Building video games is more than designing game rules and logic;. Its critical to make the player feel connected to the experience, and feel their impact on the game world. UX designers have long called this delight and thats the theme of todays DevLog.

Traffic
One of the biggest pieces of feedback weve gotten is to add more life to the world. As well as a compelling puzzle, the player should become immersed into the world. This is where creating delight serves us well as developers, as each detail enhances the experience in an intangible way.

Every road tile is modelled as a set of waypoints, or path segments as theyre called internally.

We had some fun traffic bugs along the way:


When vehicles spawn, we use a well known computer science algorithm called a randomised depth first search to construct a list of waypoints for the vehicle to drive between. When combined with a queue and some vector maths, we have a fully functional pathfinding algorithm for vehicles.

User Interface
Another core piece of feedback is that the user interface is confusing. When building the game initially, we werent sure how it was going to evolve, so the UI was never really designed and simply put together as the need arises.

Going back to the drawing board, we brainstormed a new user interface at a London coworking space for a day. The new design was created from a first principles approach. At each stage of the game (design, iteration, simulation) we asked ourselves:

• "What does the user need (or want) to know at this stage?"
• "What actions are available?"
• "How can we minimise cognitive overload but still teach the player what we want them to know?
  

Finally, we settled on this:


The clipboard details have been split up and tucked into the various top menus in what we're calling "the sandbar". Additionally the bottom and side menus have been combined into a single toolbox at the bottom.

Looking forward to your thoughts!


As always, please wishlist and follow if youre interested in playing Green With Energy when it launches.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/890890/Green_With_Energy/

[ 2022-03-06 16:08:56 CET ] [Original Post]