POLL SUMMARY: Best/Worst Computer Game Interfaces **LONG** [part 1 of 3]
David Fox
David Fox 415 485-0882
Electric Eggplant Entertainment FAX 415 485-5232
f...@eeggplnt.nbn.com f...@well.sf.ca.us
AppleLink: ELEC.EGGPLNT
-- cut here -- begin Game Poll Summary -- part 1 of 3 --
Here are the actual comments I received for my Game User Interface survey:
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From: moon!ukpr.uky.edu!jpsum00 (Dark Knight)
Best: Ultima Underworld I/II easy to use, learn, and master. Very
intuitive icons and locations of controls on screen. Movement is clean
and easy.
Worst: Ultima 7 a real clunker. Even after reading my instruction
manual, the game's controls were choppy and very Greek. It depended on
clickingon certain parts of the body to perform certain tasks. It was also
very
redundant in control of the character.
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From: moon!isy.liu.se!ingemar (Ingemar Ragnemalm)
The little I have looked at Wizardry:Bane Of The Cosmic Forge makes it
clear "worst": shitty scaled-up PC graphics, non-standard interface with
no consistent behaviour.
Second worst is Lunatic Fringe. Imagine a game that *quits* if you happend
to shake the mouse the slightiest.
One otherwise good game that deserves a "worst" mention - though it's not
alone, just the most outstanding of the ones doing it the wrong way, is
Solarian. What's wrong? No menus, no way to pause the game and do something
else. It takes over completely with no way to get out other than *quitting*.
Bad.
Runner-up: Civilization. Those silly radio buttons in the dialogs...
Best? SimCity is great: the animation is fast enough, it uses windows and
menus and palettes in a nice way. (Pity that the game mechanics is poor,
but that's not the point.)
Any game that takes over for performance reasons but still allows
pausing+switching to other programs, preferrably while hiding the game
window, are good. Let's pick 3 in Three.
A third...? There are lots of games that are simply done right, so let's
skip no 3.
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From: moon!nada.kth.se!d88-jwa
Bad game interface:
Civilization (the bug aside)
Nonstandard as can be. Typical DOS port. Alert boxes that
have radio buttons for "Yes/No" and an "OK" button. To
un-fortify a unit, you clikc on it to get a dialog box
that tells where it is, and then click on the icon in that
dialog box. Unlexx the unit is in a town, where a click
on the unit is enough to un-fortify it.
Mac NetHack with popup_dialogs turned OK (though I like
this mode :-)
Good game interface:
Mac NetHack with popup_dialogs turned OFF (Some may say
the TTY interface is even better, but that's debatable)
Excel 4.0 - for the most part.
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From: moon!ee.eng.ohio-state.edu!zimmy (Michael Zimmerman)
Worst: Bane of the Cosmic Forge. Chunky EGA graphics, poor choice of the
"hot spot" for the custom mouse pointer, use of choise of EGA graphics
from the MAC config screen, no use of windows.
Mike
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From: moon!px3.stfx.ca!jezsik (Louis Jezsik)
Rather than just poll to you ...
I'd like to open a dialog with you. I'm heading back to school this
fall to study Education Technology with the eventual goal of teaching
developers how learners learn to interface with the computer. Every
time Microsoft come up with a new Windows product, I am impressed, not
with the software necessarily, but with the amount of work that had
gone into researching how users use the software. We don't see a
whole lot of that in games until very recently. I have not played
the quantity of games that SOME of the users on this list have gone
through, so I can't be a fair judge on which have the best/worst
interface (but I AM curious as to the results of your survey).
For me, game software should be able to do what I want it to
do without having to go through some obscure ritual. In Lucas's
Monkey Island and Indiana Jones walking to another destination is a
simple matter of clicking the mouse button on the location. It already
KNOWS you want to WALK there as a default option. It also chooses
the most obvious path to get there, you do not have to manuver around
various objects. As opposed to Amazon where you must carefully move
your character one straight line path at a time. The software is
supposed to do the work.
