Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Ergonomic aspects
To design a product that is comfortable to use, some general guidelines should be
followed. They are not complicated and in most cases, they are very obvious and fa-
miliar; they can be easily formulated by your own gaming experience. You may recall
any solutions you liked from other projects (and not necessarily game products). Ad-
ditionally, some reverse thinking is required; situations when you felt uncomfortable
using a mobile application should be noticed to try avoiding them in your own project.
Good ergonomics is pretty transparent and natural for its users. It is pretty inconspicu-
ous and hard to remember actual details about problems rather than overall pleasant
experiences. That is why it would be efficient to learn from bad examples by trying to
solve ergonomic problems.
Simple rules
Even if you planned a complex gameplay with a lot of shades, always try to start with
simple rules. The first levels are the training ones. People usually dislike tutorials, be-
cause such game levels look too synthetic and boring. Games are entertainment, so
the training should be engrossing too. This is why it is better to embed the tutorials
inside the game process instead of keeping them separate. The first levels should be
simple, have only one goal, and teach a specific principle of the game. Special pop-
up messages with clarifications can be displayed. But try not to overdo it, the levels
should not be too easy to complete, the complexity must rise gradually. Otherwise,
the player may decide that the game is ridiculously simple.
Distance to the game
Literally, in each software application including games, there is a "distance to a des-
tination"; it is measured in the number of clicks (taps) a user has made to get some
output. Apparently, the intervals should be reasonably minimum; to attain such val-
ues, all trajectories of the movements inside the application from a screen to another
screen should be well thought out. The general objective is to help a player to activate
the game process as fast as possible. This is pretty trivial for simple games with only
one game mode; in such cases, the distance is equal to one, and only a tap on the
Start button of the game is needed. But games with more complex structures need
some smart decisions. For instance, a racing game by default requires vehicles and
tracks to be chosen before a race, so the distance is longer. But it can be shorter if
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