Frontier Email

Here is an email In reply to one that I sent to my brothers friend who works for Frontier ( http://www.frontier.co.uk/ ).

Hi Seb,

 My role at Frontier is that of a Programmer, some studios like to subdivide Programmers into a bunch of different titles (Tools, Runtime/Engine, Gameplay ), Frontier doesn’t generally do that though and the work we take on tends to be more fluid. I would say if I had to pick one though, I’m pretty clearly on the gameplay side of things. What this means is that part of my job is iterating with designers to make game-specific features.

 An Engine coder (not me, hopefully) might work on a say a system to load and unload gameassets efficiently, code to model Physical objects or a system to load animations and play them on artist authored assets. These systems tend to be not specific to a particular game but shared amongst all games (and therefore put in our game-engine ).

My job is then to take the design of the game as described by designers and make it out of the systems available in the engine. One of the things I do quite a lot is player controls, which involves using the input system to gather player input and then accordingly move a player object, choose animations etc. This tends to involve a lot of back and forth with designers playing the game and giving feedback on how responsive the player is or whether whatever abilities he has are easy or satisfying to control, which I then try and improve upon. I also tend to coordinate these designer issues to the engine team, if something in the engine needs changing to make a gameplay feature possible and also to animators, artists, audio people etc.

 Happy to help with any questions you might have.

-Oli

Contextual Study Research

• User Interface Designer. If a project includes user interface design as a separate role, it’s performed by one or more people responsible for designing the layout of the screen in the various gameplay modes of the game and defining the function of the input devices. In large, complex games, this can easily be a full-time task. An otherwise brilliant game can be ruined by a bad user interface, so it is a good idea to have a specialist on board. (See Figure 2.7 for a notorious example.) Large developers are increasingly turning to usability experts from other software industries to help them test and refine their interfaces.
  Figure 2.7. Trespasser: Jurassic Park was an innovative game ruined by an awkward and buggy user interface.
  
  
•   Found at  http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/game-programming/9780321685377/design-components-and-processes/ch02lev1sec5
• "Valve's Game Console of the future"= http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5063760/we-try-the-steam-machine-valves-video-game-console-of-the-future
• Latest Generation of Consoles = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/10516223/What-will-the-game-consoles-of-the-future-look-like.html
• The Aesthetics of Game Art and Game Design By Chris Solarski = http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the_aesthetics_of_game_art_and_.php?print=1
• New Touch Technology in PSP vista game Tearaway = http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/11/18/5056096/making-tearaway
• Touch-based Game Interaction Design Considerations By Jonathan Beilin published MARCH 20, 2011= http://www.jonbeilin.net/2011/03/touch-based-game-interaction-design-considerations-draft/
•  Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition By: Ernest Adams Publisher: New RidersPub. Date: September 14, 2009
• Extra Credits: Designing for a Touch Screen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBHircZu5EI&feature=youtu.be
• Shifting mobile game market to hit $9 billion in 2016 By Steve Peterson, 30th April 2013 http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-30-mobile-to-be-primary-hardware-for-gaming-by-201As Mobile Gaming Market Thrives, Tablets Gehttp://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Gaming-Market-Thrives-Tablets-Grab-Share/1010440

http://www.creativeskillset.org/games/careers/article_2768_1.asp

• "Kids may soon be playing mobile more than PC or console games" = http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200374/Kids_may_soon_be_playing_mobile_more_than_PC_or_console_games.
• The Evolution of Game Controllers & Control Schemes & their effect on games

 by Alastair .H Cummings, University of Southampton.

• Game Makers Are Picking Mobile Devices Over Consoles http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-mobile-gaming-2013-3  

User Interface (UI) Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. UI brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture.

Terminology

Before reading further in this article there is some terminology you need to be familiar with.

Diegetic: Interface that is included in the game world -- i.e., it can be seen and heard by the game characters. Example: the holographic interface in Dead Space.

Non-diegetic: Interface that is rendered outside the game world, only visible and audible to the players in the real world. Example: most classic heads-up display (HUD) elements.