Speaking of using the mouse, I have yet to encounter a game
that could work better from the keyboard than the mouse. I really
don't know if there are people out there who do not follow this line
of thinking, but for some reason developers create games that allow
the keyboard input as well as mouse. ARE there keyboard gamers out
there?
Well, I'd like to go on, but I'd sure like to get some feed-
back from you. What do you think about the game interface? By the
way, what is Electric Eggplant Entertainment and what do you/they do?
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From: moon!ac.dal.ca!SEANMCD
I'll give just a few of each...
*BAD*
SSI: Pools of Radiance.
Does this need explication? Various naughty things are done...for example,
when printing text, if a word won't fit onto a line, it starts to draw it
anyways; once it has drawn half of the word & finds that it won't fit, it
erases it and draws it on a new line. If i remember correctly, every time
you move all of the buttons on the bottom of the screen are erased and
redrawn. It's ugly, clunky and slow. It uses its own 'custom' font without
any small letters. The perspective on the 3D graphics is terrible. Of course,
I still played the game to completion...
Accolade: Hardball II
This one wins a prize for: removing the apple menu items; having to use
command-Q to move from 'game mode' to the 'option screen' or some nonsense
like that.
*GOOD*
Sim City (Maxis)
An original Mac game (the prior two are ports) that's intuitive, tidy and
responsive. All attention to detail is there!
Citadel (Postcraft)
This is the best interface I've seen on an 'adventure' genre game. It uses
all of the mac tricks: dragging icons, clicking, tear-off menus, etc. Very
elegant. The shadows that are cast when you drag and icon still make me
wonder how he did it. Now if only they'd hired a *real* artist to do the
artwork and killed a few of those bugs! Citadel II *might* be out soon.
So I guess for me, a good mac interface is: clean; tidy; elegant; intuitive;
responsive. Bad (usually ports) = dos heritage; clunky; no attention to
detail; anti-mac practices (like killing the apple menu); ugly; modal.
Looking forward to seeing your results,
Sean
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From: Christian Steffen Ove Franz <moon!iiic.ethz.ch!cfranz>
Best interfaces you find in games designed specifically for the mac.
Look at 1) Sim City
2) Spaceward Ho! (2.0) or
3) Sim Ant
All these games have something in common:
They are designed with the same interface guidelines in mind. They
sport some kind of tool palette (the Sim games) or statistics window
you point and click into and what happens is what you think it will.
Then there are those games that are ported from the PC. They have no
standard in interface design and the people who do the port usually
have no idea how to employ the Macintosh Toolbox. Look at the otherwise
great game Civilization (just released) by MicroProse.
When you Quit, a dialog box pops up with a pushbutton labelled OK and
two RADIO BUTOONS, one called 'Yes, Quit', the other 'No, continue'. To
quit, you have to select the 'Quit' radiobutton and then click OK. Why
on earth didn't they use two normal buttons, one labelled 'Quit', the other
(default) called 'Cancel' as described in chapter 1 of Inside Mac?
Big Interface blunders like this clutter the whole interface. Buttons that
are clicked even when you keep the mousebutton pressed and dragged off,
nonstandard areas where you have to click in to change sommething,
scrollbars that are always centered (used in display of the world, the
thumb is always in the middle of the scrollbar).
This shows that all games ported to the mac have some flaw just because
most programmers have no idea what interface standard means. Look at the
abysmal interface in 'Pool of Radiance' or 'Dark Queen of Krynn'. This
is PC pure. Literally nothing you are used to works. Command-S shoots,
if you want to save a game, you can't use your own but choose a letter
from A to H. The list goes on and on.
There are some games, however, that don't really require a good interface.
These games are usually fast-paced arcade games that rely on manual
dexterity. Even ports look good on the mac if the graphics are done
right. Examples are Prince of Persia (Port), Lemmings (Port from the
Amiga I believe) and Maelstrom (no Port but a straight Mac game with no
real interface).
