hi all,
Late last month there was an article posted on Gamasutra by a fellow named Philip Goetz regarding the UI (user interface) of strategy games. The fellow starts out with a click count for a single turn of Civ 3 in late game, and reports 422 mouse clicks, 352 mouse movements, 290 key presses, 23 wheel scrolls, and 18 screen pans, using all the keyboard shortcuts available.
He then goes on to talk about current problems with strategy game design, saying that the number of units to control and the speed at which clicks are required make the player experience of many current strategy games not one of strategy, but one of mouse movements and clicks. As he says:
Possibly a few people here will agree with this.Quote:
Games that require a click per second are arcade games, regardless of their complexity.
Anyway, the main reason I bring this article up here is Philip's statement about halfway through the article:
At first glance, and even at fifth and sixth glance, it seems like this idea of rules of engagement, or previously-trained units, would very nicely fill the tactical gap in the TW battle interface. It would, I believe, also create some tremendous possibilities for the AI.Quote:
Providing two user interfaces – one to be used off-line to provide rules of engagement, and another to be used on-line – could reduce the stress of handling individual units.
Rules of engagement would allow a user (or AI) to give high-level commands to a group of units like, "Run around the enemy's left flank after most of their units are engaged, wipe out any cavalry and archers, avoid contact with infantry, and pick off any routers" --- simply because four of five parts in this command were handled by setting rules of engagement before the battle even started.
Philip gets into some formal UI definitions toward the end which may/may not be interesting to folks here. But I would highly recommended it. This article can be found here on Gamasutra.
Happy reading!
