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We Back Boys: UI and UX

So I’ve been ill for the last few weeks, but I’m hale and hearty again, so let’s get back to what we’ve been doing! In this post, we’ll be covering good UI (User Interface) and UX (User (e)Xperience) practices.

User Interface: 

The User Interface, or UI for short, is the term used to describe what the player can interact with that isn’t directly part of the game world. Overlaid buttons, health bars, and a lives counter are considered parts of a User Interface. However, just because you have a User Interface does not mean that you have an intuitive User Experience.

User Experience: 

The User Experience, or UX for short, is the term used to describe how the placement of the User Interface affects the player, either positively or negatively. For example, just because you have all the parts of a good User Interface does not mean that you have created a good User Experience, especially if you’ve shoved all of that interface up in the top left corner and left everything else on the screen empty. Think about where you believe everything should go, and try and use the screen space to its fullest, without making it feel too cluttered, as that will detract from the User Experience. When designing your User Experience, you should ideally have everything accessible within two clicks from the Main Menu, so to get into a game from the main menu, you could design it along the lines of Main Menu -> Singleplayer -> Difficulty Select -> Start. For your options menu, you could have it set out as Options -> *all of your general options headings* -> *Specific options within that general options heading*.

Keep all of this in mind, and you’ll be able to design a User Interface that not just aids your game, but actively adds to it. Good luck out there with your designing!

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Flow Theory and What Makes A Game Fun

This week, I did some research into Flow Theory and what makes a game fun for the player. Finding the perfect mix of challenge that tests the player’s abilities is one of the hardest parts of being a game designer. Make your game too hard, and the player won’t be able to complete it. Make it too easy, and the player will get bored and not want to play it. Finding that perfect difficulty curve is one of the main aims of a game designer.

Flow Theory:

Flow, according to Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, names the feeling of complete and energised focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfilment. From that, we can say that the components of a flow-producing activity are:

We are up to the activity.

We are able to concentrate on the activity.

The activity has clear goals.

The activity has direct feedback.

We feel that we control the activity.

Our worries and concerns disappear.

Our subjective experience of time is altered.

We can note that we don’t need to have all of these points together to create a flow-producing activity.

There are many characteristic experiences that are associated with fun: the sense of timelessness, of being at one (with mind and mountain), of exhilaration, focus, immediacy. And all of these are characteristic of what we, regardless of activity, call "fun."

There’s near-universal agreement that when there isn’t a high correlation between the challenge, and the ability to meet that challenge, fun is something that we aren’t having. Having to face a difficult challenge without the abilities and skill to meet that challenge leave us anxious, and potentially dead (in game). Conversely, if the challenge is nowhere near our abilities we become bored, and potentially dead (from boredom). Maintaining the dynamic balance between challenge and abilities is the key to making a fun game, and one of the hardest things to get right. Having that perfect flow where the challenge rises at the right speed as the player’s abilities get better is an incredibly difficult thing to get right, but by successfully doing it, you can create a game that the player will find enjoyable and challenging without being unfair.

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Sound and Stuff

So I started doing some research into how sound and music can be used within games, so my first research came from how different sound and music techniques are used within film. The first thing I researched was contrapunal music.

Contrapunal Music:

Contrapunal music has various meanings depending on what the context is where the phrase is used. For example, in music, contrapunal music is also known as Polyphonic music, where the independent parts of the music consist of equal value, so no one part is more dominant than the other. However, in film and games, the more commonly used name is contrapunal music, wherein the music used does not match, or contradicts the images shown. i.e: happy music in a sad scene. Various directors are famous for using contrapunal music in nearly all of their works, with the most famous director being Quentin Tarantino. An example of contrapunal music being used would be in a scene from Tarantino’s very own Reservoir Dogs, released in 1991. The scene in particular is where Mr. Blonde cuts off a police officer’s ear to Stuck In The Middle With You, by Stealers Wheel which, considering the seriousness of the scene, is a perfect example of how contrapunal music can be used.

Foley Sound:

Foley Sound is a technique used in film-making, where sound effects are added in post-production to increase the immersion of the film, such as gravel crunching underfoot, rainfall, thunder, or even just bystanders chatting. This is done because, during dialogue recording, the boom operator wants to record the dialogue for the scene, and only the dialogue, as should any dialogue need to be louder or quieter, any background noise would be louder or quieter as well, but by adding the background noise in post-production, the dialogue can be made louder or quieter independent of the background noise, making the final mix much more realistic.