But to give you the interface horror list:
1) Starflight (this one is really the worst I've seen)
2) Dark Queen of Krynn & Pool of Radiance (Hell, *any* SSI game *)
3) Sands of Fire (not ony bad interface but buggy as hell)
4) any other port save for Lemmmings and Prince of Persia (look
at Sierra's adventure series. Poor graphics, poor interface)
5) Ha! just remembered. Check out Red Baron. Use it on a Mac that
has a max of 16 colors. It will quit with a dialog box telling
you you don't have enough memory. I upgraded to 16 megs and
it sitll game the dialog box. I ran it on a 6 MB LC with 256
colors and it ran...
The rest of the interface is ridicoulus at best.
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From: Babak Gohari <moon!wam.umd.edu!bgohari>
Hate:
Bane of the Cosmic Forge: This ranks up there as probably the worst mac
game interface. It has blocky 16 color graphics, pure IBM-style interface.
You can't even use the mouse and keyboard together. No menus. No mac-like
features. Basically, even though the game was good, I stopped playing
because of the lameness of it.
Starflight (I and II): even though better than BOTCF, still have very poor
graphics and lack of mac interface. Very poor port.
Vengeance of Excalibur: another terrible port. Tries to be mac-like, but
fails miserably.
Love:
SimLife: one of the best interfaces I've seen. Very good use of windows,
menus, buttons, etc., etc.
Might & Magic III: despite it being a port and somewhat slow, I think New
World did a great job with the interface. There are so many ways of doing
things, with a mouse, keyboard, or combination. It uses real mac graphics,
rather thank blocky PC graphics.
Civilization: another great port by Microprose. They're getting good at
this. They have both menu and keyboard commands for virtually everything,
and the window structure and graphics are very clean and expressive. Civ
Mac blows away Civ PC by a huge margin in terms of overall appearances
and easy of use.
Hellcats: (I know, this is 4, but hey)... basically, most games that are
made for the mac in the first place have a pretty good interface. Hellcats
is very good, in that you can use all types of screens (from 1 bit to
8 bit, and all sizes) without any problem. Good mac-like stuff, where
needed.
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From: Scott Patlin <moon!gold.colorado.edu!PATLIN_S>
Bad:
Bane of the Cosmic Forge
(Sloppy port, eroneous references to IBM sound cards, etc.)
The SSI AD&D Games (DQK, POD, etc.)
(command Q enters quick mode rather than quitting, sloppy port)
Good:
Maelstrom (Configurable keys, OK for this kind of game to take over whole
computer for play-- Arcade games can or possibly should, quest or
strategy games MUST not, great graphics)
(Several other games such as Jewel Box or OXYD fall into this category for
the same reason as Maelstrom)
Empire Master
(Lots of choices, good use of sensible option or command key modifiers,
making it easy to operate from the keyboard)
My summary:
Ports can be _really_ bad, good games have to be designed for presentation
on the platform they are meant to be used on. It's coincidental that my good
examples are shareware and my bad ones are commercial (but curious, no?).
Also, it is possible for a game to be good in spite of its interface, but
a good interface certainly helps.
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From: Skywalker <moon!PACEVM.bitnet!PNYSCAV>
You forgot about LucasFilm's interface ? I believe the Point & Click
interface is the best one around. No typing, just click on a verb then an
item and the action is done. I think it's one of the easiest ways to control
an
onscreen character. But then again, that's my opinion.
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From: "Tim Triemstra" <moon!ais.org!empath>
GOOD:
The best interfaces I've seen are the CUA compliant, no-nonsense interfaces
like Harpoon.
Populous also had a good interface because it gave you all options right
there on the playing field, it also left highlights and such so you know
the status of important variables (like energy etc.)
