The First Game : Part II

The First Game: Star Control 3

Convered Previously: Conversing with aliens

(all pics for this blog where found on The Ur-Quan Masters website)

Gathering minerals subgame:

A feature of the SC3 game that I really loved was that the galaxy was displayed on a huge map that filled up the monitor. Each little star had its own color (back in the days when VGA ruled!) and the player could select a star to travel to. Once the star was reached the star system was displayed and the player could then land on the various planets (not the gas giants of course!) and begin to harvest minerals. What I want to discuss is the well thought out interface for this sub game and the way that SC3 really took advantage of sub game architecture.

Planet Information Screen

When a player reaches a planet and enters orbit the information screen shown to the right pops up. (in this case earth is imprisioned underneath a pulsating red slave shield). Miscellaneus information is displayed, and most of it is just "fun facts" that the developers felt would add to the game (this is called chrome in game architecture lingo). However, there are two important bits of information and those are the weather and tectonics readings (in this case both are class 2). A map of the planet surface is displayed underneath, and to the right a display of your starship fleet is shown as well as the options menu. At this point players can decide to scan the planet to look for resources, which they can then gather by sending a ground vehicle down to the planet and in turn initiating a fun little sub game I dubbed "The Gathering"

Mineral gathering sub game

Once on the planet, your vehicle travels across the map (vehicle is at center of top window) and collects minerals and alien life forms. The information displayed on screen is formatted in a similar way compared to the alien dialog screens. Information is organized in a top-bottom alignment. The little animations of the ground vehicle are displayed in a large top-left window. There is a map displayed below so that pockets of resources can be located. To the right of the 2 windows showing animations there is a tall window displaying fleet status and your ground lander status. All of the information is organized in such a way that the player doesn't need to search through screens to see vital information. Its all presented right in front of them in already established patterns so that it becomes a familiar way that information is displayed in the game. After a while players just "know" where all of the important information is because the important information is continuously displayed in the same place. This is really important information placement! Time and again in game architcture books a big theme is "A player shouldn't be fighting the interface! The interface should be designed so that it is intuitive, and if possible invisible. " This is because when a player is "fighting" with an interface it means that the player cannot locate information, or is unable to figure out how to perform an action. Imagine how frustrating it would be if each time you wanted to navigate your ship in a game would have to: set your speed, pick a pilot, turn on engines, turn on shields, set shield strength, etc... You wouldn't play the game for very long, if at all.