Game Design 2Lecture 2: Planning Menu Flow

2013

Book: Game Interface Design (Fox)

Why plan?

•Getting it right first time saves time

•Clarify your needs

•Distribute work

•Schedule

•Get approval

Helping Games Design

•CounterStrike ‘buy’ menu.

•could have been difficult to put in later

•Civilization 4 Trade screen

•interface forces single civic change

•this hurts the design

User Centric Design

•You are (almost never) your target user

•Find out what they think of other interfaces

•Design around their preferences

•Test your design and iterate!

Prioritise Design Goals

•Always conflicting factors in a design

•fact filled educational game

•slick interface

•Prioritise simplicity or customisation?

“Clear communication of the flow of the interface

is the number one goal of a flow chart.”1

1. Brent Fox, Game Interface Design, Page 13

Planning a Front End

•Identify how you get from A to B

•If you use good software, you can mock up different flows using same screens.

•Avoid having screens that you can’t get to

Flowcharts

Flowchart Software

•Any tool that works

•Illustrator?

•Flash?

•Web tools like lovelycharts.com

•Omnigraffle

Flowchart Techniques

•37 Signals is a company that specialises in well designed groupware.

•They have a simple approach to flowcharting

•(article here: http://bit.ly/37flowcharts )

•Good for Use Case modelling

use case•For example - imagine you are going to

have a menu in your game to buy and sell goods in a shop.

•There are many ways of doing this

•so you decide what your usage-cases are:

•buy item

•sell item

•compare items

•and then for each of these usage cases, follow the 37 signals approach to do a quick sketch of a possible screen flow

Multiple possible user actions

Multiple outcome actions

End result•Lots of separate use-case sheets

•you then take all these sheets and condense them into ‘actual menu’ decisions

•you will have some conflicts if two use cases would like a certain screen to behave correctly ‘for them’

•better than ‘just deciding’ because you think about the user at all times and won’t miss screens (e-Bug)

37 Signals Sketching

•Pro’s

•Good for quick idea sketching

•Good for use case modelling

•Easy to see important elements without getting lost in detail

•Should be done before you start ‘filling in the gaps’ in your menu design

Brent Fox’s Approach

•Draw a box, place title at top

•Write screen options in box

•‘Guess’ at options in each screen

•Link screens with arrows

•Italics for important but non interactive items (descriptions etc)

•Padlock symbols for ‘locked’ items

•Simple use of colour

Brent Fox’s Approach

Pop Up Menus•Not usually standalone

•Usually appear on top of screen

•Cover only part of screen (dim)

•Modal

•Usually little info

•Don’t usually go anywhere (dead end)