In a game context, Foley Sound refers to any noises that would increase the immersion of the game feel. A great example of this would be in the horror game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where sounds like rustling wind, rainfall, thunder, rustling chandeliers, and even your teeth chattering when your sanity meter drains, all add to the feeling of paranoia and fear for the player, thus immersing them deeper into the game.

Psychoacoustics:

Psychoacoustics is the study of our perception of sound, and includes how we listen, our psychological responses, and the psychological impact of sound and music on the human nervous system. Psychoacoustics was an interesting topic to research, as everyone will have a different sound or song that resonates with their psyche. An personal example of a song that resonates on a psychological level with me would be the track, To Zanarkand, from the 2001 game, Final Fantasy X. This song resonates personally with me because the game was the first that got me emotionally invested with the characters, the story, and the game world. I genuinely felt like I was with the characters on their journey to the end of the world, and because of this, whenever I hear this track, the memories of all of these events come back. That’s the song that resonates deeply with me, but to anyone who’s reading this, what song would you say resonates with your psyche?

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Built a house yo

Over the last two weeks (should have been one week but I’ve been ill for the last five days. Cheers, freshers), I’ve been building a house in 3DSMax through a combination of primitives and editing some of them to become editable polys. What this means is that I can edit the shapes of them (whether they’re a box, a pyramid, or even a sphere) to more closely match what I require. By transforming them into an editable poly, I can select vertexes, edges, borders, or even whole polygons, and edit them using Extrude, Weld, Chamfer (my favourite), Bridge, Connect, and Bevel options. Depending on the type of selection used on the poly, several of these options will be available, and although they were hard to use at the beginning, I’d like to think that I have a much better grasp on how each of these tools work.

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Prototyping Methods

Through research, I’ve learned about two different methods of prototyping: Evolutionary Prototyping, and Throw-Away Prototyping. These prototyping methods both have their pros and cons.

Evolutionary Prototyping:

The idea behind evolutionary prototyping is that an initial prototype is presented to the user. The user then provides feedback and suggestions for improvements. This feedback is then actioned by the developer who then presents a more refined prototype, where the user once more provides feedback. This process is repeated, so at each stage, the prototype ‘evolves’ towards the final system, hence the term, ‘evolutionary prototyping’.

The advantages of evolutionary prototyping are various. Firstly, due to iterating the prototype so often, the end product is very likely to meet the user’s satisfaction. Secondly, it also allows refinement of an existing program, meaning that any changes that occur can be done extremely quickly.

However, the disadvantages to evolutionary prototyping include that, due to the amount of iterations the product goes through, it can be difficult to project an accurate date for the finished product to ship. As well as this, assuming the code isn’t written efficiently, deleting and changing the code can cause issues at every iteration which will need to be solved.

Throw-Away Prototyping:

With throw-away prototyping, only a small part of the system is developed, and then given to the end user to try out and evaluate. The user then provides feedback which can quickly be incorporated into the development of the main system. The prototype is then discarded, or ‘thrown away’.

The objective of throw-away prototyping is to ensure that the system requirements are validated and clearly understood. The throw-away prototype is NOT considered part of the final system. Instead, it is simply there to aid understanding and reduce the risk of having poorly-designed requirements. The full system gets developed alongside the prototypes and incorporates the changes needed.

One advantage to throw-away prototyping is that, due to how the prototypes only focus on one part or system of the overall product, the speed at which they can be put together is incredibly fast. In addition, the end user is only focused on one aspect of the system, making them focus on giving precise feedback.

However, one disadvantage with throw-away prototyping is that all the man-hours of putting together the throw-away prototypes are lost, unlike in evolutionary prototyping. However, the benefits may outweigh the drawbacks.

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3DSMax Basics

Last week, I begun learning the basics of 3DSMax, which is a 3D modelling and rendering program developed by AutoDesk. As part of the learning process, I tried modelling Olaf from Frozen, which turned out okay (I say okay in the context that it was in the first hour of familiarising myself and using 3DSMax. From a professional’s perspective, it’s absolutely terrible), pictures to follow.

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Making A Portfolio Hype

This is a new blog which will take you, the reader, on a magical adventure towards the eventual end goal of having a decent portfolio containing both polished 3D models, and well-rounded music loops and clips.