Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
You need to take care to figure out how much information and how many
interactive elements to add to each screen. Some screens carry a great deal of
information (how much usually depends on the complexity of the game) or are
broken into sequences of screens. Some are extremely simple and filled with eye
candy. One thing is true for almost all games: these screens are the first thing
any player interacts with when starting a new game. When coming up with the
look for the splash (or title) screen, you should not only provide a good visual
that communicates the look and feel of the project, but also entice the player
and make it easy for them to get right into the game (finding what buttons to
push, and so on).
Use words, colors, and graphics that appeal to your audience. If the game is
designed for little children, then select bright colors, use text that's easy to see
and read, and consider having animations that actually jump up and down and
point at things the child needs to interact with in order to play the game. Be
careful of cluttering screens for children's games. It's tempting to fill them with
all kinds of cute things, but if your goal is to entice the child and let them run
the game, then they need to see clearly what they have to interact with.
Languages
All the screens for the game need to be checked for typos, and the complexity of
the words and grammar should align with your audience. If your game needs to
be translated into other languages, use a professional service. Copying and past-
ing text from a free online translation site will yield iffy results.
m
o s t
C
o m m o n ly
u
s e d
l
a n G u a G e s
According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)'s 2009 census, the
most common languages in the world are
1.
Chinese (Mandarin)—1,213 million speakers
2.
Spanish—329 million speakers
3.
English—328 million speakers
4.
Arabic—221 million speakers
These numbers are based on the numbers of people in the world who speak
the languages. Significantly more people speak Chinese than speak any
other language. The languages listed for numbers 2, 3, and 4 change from
time to time, as the populations adjust and census methods vary, to include
Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. Although there are more
Chinese speakers, the English language is the most widespread.
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