Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
features of the Wii controller (and other new devices) have had the biggest effect
on sports games. Now players can swing bats and golf clubs, bowl balls, and do all
sorts of other physical activities.
Think about what kinds of things the player will want to do at each stage of the
game and how best to make them available. Whenever possible, make sure that
similar actions in different modes use the same buttons; for example, if the athlete
can jump in both offensive and defensive modes, assign jump to the same button
in both cases.
In team games, the player normally controls one athlete at a time. The game
generally displays a circle or a star under the feet of the athlete currently being
controlled. A good many games also draw symbols on the field to help the player
overcome the lack of depth perception—the spot where a flying ball is due to land,
for example.
When the player's team is on the defensive, include a button to automatically
change control to the most appropriate defending athlete (in soccerlike games, this
is usually the one nearest to the ball). Another useful pair of buttons allows the
player to cycle control forward and backward through all the athletes on the team.
DISPLAYS
Most sports games avoid pull-down menus and anything else that resembles the
user interface for a computer's desktop so as not to interfere with the fantasy pop-up
windows and semitransparent overlays make more sense, particularly if you can
design them to look like the graphics seen on TV. Styles vary from year to year;
watch matches on TV for examples of how to handle overlay graphics.
The features you will need to display vary so much from sport to sport that there
isn't room here for a list of them. Generally speaking, borrow all the ones you see
on TV, then add more to help the player and to compensate for his lack of depth
perception. Aiming tools let the player see where a thrown or kicked ball will go;
these are especially valuable.
Unless you're simulating archery or bowling (the athlete aims and lets go), a sports
game is essentially an action game. No matter how complex the sport is, the user
interface must be as smooth and intuitive as you can make it.
Summary
A good sports game design requires compromises. We do not yet have the comput-
ing power to simulate a real sport in all of its complexity and detail on a home
computer or video game console—and even if we did, we still don't have input
and output devices that allow a player to feel as if he's really down on the field.
Someday, when we perfect virtual reality and make home computers as powerful as
today's supercomputers, we might be able to do this. In the meantime, it's the job
 
 
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