Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Conduct conversations with nonplayer characters.
Video games almost
always implement dialog with NPCs as
scripted conversations
conducted through a
series of menus on the screen. See “Scripted Conversations and Dialog Trees” in
Chapter 7, “Storytelling and Narrative.”
Customize a character or vehicle.
If your game permits the player to customize
his character or vehicle, you will have to provide a suitable gameplay mode or shell
menu. The player may want to customize visible attributes of avatar characters,
such as hair, clothing, and body type, as well as invisible ones, such as dexterity.
Players like to specify the color of the vehicles they drive, and they need a way to
adjust a racing car's mechanical attributes because this directly affects its
performance.
Talk to friends in networked multiplayer games.
Multiplayer online games
must give players opportunities to socialize. Build these mechanisms through chat
systems and online bulletin boards or forums.
Pause the game.
With the exception of arcade games, any single-player game
must allow the player to pause the action temporarily.
Set game options.
Outside the game world, the player may want to set the
game's difficulty level, customize the control assignments (see “Allowing for
Customization” later in this chapter), or adjust other features such as the behavior
of the camera. Build shell menus to allow the player to do this.
Save the game.
All but the shortest games must give the player a way to stop the
game and continue from the same point when the player next starts up the game
software. See “Saving the Game” in Chapter 9, “Gameplay.”
End the game.
Don't forget to include a way to quit!
The Design Process
You will recall from Chapter 2, “Design Components and Processes,” that the game
design process takes place in three stages: concept, elaboration, and tuning. Designing
the user interface takes place early during the elaboration stage. There's no point in
designing it any earlier; if you do so before the end of the concept phase, the over-
all design may change dramatically and your early UI work will be wasted.
NOTE
In a commer-
cial development team,
the lead designer and
the user interface
designer(s) are nor-
mally different people.
For simplicity's sake,
this chapter assumes
you will do both jobs.
This section outlines the steps of the UI design process. You can find definitions for
many of the components you will use for your game's UI later in this chapter.
Define the Gameplay Modes First
A gameplay mode consists of a camera model, an interaction model, and the game-
play (challenges and actions) available. During the concept stage, define, in general
