Re: Weird fuel behavior

[Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com>]

Eric McDonald wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Hans Ronne wrote:
>
>
>>at first. However, Stan long ago pointed out that professional games almost
>>never use multiple windows since "users don't like Office-type
>>applications". 
>>
>
>I think this is true for 3D shooters (such as Unreal) or 
>some simple (many things are highly automated) realtime strategy 
>games (such as Warcraft), but not necessarily true for 
>strategy games where there are multitudes of forces of different 
>kinds to track and manage, and there is not heavy automation of 
>their actions.
>
Theoretically you're right, but in practice nobody actually goes there.
Consider TOAW (The Operational Art of War), probably the most like
Xconq in terms of scope and intent. One screen with panes on the side.
Certain commands will pop up screen-filling lists, and there are
smaller popups for dialogs.

Partly this is evolutionary - PC games had to run on DOS for a long
time, and so people got used to it, but I think there are deeper
reasons, otherwise you'd have companies advertising "new, using
revolutionary multi-window interface!" Two reasons that I think
drive the trend:

* simplicity of play - if you're forced to make everything fit in one
window, you think harder about how to design the interface for
efficiency. For instance, instead of switching to another window, make
a panel display an array of choices represented as icons small enough
to all fit in the panel.

* suspension of disbelief - A-list games, of whatever genre, always
work hard to get game-specific atmosphere into the rectangle of the
screen. Funny thing is, you always hear that users want interfaces
to be consistent "so they don't have to learn a new one", and yet
they'll never refuse to play a hot new game because its interface is
unlike any they've seen before. Players will do whatever it takes to
achieve that moment of sublime game satisfaction, and it's easier to
get to that moment if they're immersed in the game world.

One of my expectations for the SDL interface was that module designers
should be able to supply skins for the interface as well as the game
images.

Stan