I have noticed one of Byond's biggest problems. Developers do not know how to present their games. Most games I have ever seen, or tried to play all followed the same trend. One main window with a image set as the background, and some sort of popups for every other prompt or dialog. Is it to much trouble to look into how to properly use a child element, and just create a pane for all your character creation and winget all the info?
With Byond trying to usher in a era of new original games, and attract more experienced developers from outside communities. Why should we be showcasing games that are still using alerts, inputs, and in some case ugly browser popups? Its simply just unappealing to the eye, and in my opinion not a good way to attract would be developers.
I have also noticed a growing trend of "Developer Teams" searching for skin artist. I hate to break it to ya guys, but a programmer should be able to layout your interface(if you have a drawing of sorts) and program it with no problem, and if you want it to look pretty have someone design some kind of header for the panes, or a background image that can be used pretty modularly.
Byond has the capability of producing visually appealing games, and the term visually should be taken as more than just pixel art. The games UI and pixel art should, be just as appealing as one another. A game with crappy UI and nice game art, will always be just as crappy as UI. So please start spending more time on your interface!
Enough of my rant, I feel a bit better now.
ID:114103
 Jun 5 2011, 2:09 am
|
|
|
Jun 5 2011, 2:41 am
|
|
Akriloth
 |
so.......what are you going to do about it?
|
The "skin artist" thing isn't such a bad idea, if it wasn't for the fact that UX is actually a formal area where you could learn some do's and don'ts, and I suspect people calling themselves skin artists haven't picked any of that up for the most part.
For projects of decent size in industry, I'd expect to end up working with some UX engineer to develop the UI and human interaction with the system. It may mean I'm creating the interface etc, but under direction from someone who appreciates the consequences of a given design on a user. | |
Akriloth wrote:
so.......what are you going to do about it? Nothing - that's why it's called a rant. But anyway, thanks for reinforcing my idea about our games that are on display. A lot of people seem to think that it has no influence on a developer's impression of the software. | |
Akriloth wrote:
so.......what are you going to do about it? Nothing I can do, I can't help some developers lack the incentive to make their games look good as well as play good. It's just like in the game industry, games that look good play like shit, the less graphically pleasing games have the best content. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
But anyway, thanks for reinforcing my idea about our games that are on display. A lot of people seem to think that it has no influence on a developer's impression of the software. I'm not sure that's strictly true, it's just not the be all and end all. I polled around some of my old university friends who dabbled in games development, seeing a platform with presentable games obviously helps, but unless they have a technical breakdown of what the platform can do as well, they don't know if it's appropriate for their game ideas. I think as we concluded last time this was discussed, BYOND really need to improve both areas, as both are lacking currently. | |
Stephen001 wrote:
The "skin artist" thing isn't such a bad idea, if it wasn't for the fact that UX is actually a formal area where you could learn some do's and don'ts, and I suspect people calling themselves skin artists haven't picked any of that up for the most part. But Stephen this isn't the industry, and most of our UI don't have to be that complicated. Tom and Lummox have provided us with a tool that allows us to easily manipulate the way our programs look and feel, there no excuse it's time we start doing our part. | |
If you took all of these games that use inputs and alerts and gave them excellent interfaces, would the games be good? Or would they still be terrible? My hunch is that they'd still be terrible. A better interface would certainly help, but it'll never cover up terrible gameplay.
