Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Setting the screen layout
Platformers have a more complex and fanciful structure of elements on the screen.
In contrast to puzzle games, the game screen is not just a regular grid of items, but
a composition that is close to landscape painting or photography: some characters,
foreground and background, horizon, sky with objects like clouds, and the Sun. Thus,
some traditional visual art rules can be used to create an expressive image. First,
the horizontal direction of movement should be chosen. Traditionally, protagonists in
platform games run from left to right. This is correlated with many familiar processes
such as the direction of reading (in western cultures), the direction arrows rotating in
analog clocks, and so on. Therefore, the direction from left to right as a rule means
forward
, but from right to left means
backward
(just recall the images of history but-
tons in your Internet browser). In many platform games, the main character can move
both forward and backward, but direction to the right is always dominated and related
with progress in the game.
The vertical movement is usually directed from bottom to top. This is not a strict rule,
but in many cases, players find such direction more comfortable and apprehensible.
Apparently, this is because of some cultural models where it is much more delightful
to climb into sky and clouds, rather than descending into the deep. Here you can see
a schematic presentation of a composition rule known as the
rule of thirds
:
To construct a good visual composition of a scene, the
rule of thirds
can be used.
It is common in photography and cinematography (for inspiration, look at any frame
of a widescreen movie) and works very well for rectangular aspect ratios that mobile
devices have. To apply it to the scene, the screen should be divided into three equal
parts horizontally and three equal parts vertically. A simple grid should be developed.
Then, the basic elements of the scene must be aligned to it. The protagonist has to be
placed in the first third, the horizon line should be near one of the second horizontal
lines of the grid, and so on. Remember that the rule of thirds is an artistic rule, not
