Comments on CrazyKinux's Musing: Blog Banter #5: To hell with Myth Drannor!

It's funny how such a simple yet important part of...

2008-07-24T11:08:00.000-04:00

It's funny how such a simple yet important part of the game could be overlooked by the developers. I guess it's like engineers designing a GUI. It would work, but it would, and usually is ugly!

Not so much due to the UI, but this is certainly a...

2008-05-02T11:57:00.000-04:00

Not so much due to the UI, but this is certainly a game I could never finish because it was flawed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_(computer_game)

As to flawed interfaces preventing a great game from being perfect, how about the end-game in Civ 2? Remeber how the micro-management of all the cities became totally unmanageable on a large map once you got towards the end? I remember taking an entire evening just to get through one turn due to the lack of decent auto-manage and build ques.

Doesn't upgrading your computer for a crappy game ...

2008-05-01T10:39:00.000-04:00

Doesn't upgrading your computer for a crappy game suck?

Anyway, this reminded me of Mistmare, a game which sounded cool, but I had no clue what I was doing. I believe you should be able to dive into a game without studying the manual, but the people behind Mistmare disagreed.

--Terry, GameCouch.com

I have to be able to handle the game the way I wan...

2008-04-30T22:16:00.000-04:00

I have to be able to handle the game the way I want to if I want to play it right. Just like bs angel, I must play inverted, and I also play with captions always on. If there isn't something as simple as captions, I just can't play it.

I've always wanted to pick up Pool od Radiance, de...

2008-04-30T19:56:00.000-04:00

I've always wanted to pick up Pool od Radiance, despite it's reputation. Maybe not so much now? I've only encountered this problem once, and that was with X-3: The Return. That game was absolutely opaque.

What a very basic, core mistake. I have only playe...

2008-04-30T15:38:00.000-04:00

What a very basic, core mistake. I have only played a few games like that, but if you try your hand at something for an extended length of time and the controls simply don't feel right, there is not much you can do besides shelve the game. I play all my games with inverted settings and I'll never forget the time I loaded up a game and spent a long time searching in the settings only to finally figure out they didn't have the option to invert the x and y axis. Really? Things like that make games completely unplayable.

The only interface I could not stand was Final Fan...

2008-04-30T15:16:00.000-04:00

The only interface I could not stand was Final Fantasy Tactics on the playstation... too many menus to sort through!

Nice post : )

Back when I did more front-end development I used ...

2008-04-30T14:26:00.000-04:00

Back when I did more front-end development I used to hate the coding but I loved designing user interfaces.

There are some easy design patterns to follow but usually the best is "Could I explain this to my grandmother". Not that my grandmother is a stupid woman, but her lack of exposure to computers meant that if she could get it rather quickly than so could anyone else.

I don't think my Grandmother would ever play a game, but the question is still "Can someone who DIDN'T work on this game understand the interface?" Interface is important, and developers keep forgetting that.

What I've found though, is that no matter how good my code underneath is, if user's don't like the interface they're not going to like the product. I think this is even more true for games.

Wow, I don't think I've ever played a game that ha...

2008-04-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

Wow, I don't think I've ever played a game that had such a poor interface that I just couldn't function like that. It's interesting how the "little" things like that can make or break a game.

I could care less for the D&D online UI. The ...

2008-04-30T13:03:00.000-04:00

I could care less for the D&D online UI. The UI in WoW I like but only because i customize the heck out of it...except when they patched the game....EQ had a fairly good UI as did EQ2 to a smaller degree. EvE's UI does need some refinement for sure but overall I like the changes implemented recently.