Friday 26 March 2010

Just couldn't keep away today

I had a couple of hours with Just Cause 2 which I hesitate to recommend, it a really fun game but you're stuck playing an unlikeable character. Cheesy dialogue abounds and that's no bad thing in games, I scripted plenty of cheese for Longbow Combat Helo. Think about the lines of dialogue from old games you might remember.

The Playstation 3 was needed by the children for Final Fanstasy n so Rico, Scorpio (whatever the slab of MDF you play is called) was parked for the evening.

So back to doing some little things on the project. There's an expectation of standards, a language of gaming to follow. To guide players through the work-flow by implementing cues and guides, can something be too obvious? I think so. I might expect to see the following (see picture below) on an XBOX or PS3 title but not a Combat Sim. Maybe some funky looking icon suggesting "mount".


The advantage of icons over text is that they don't need to be localised. English, French, German, one icon says it all, even if you don't understand apparent meaning the first time, you associate the action with the icon afterwards. So I think we'll go down that route.

So what is the internationally recognised symbol for "Board Helicopter"? Agghh, just stick any old crap in there, people are smart, they'll work it out.

2 comments:

  1. Board helo?

    Stick figure stepping up into helo...

    keep up the great work!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting ideas. Maybe stylised arrow would be enough? :-)

    ReplyDelete