I haven''t seen many articles of them and these things aren''t very familiar to all game developers so I thought it would be interesting to take this issue. My opinion about it is that good visual enviroment and story can''t make good game if it doesn''t have good playability and easy GUI it sucks. Here is 2 examples Crusader: No Regret and Diablo, these games were very similar, explore and kill everything, get weapons and improve (ok Crusader didn''t have stats/chr system). Crusader was stiff, no scrolling map unlike Diablo: smooth scrolling engine, easy hack&slash GUI&movement, 3 chars and dynamic maps. I''ll reply more soon if you comment my topic.. Time comes, time goes and I only am.

Couldn''t agree more. The user interface is THE single most important element in game design. It does not matter how good the game is if the player can not control it. The game must do what they want when they want or it will cause user frustration.


Dan Marchant
www.obscure.co.uk

It often seems to be the case that game developers get an idea that seems neat and decide to implement it, causing some really weird interface stupidities. The jumping system in Ultima 8 is a good example of this: the designers didn''t originally even consider making the player jump where he clicks. http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm (interface hall of shame) and http://www.iarchitect.com/mfame.htm (hall of fame) have some good advice for interface design that also applies to game design.