Manuals, In-Game Text, and Credits - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 46

Generating an index is a study in drudgery. Extremely organized people will, as
they write the manual, keep a list of these words on a notepad, also scratching down
the page number. Once the manual is done, they import the list into something like
excel and sort the list in alphabetical order. They then collapse the list, putting all the
page numbers of duplicate words next to one instance of the word. Then, after the
manual is done, they go back and check each word to make sure the page number is
correct. Then, they might reorder the index so that some words are headers for other
words.
Unfortunately, we're not all that organized. Luckily, modern word processors
have the functionality to generate an index from your manual. However, the process
requires you to mark the words you deem important enough to be included in your
index, so check the help menu of your word processor of choice and check out what
hoops they'd like you to jump through to make the index happen.

5.4 In-Game Help and Text

Recently, game developers have realized two things.

1. No one is going to read the manual.

2. Noonelikesagametheydon'tunderstand.

This puts game developers in a bit of a bind. How do you teach the game to players
who won't read the text that teaches them how to play the game? Luckily, the simple
answer is in-game pop-ups that appear to help guide the player as he plays the game.
As the manual writer, it may fall upon your shoulders to help write the text that
goes in these pop-ups.
Text pop-ups have a different flavor from manual prose. First, they have to be
much shorter, especially for console games. In console games, text is much larger
because of the lower resolution of the screen as compared to your computer monitor.
For a quick demonstration, resize the resolution on your monitor to 640

×

480 to

×

see how much desktop space you've suddenly lost. Normal TV is about 640 480,

so the text you use has to be fairly big, or it doesn't come out at all. Some fonts
also have problems with normal TVs, so you might be limited to some fairly boring
choices. Depending on the artist that designed the fonts for your game, you may also
not get a choice of having underlines, italics, bold letters, or even lowercase letters.
You may be wondering, “What about HDTV? It has better resolution than reg-
ular TV!�
Good question. HDTV does have better resolution. However, when game de-
velopers make a console game, they have to make it so it works on all TVs. It's part
of the TRCs, or requirements that game developers have to achieve in order for a
console maker like Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo to allow the developer to sell the
game for their consoles. So, even if the game you are writing for is a spiffy hi-res