Software Game Design Issues

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Software Game Design Issues

• Peter L. Jackson
• School of O.R. and I.E.
• Cornell University

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What makes for a good game?

• Fast, fun, and understandable
• Pleasing to the eye and to the touch
• Competitive nontrivial but not impossible
• Social stimulates interaction
• Relevant connects with the real world
• Skill-building not pure chance or autoplay

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Overview

• Evolution of game software elements a personal
  history
• Examples from 7 games
• Towards a data-driven game interface
• Network game architecture
• Game software design recommendations
• Game design recommendations

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The Mfg. Operations Game
Menu buttons
Text-based screen
Large font
List-limited inputs
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The Distribution Game
Menu
Simple score
Few inputs
Graphical analysis
Animated pictorial state of system
Multi-purpose screen sections
Button control
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The Transportation Game
Multiple cascaded screens
Drag and drop interaction
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Process Optimization
Menu buttons replace menus
Multi-purpose screen sections
High impact art
Diverse inputs with pictorial clues
Graphical analysis
Quick help text line
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The M.F.D. Pull Game
Animated pictorial state of system
Multi-purpose screen sections
Message line
Quick help text line
Centralized control panel
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Situations Flavor the Game
The Manufacturing Operations Game
The M.F.D. Pull Game
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Commercial Game Screen Deadlock
Iconic menu buttons
Pseudo 3-D view with high impact animated art
Multiple screen sections
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The M.F.D. THRUPUT Game
Pseudo 3-D view with high impact animated art
Graphical analysis from database query
Quick help text line
Query control dialog
Menu button panel
Centralized control and dialog panel
Multi-purpose screen sections
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The M.F.D. Thruput Game
Cyclical game sequence control
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The Engineering Factory
Large font status row
Multi-purpose screen sections
Variable size
Menu button panel
High impact art section
Quick help text line
Centralized control and dialog area
Variable size
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The Engineering Factory
Graphical analysis from database query networks
and multi-level axes
Drill-down list for query control
Multi-purpose screen sections
Centralized dialog panel
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Situations Flavor the Game
Rich text format document view document stored
in database
3-D rotational view
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Towards a Data-Driven Game Interface

• Game components are becoming standard
• Programming and layout is repetitive
• Data are coming from relational databases
• Put component descriptions in database too
• Databases provide both data and instructions on
  how to display data
• Graphs, lists, tree lists, dialogs, control
  panels, rich text documents, images
• Result game interface is more generic

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Towards a Data-Driven Game Interface
Tables and queries define complex charts
Queries define multi-level indices
Tables define dialogs
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Network Game Architecture
Server
Game database executes game
Map database describes game
Clients
Clients interact with game database
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Game Software Design Recommendations

• Use multi-purpose screen sections
• Reserve a section for a centralized control panel
  (even if it blocks view)
• Make next steps obvious eg. cycle
• Use high impact art
• Illustrate situations
• Animate resource states
• Customize buttons
• (Hire an artist)
• Dont try to be funny play it straight

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Game Software Design Recommendations (contd)

• Represent state of system pictorially
• Animate resource state changes
• Show history in graphical form
• Display status in large font
• (for instructor to see)
• Plan for different screen resolutions
• Use iconic menu buttons rather than menus
• Add tool help text (balloons or text line)

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Game Design Recommendations

• Identify a small number of decision variables in
  a repetitive decision problem
• Prefer low-level decision to high-level
• eg. Next city to visit rather than which TSP
  algorithm to use
• Flavor the game with situations
• Break monotony of repetitive problem
• Illustrate complex problems but treat them as
  exceptions
• Keep scoring (and tradeoffs) simple

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For More Information

• Web page
• http///www.orie.cornell.edu/jackson
• E-mail
• pj16_at_cornell.edu