a bunch of fixes. More importantly, though, they posted a new resources section on their site, which I hope will eventually be home to tons of great materials to get people started with Unity.

Right off the bat, this little area contains a wonderful package of pre-made nature assets, from trees to rocks, grass, and textures. According to the license agreement (as far as I understand it), these assets are free to use in commercial projects without giving credit to Unity Technologies as long as they are used only in games created with Unity. I can handle that.

I continue to be blown away by Unity. Someone on the Unity support forums has said that Unity is so fun to use, it's almost a game in itself. Every time I open it up, I have new ideas for features to add to my games or gameplay mechanics to try out. More than that, I rarely get frustrated when working in Unity. That's not something I can say about many pieces of software. It's all a testament to the brilliant design of this product, with it's straightforward interface and powerful features. Great stuff.

Ok, my fanboy post is over now.

The anatomy of a zombie

As expected, my new Xbox has found a way to cut into my game development time. There are, of course, many excuses I can employ to rationalize this. The simplest one is to blame the Xbox, as if it had a mind of its own or was being controlled remotely by Steve Ballmer himself.

That, of course, is ridiculous. Steve Ballmer would never control my Xbox himself--he would certainly get a low-level lackey to do it.

Ok, maybe it's my own fault that I'm playing so much, but at least I can tell myself that it's as much research as entertainment. How can I expect to make compelling games if I haven't even played the latest and greatest? Yes, it's definitely research.

I have learned several important lessons during this crucial research.

1. Every good first-person shooter must have an alien invasion, either from outer space or some other dimension--the more hellish the better.
2. Said aliens must have the ability to infest human corpses. Several methods are acceptable, including face grabbing, which clearly gives the alien rudimentary control of the host's motor functions, and fungal-like infestation, which transforms the host's upper body into something lumpy and terrible.
3. The zombie-like creatures that result from alien infestation must be slow-moving, hide frequently in dark corners, and be extremely hard to kill. Shotgun blasts to the head (or what's left of it) tend to be most effective.
4. Once knocked down, zombies must have the ability to get up and attack you again. While it may seem unnecessary (why not just send twice as many zombies?), it's very important to kill alien zombies correctly. A resilient zombie is a scary zombie, after all.

With such valuable insights, I'm sure you can see now why my research is so important to me. I'm also sure you'll understand if my progress on SPUDZOOKA slows down just a little bit while I study.