Today's thought of the day (24 Nov)

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Today's thought of the day (24 Nov)
« on November 25th, 2011, 12:11 AM »
I think I might start this as a little daily column, ooh-err.

Anyway. Elsewhere on the interwebs, I got talking to someone about the relative interfaces in games; me thinking about DeathSpank's interface (both keyboard and gamepad) and my friend telling me about Skyrim.

The thing that I got from the discussion is that PC games don't actually care as much about the user. They figure the user has a lot of buttons in front of them, they can press them to bring things up. My example, actually, is DeathSpank. There's a quest log, inventory, 'hero cards' and equipment. Each of those can be brought up from a single keypress. BUT, if you're using a gamepad, there's only a single button allocated to equipment and you step through the pages from there.

Now, my friend mentioned that there's a 'console accommodation' in Skyrim, pressing a single keyboard button brings up a 4-point menu for levelling/skills, map, items and magic. Similar to the four items in DS, really.

My friend stated that he'd use the one button quick key for doing this - but the thing is, I'm not convinced that's the right thing to do, on the game dev's POV at least.

If you use something frequently, leave it a single (easy) keypress away. But if you don't, don't make it a first-class item parallel to everything else, instead delegate down to a menu. In DS, I don't often have to touch any of those 4 pages, so it makes sense that they're one level removed.

Skyrim seems a bit different, where at least one of those pages is frequently accessed, but even then I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong.

It's as though you're given a dashboard of 15-20 options, that are all as 'important' as each other, seeing how they all take the same effort to make happen, yet surely you don't need all 15-20 options available all the time? Wouldn't it be better to hive off the less important options into a submenu?

And this is what we're seeing being done on console games; they don't have ~100 buttons at pressing distance. Because of this, I'm thinking they have to intentionally be careful with what does what, and force the design to fit - and I'm thinking this is not a bad thing.

I also think a lot of software developers could learn from this approach, actually. Instead of designing to fit with x facilities, what would happen if only a subset y were available?

The other thought I'm having out of all of this is how far I personally have travelled. I always used to be the person who consistently said that I never made it look good, merely that I made it work well, but the more I journey as it were, the more I find that the two things are practically one and the same. I still don't make it look good, but I make it work well for the user, I think.

Thoughts?
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Adonis

  • Skyrim Arch-mage and errand runner
  • Posts: 80
Re: Today's thought of the day (24 Nov)
« Reply #1, on November 26th, 2011, 05:46 AM »Last edited on November 26th, 2011, 06:14 AM by Adonis
I think it boils down to what keys are where.

 In the example mentioned (Skyrim) the 'accommodation' button is <tab>, then <arrow/WASD> to select which of the 4 you want and AGAIN to confirm.  3 keypresses. .  The <tab> key you use a lot (it's basically the /exit/ button too) and WASD is your normal movement keys.  So to some extent your hand doesn't have to drift far to do it that way.

OTOH the (default) quickkeys for one button are / (skills), p (magic), i ('nventory), m ('ap) - two of which are the first letter of the word in questions and the other two are directly above and below where your pinky finger rests.  It does mean taking your hand off the mouse - but as that's mainly for combat you don't have a lot of reason to open those menus then (map doesn't let you fast travel in combat anyway - and there's a Quick menu for Favorited items/spells which is bound to Q by default).  By placing them on the same side of the keyboard as the righthanded mouse user, they are IMHO, second- tier keys. 

The argument is somewhat moot though, as you can use either method at any time without having to rebind anything. If I need *full* inventory/magic (not just quick list) during combat (or map/skills) I will hit <tab>. 

FYI, including 2 buttons for the mouse, WASD, quick save/load and system menu (esc) .... there's 27 programmable keybinds in Skyrim - plus one or two non-changeable context keys (Like 'L' for Local map ONLY when looking at the main map).

   

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Re: Today's thought of the day (24 Nov)
« Reply #2, on November 26th, 2011, 09:03 AM »
+1 Adonis. Oh and that L key is annoying....

Everything should be doable without leaving the screen so i guess we all use tab.