Spatial: UI elements presented in the game's 3D space with or without being an entity of the actual game world (diegetic or non-diegetic). The character outlines in Left 4 Dead are an example of non-diegetic spatial UI.

Meta: Representations can exist in the game world, but aren't necessarily visualised spatially for the player; these are meta representations. The most apparent example is effects rendered on the screen, such as blood spatter on the camera to indicate damage.

Terminology from Fagerholt, Lorentzon (2009) "Beyond the HUD - User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games". Master of Science Thesis, Chalmers University of Technology

Diegetic (below = I found very Interesting) Found at thewunderlust .net

Diegetic user interface elements exist within the game world (fiction and geometry) so the player and avatar can interact with them through visual, audible or haptic means. Well executed diegetic UI elements enhance the narrative experience for the player, providing a more immersive and integrated experience.

Many games get away with using Diegetic patterns because their narrative is set in the future, where UI overlays in daily life are commonly accepted. This is the case for the latest version of Syndicate. If the story was set in a different time period the UI elements would be probably be considered Spatial (explained in detail later in this post) instead of Diegetic.

Syndicate’s DART overlay mode highlights enemies and allows the character and player to see through cover

Assassin’s Creed manages to use a lot diegetic patterns even though it’s set in a historical world because the player of the player is using a virtual reality system in the future. So the story is in fact futuristic rather than historical.

Assassin’s Creed uses it’s eagle vision to highlight enemies and their patrol track. The player and the character see the same thing.

There are cases when diegetic UI elements aren’t appropriate, either because they aren’t legible in the geometry of the game world, or there’s a need to break the fiction in order to provide the player with more information than the character should or does know.

Meta

Sometimes UI elements don’t fit within the geometry of the game world. They can still maintain the game’s narrative but sit on the 2D hub plane — these are called Meta elements. A common example of a Meta UI element is blood the splatters on the screen as a form of health bar, as in.
Blood splashing on the screen within the 2D HUD plane to tell the player that the character is losing health

Interacting with the phone in Grand Theft Auto 4 is an interesting example. It mimics the real world interaction — you hear the phone ringing and there is a delay before the character and player answer it. The actual UI element itself appears on the 2D hub plane though, so it’s actually a Meta element, though the start of the interaction is Diegetic.

The character is answering the phone but the actual UI element is placed within the 2D HUD plane that only the player sees
Spatial
Spatial UI elements are used when there’s a need to break the narrative in order to provide more information to the player than the character should be aware of. They still sit within the geometry of the game’s environment to help immerse the player and prevent them from having to break the experience by jumping to menu screens. The closer these follow the rules of the game’s fiction the more they can help immerse the player.

Splinter Cell Conviction also adopts Spatial elements in the form of projections that illustrate objectives within the game world. Their scale does seem to challenge the fiction slightly more than other examples.

Type is overlaid in to the environment to communicate messages to the player rather than the character

Fable 3 is another example where Spatial elements are used to provide more information to the player and prevent them from jumping to a map screen. The glowing trail almost fits within the fiction given it’s magic aesthetic quality but the character isn’t meant to be aware of it. It guides the player to the next objective.

Fable’s sparkling trail allows the player to guide the character in the right direction

Non-diegetic

Then there are traditional non-diegetic elements, these elements have the freedom to be completely removed from the game’s fiction and geometry and can adopt their own visual treatment, though often influenced by the game’s art direction. I think these elements are best used when the diegetic, meta and spatial forms provide restrictions that break the seamlessness, consistency or legibly of the UI element.

World of Warcraft uses a mostly Non-diegetic UI, one exception being the Spatial player names. It allows the user to completely customise it, hopefully ensuring a familiar experience.

Most of the UI elements in World of Warcraft sit on the 2D hub plane, some elements sit within the world’s geometry such as the player names however the character isn’t aware of any of the UI

Finally, Mass Effect 3 uses many Non-diegetic UI elements in order to inform the player of the character’s selected weapon and power — among other things. Given it’s futuristic setting I can’t help to think if some of this information could have been integrated in to the game world, narrative, or even both.Mass Effect 3’s Non-diegetic elements still inherit the visual style associated with the game world