Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
department complained about it early on, after some time they learned how to cast
spells with no problem. But real players are not hired to deal with your bad interface,
so don
'
t expect them to just tolerate it until they finally learn it.
Targeting Is Always a Little Sloppy
The Ultima VII mouse code detected objects on the screen by performing pixel
collision testing with the mouse (X,Y) position and the images that made up the
objects in the world. Most of these sprites were chroma keyed and therefore
had spots of the transparent color all through them. This was especially true
of objects like jail cell bars and fences. Ultima VII
s pixel collision code ignored
the transparent color, allowing players to click through fences and jail cell bars
to examine objects on the other side. That was a good feature, and it was used
in many places to advance the story. The problem it created, however, was that
sometimes the transparent colored pixels actually made it harder for players to
click on an object. For example, double-clicking the door of the jail cell was
difficult. If you use an approach like this, take some care in designing which
objects are active and which are simply scenery, and make sure you make this
clear to your players.
'
This is an extremely important issue with casual games or kids
games. Very young
players or older gamers find games with forgiving interfaces much easier to play.
Making your game easier to play tends to broaden the appeal of the game, but it
also narrows the skill gap between first-time players and elite players. This balance
is sometimes hard to gauge. The best advice I can give you on that front is try to
know your audience. If the game is something families of all ages will play, make
the game fairly forgiving. If the game is targeted more toward a hard-core audience,
ramp up the difficulty quickly and give the elite players something that will challenge
them. It isn
'
'
t impossible, but typically you can
'
t do both.
A Fine Use of a Piece of Tape
With UltimaVIII, the left mouse button served as the
button. As
long as you held it down, the avatar character would run in the direction of
the mouse pointer. Ultima games require a lot of running; your character
will run across an entire continent only to discover that the thingamajig
that will open the gate of whosiz is back in the city you just left, so you
go running off again. By the time I
“
walk/run
”
d played through the game the
umpteenth time, my index finger was so tired of running I started using
tape to hold the mouse button down. One thing people do in a lot of FPS
games when playing online is set them to
'
“
always run
”
mode. I wish we
'
d
done that with Ultima VIII.