BAD:
Any MicroProse interface. They want to put so many digitized pictures or
artwork into the game they they have pointless pictures where you have to
move the mouse around to find hot points. Why not just show the picture
and put a list of possible choices at the bottom of the screen? Why this
game of hide and seek to find where the radar station is, per se?
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From: Juggler <moon!UTEP.BITNET!IH23>
Love:
Alone in the Dark
Clouds of Xeen
Ultima Underworld
Hate:
Ultima 7
Wing Commander II
SimLife
I really like the smoothness of play of Alone in the Dark and how easy
it is to control the character. As for Xeen I like how it's very easy
to execute all the command from the keyboard without having to use the
mouse (like Eye of the Beholder II). The play is just real easy... As
for Ultima Underworld, I thought at first it was gonna be very difficult
to get used to, but after about 10 minutes of play I found that actully,
mouse play on it was very easy. They make the commands simple and the
hand eye corridination minimal for such a complex game.
As for U7, WC2, and SimLife, there was just too much to do at once.
U7 was just plain choppy and inacurate in movements and fighting...WC2
was just plain awkward. I couldn't decide if mouse or keyboard was
worse....I think both were equally bad...And SimLife, well, the commands
were just overwhelming. Too much to do, too many keys (or mouse things)
to press at once, and little reaction. Didn't like em'...
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From: moon!exu.ericsson.se!exubrst (Brad Steele)
I really only have a top one for both, so here they are:
Best:
Links - It uses a mouse driven pushbutton interface.
This is normally a bonus any time, but Links
takes advantage of the 256 colors in VGA and
makes the buttons flash in a pleasing way that
also immediately indicates that it took the
user's input.
Worst:
Space Ace 2 - Horrible! The game interface is identical
to the interface in the arcade version.
But since this game is on a PC the designers
tried to add in the ability to save the
game whenever the user wants to. This
function only works sporadically, and
requires the user to be able to read about
2000 words a minute to see that it was
saved or recovered. In general, input by
the user is shaky at best.
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From: moon!cse.unl.edu!pdietz (Phil Dietz)
Bad interface:
-Amiga John Madden Football. In order to call a play, one has to perform
miracles with the joystick to call the right play. The game also has
some very poor player controls....if you tap the button you player dives
but if you hold it he power runs. I don't know how many times my doofus
player has dived when I wanted him to power run.
Good interface:
-Lemmings
-Black Crypt
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From: Andreas Kuehnel <moon!cs.tu-berlin.de!idler>
In my opinion these Lucasfilm-Adventures got the best (standardized)
interface.
The game interfaces of DuneI and KGB (Virgin/Cryo) are also very easy and very
fast, but after a while you start clicking faster than you can read.
I don't like the Sierra adventure icons too much, but that's perhaps a matter
of taste. Most of all I disliked the Starcontrol2-Interface. It really takes a
time getting used to it.
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From: moon!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!cwagner (Christian Wagner)
Best Inferfaces :
Ultima VII - Origin Systems
A mouse-driven interface that is almost completely intuitive (IMHO), easy to
deal with, and quick to learn. Even though it has limited commands, you still
have an awesome amount of options, and puzzles and "what do I do here?"
riddles
are still as challenging as ever. The way one can pop up windows with keyboard
commands makes it twice as easy to use, as well. Overall, one of the best.
Wing Commander II - Origin Systems
A very easy-to-learn, intuitive control system for the spacefighters, one that
-makes sense-. It's all laid out well and easy to remember, and the shortcut
keys (like "Alt-B" to tell your wingman to Break and Attack) are invaluable.
The joystick control system works well, too, although some things (like
afterburners) are easier to control with the keyboard. If only all flight sims
had this kind of ease of use, where one can concentrate on tactics and flying,
instead of learning the %@#! controls.....
Dune (the first game, haven't played Dune II) - Virign
Quick and easy interface, almost transparent. Just click where you want to go
and what you want to do, and -boom- yer going there/doing it. Interesting
graphics make even monotonous tasks fun to look at. Overall, a very slick,
polished interface, easy to learn and use (I never even looked at the manual
when playing).
