Hello there and welcome to another Design blog post for Magic Writer.
During the development of Magic Writer, we've had discussion regarding the control scheme for the game several times. Both teachers and members as well as playtesters have voiced their opinion on the matter loudly. The designers job is to collect all those responses and form a plan to fix this. Let's go through the problems one by one.
This blog's artifact: Design of the controls.
To put some perspective into the controls.
Movement
One part of the group wanted to use the WASD keys to change lanes. But I wanted to use the arrow keys for that purpose.
The argument for WASD was that it was more optimal together when firing items with space. It was also faster to get your hands to after you've finished writing an item.
My arguments for the arrow keys was that it would feel more natural to a broader audience than the WASD keys. The separation of writing(letters) and movement(arrow keys) would make more sense to the player so they could go write->move->shoot, letters->arrows->enter.
Playtesting then showed us that players actually wants to move before they shoot. This made the arrow keys become the permanent choice for movement options for us, since we didn't want to go against something the players was doing naturally.
Shooting
Space or Enter was the big question when it came to shooting.
Arguments for space was that it was closer to the left hand's thumb after writing, which would make it the more optimal way to shoot.
And for enter it was because the letters->arrow->enter would feel better to execute than letters->arrow->space. Also because enter is a more natural choice because people are used to finish writing with enter in chat messages.
This time, playtesting showed us something interesting. Half the players would try and use space and half the players would stick with enter. After keeping enter and later discussing the descicions with our teacher, we decided both buttons would be able to shoot items. So a player could stick with the option he/she was most comfortable with.
Summary
Problems in the controls of our games sparked discussions in our group which brought out different opinions from the members. Later on, playtesting revealed what worked and what didn't work. From there we took decisions which would be the most intuitive to a first time player.
I hope you liked this tour of Magic Writer design and tune in next week for another design related blog post.
Först och främst, bra jobbat!
ReplyDeleteDin text är lätt formulerad/strukturerad på ett bra sätt som gör den intressant för läsaren. Jättebra att du började med en frågeställning i början, på detta vis fångar du läsarens intresse. Det är alltid intressant att få läsa om en diskussion som har förekommit, dvs dom olika åsikterna som ni hade angående kontrollsystemet. Du motiverar varför du ville använda piltangenterna istället för ”WASD” vilket ger en bra förståelse för hur eran diskussion löd under tiden som den ägde rum.
Med andra ord så svarar du på följande vad, hur och varför genom hela din text. Texten är övertygande på så sätt att du motiverar varje ändring ni gjorde baserat på dylika test som genomfördes. Baserat på dessa tester har ni enkelt kunnat analysera spelarnas åsikter, och därav kunnat justera spelet utefter det.
Jag skulle vilja säga att detta blogginlägg har en väldigt vetenskaplig jargong, med tanke på att den följer tidigare nämnda vad,hur och varför, men också för att processen bakom era beslut kring knapparna beskrivs på ett strukturerat och detaljerat sätt. Kategorier är det inte många som har i sina blogginlägg, detta ger en väldigt behaglig översikt om vad texten innehåller. Samt slutsatsen som du har med ger ett behagligt avslut.
Mycket bra jobbat