May
23
2011
I don't have much time to devote to gaming anymore, and becuase of that I have been enjoying mobile games more than console games lately. Mainly because most of the time I only have 20 minutes, and there seem to be more mobile games that I can do short plays on over console games.
The only thing I miss about console games are the controllers. no matter how hard you try, a phone just doesn't have the same "input feel" as a controller. Some people have tried using virtual analog sticks and buttons, but those always bothered me. Maybe I am just different, but I often find my fingers have drifted from the "button" at a crucial point in the game play. What bothers me is the enitre phone is an input device. Why limit the input to a few virtual buttons on the screen? In a recent game me and a good friend are working on, I really didnt want to have to use the virtual button approach. Our game (a 2d, top down, rpg -like game) was going to be better.
If a player want to walk to a certain place on the screen, he could just tap on it, and the player would walk there. It felt great, but it was missing a few things. The viewport was small, and if you wanted to walk across the current map, it took several taps. So I added the ability to "pinch zoom". It was an immediate improvement, but still not good enough as you are limited as to how far you can zoom out and still have the game playable. The next logical thing was panning. Swipe you finger across the screen, and the camera moves that direction.
Great, the person was able to quickly locate, move to the position, and it felt natural. Well, natural until it was a bigger play area. I found myslef looking for my player after I had panned away. Easy enough, when you told the player to move to a location, the camera quickly panned back down to where the player was on the map. Much better! I even added a little icon to the HUD that let you know if the camera was following the player, or if it was in "free range" mode. When in free range mode, touching the icon would snap back to the players location.
I guess what I am trying to get at is, think about a phone's input differently than a traditional gaming device. Try a few approaches until you find something that feels good to use. Now I know that not every game will benefit from the approach I took, but that is the point. Games/generes all require something different. Don't settle for what you think is traditional. Branch out and try something else.