A crappy interface is often an indicator that the game is terrible. If crappy games had good interfaces I'd have to waste more time playing the game only to discover that the gameplay is boring and disappointing. Now, I can quit once I see the interface and I haven't missed out on any hidden gems yet. Edit: This is unrelated, but... Stephen001 wrote: a technical breakdown of what the platform can do ... I think as we concluded last time this was discussed, BYOND really need to improve both areas, as both are lacking currently. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, then I took a stab at creating that document if you'd like to read it over: http://files.byondhome.com/Forumaccount/dev-guide.html | |
National Guardsmen wrote:
But Stephen this isn't the industry, and most of our UI don't have to be that complicated. Tom and Lummox have provided us with a tool that allows us to easily manipulate the way our programs look and feel, there no excuse it's time we start doing out part. I'd put it this way, I think. Any focus on user experience design (be it from a programmer or someone else) is better than nothing! So to that extent, we do agree. However we'd better appreciate that while you can console yourself with saying "But we're not in industry", the end-user, the player, doesn't care. They will judge all games on a fairly level field and on their merits, so you need to have that focus. However from the delights of seeing the rear-end of most games submitted on BYOND, I can assure you that in the general case, programmers here do not make good use experience designers, even when they do use the tools provided, and do try. There's a mentality thing, a lack of experience, and lack of understanding of the theory behind how people approach tasks in games and view information. If individuals on BYOND happen to want to take a route of focusing purely on that and taking the role of "skin design" (it's more than that really) seriously as a standalone role in games, BYOND would benefit a great deal, and their input into a UI should be favoured over most programmers here. As it is, I don't think we have such developers yet ;), so yes, anyone putting a little effort in is of course better than none. But lets not discredit a potentially good "culture" BYOND could pick up. | |
I'm probably alone on this, but as long as the UI is intuitive and is not obviously hideous, I don't care how it looks. I actually quite like BYOND's default interface.
The biggest problem with BYOND is people don't know how to make games. Look at Ultima VII: one of the greatest RPGs. BYOND can replicate it to the smallest detail, and do it better. Why don't we have an Ultima VII then? It's not about interfaces, networking problems, or built-in pixel movement, it's about talent and dedication on part of the developer. | |
Toadfish wrote:
The biggest problem with BYOND is people don't know how to make games. Look at Ultima VII: one of the greatest RPGs. BYOND can replicate it to the smallest detail, and do it better. Why don't we have an Ultima VII then? It's not about interfaces, networking problems, or built-in pixel movement, it's about talent and dedication on part of the developer. Some short answers to the biggest question: 1. Some DM language features make it difficult to maintain large projects. 2. It's easy to say "make an awesome RPG" but it's hard to do. 3. BYOND attracts first-time programmers. 4. BYOND tends to attract people who would rather dwell/work on their one, idealized fantasy dream game instead of developing more ideas and games. Any one of those points could turn into a huge (and irrelevant) discussion. | |
Reading your response I'm not quite sure if you're responding to "why don't we have enough good developers" or "why don't we have enough good games". I'll take it as answering "why don't we have enough good games".
I don't think technical limitations on part of the language, or an inexperienced developer pool is much of an issue, "evidence" being RM2K is a lot more harder to work with but the indie community has produced many, many great games over the years. The biggest reason why we don't have good games is because we don't have and/or promote enough good games. If people start seeing great games on BYOND and think "I can do this too!", that's all we really need. Really, I'd place the finger on internal promotion and too many people telling us why they can't make their own net dream* instead of sitting on their asses and actually making it. BYOND would do well to look at communities like the RPG Maker community and see what works for them and why. e- *I'm not talking about Falacy in particular as he actually does actively develop, but the whole pixel movement discussion is one of the most ubiquitous, and ubiquitously irrelevant issues around here. | |
Toadfish wrote:
Really, I'd place the finger on internal promotion and too many people telling us why they can't make their own net dream instead of sitting on their asses and actually making it. The problem is that even when people aren't making excuses, as you said, they're trying to make their dream. They're not making games, they're making their dream. Dreams are poorly defined and aren't tangible. We have a lot of developers who are satisfied by planning their dream game and imagining how much fun it would be. We need more people who are satisfied by results. I agree that having some developers who actually put some decent games together would really help. When it comes to making games, BYOND does a lot of the work for you. Not only should people be able to make complete games, they should be able to make them quickly. | |
Is it okay that this post gave me a bonner?
| |
Personally, I believe BYOND games should prove to be good games by... you know, having fun and entertaining gameplay.
Not by flaunting pretty interfaces at everyone. (That said, I refuse to play any game that thinks "Neon Red on Black" is a good colour scheme for their interface.) | |
The peoples republic of china wrote:
Personally, I believe BYOND games should prove to be good games by... you know, having fun and entertaining gameplay. Yea but your totally missing the point, why would you develop a decent game and not sink another hour or two into creating a nice interface? How many indie games have you seen use anything remotely like a input? | |
+Rep for this one.
| |