Bad Interfaces :
The new Sierra games, like Larry V and The Dagger of Amon Re
A point-and-click interface is fine and good for roleplaying games, IMHO, but
on an adventure game, one needs more options, or the puzzles become -so- easy
to solve. I suppose it's not entirely the interface; the LucasFilm SCUMM
system
games are very good, and they're totally point-and-click, as are the Dynamix
games like Rise of the Dragon, Heart of Chine, and Willy Beamish. It's
probably
the way it's used, because the puzzles in LucasFilm games are still
challenging, possibly because they don't stick you in a linear plotline like
Sierra games do.... Overall, the new Sierra games interface make the game too
damn easy to solve, because of the severely limited options one has, as well
as
the way the games themselves are written.
Civilization/Railroad Tycoon
Great, addictive games, but the interface used by them is not up to par.
They're too hard to figure out how to use, and they have strange ways to
access
options that should be available easier. The interface should be -far- more
intuitive, so one can concentrate on the -game- and not it's interface....
Warlords
A great strategy game, but hampered by a strange and unintutitive interface,
that makes executing one's strategy just a little too hard. -Some- kind of
online help function would have been appreciated....
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From: moon!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!ginsu (Wes Simonds)
To me, a great interface is one I don't notice... so I'd still have to say
Infocom's text parser. It still provides a natural flexibility that no
amount of point and click can touch. I am a devout Mac owner and consequently
love most aspects of GUIs; but being able to type in what I want to do in
straight English not only seems most accomodating to my interests as a gamer,
but also provides for puzzles of much greater complexity and innovation than
could be obtained with a mouse alone.
On the other hand, I like Lemmings fairly well for exactly the opposite
reason.
It requires *nothing* but the mouse, and looks very slick besides.
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From: moon!yfn.ysu.edu!ac374 (Stanley Kaminski)
Game companies are in parentheses after each description.
The three worst amiga games interfaces/controls:
(TIE) Megatraveller 1. Sci-Fi RPG whose control system is kludgy enough
WITHOUT having to simultaneously control every character in your
party _IN REAL TIME_. Awkward in the extreme. (Paragon)
(TIE) BATTLEHAWKS 1942. A WWII flight simulator that does NOT offer joystick
control (as in a "real" airplane) but only mouse & keyboard control.
Considering that this fact is NOT mentioned on the game's box, and
that the ms-dos version DOES offer joystick control, I felt that this
product was a slap in the face to every amiga owner. (Lucasfilms)
3) Civilization. Sure it's still a fine game, but it would've been nice
if they didn't take the amiga's rather excellent pull-down menu
system and try to make it behave like a crippled version of that
already brain-damaged Microsoft Windows <sigh>. (Microprose)
Now for the three best:
1) Rules Of Engagement. They HAD to make the control interface somewhat
complicated since the game itself can get rather involved, but the
end product turned out so effortlessly learned, straightforward and
easy to use, it's actually rather elegant. There are more than a few
"serious" software packages (not just for the amiga either) whose
usefulness would be substantially enhanced if their interfaces were
as user friendly (anyone from WordPerfect listening?). (Mindcraft)
2) Mechforce. Since it's PD, this game isn't merely a port, but ori-
ginally written for the amiga by an amiga developer, which is ap-
parent in its control interface - pure amiga, meaning functional
and intuitive, without being ponderous. Oldie but Goodie.
(Ralph Reed)
3) Star Control. Very slick interface using joystick, mouse and user
configurable keyboard controls. (Accolade)
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From: moon!cup.portal.com!TomK (Tom Krotchko)
Good game interfaces:
(a) Simcity: Its simple, obvious, and it works.
(b) The original SCUMM interface from Lucas as used in Maniac Mansion
and Zak McKracken. The new "improved" version is a step backwards.
-- cut here -- end Game Poll Summary -- part 1 of 3 --