作者：Andrew Doull

文字处理器中的WYSIWYG的出现将让不了解字距调整，DPI或色彩空间等技术细节的人也能够设计出专业的文件。因为在用户行动和最终印刷的文件间存在着强大且即时的反馈。所以用户将能在提交最终设计前于沙盒中自由地进行实验。

作为一种视觉媒体，游戏应该确保视觉元素与游戏内部状态间具有强大的一致性。但因为执行这种连接具有较大的难度，所以这一点经常遭到设计师的忽视。相反地，游戏设计师总是求助于同类型其它游戏所采取的各种捷径，如瞄准标线，生命值以及弹药计数器，但却忘记非专业游戏玩家可能不会意识到这些元素的事实。

尽管我并不提倡彻底删除HUD元素，但任何转移玩家对于单一游戏空间注意力的内容都有可能打断他们的“流”，并破坏其游戏体验。这将包括笨拙的库存系统，如《质量效应》中的内容，屏幕上的文本，很少人会去阅读的《传送门》注释中的评论，以及地图屏幕或替代视图。幸运的是，产业正在朝着正确的方向移动着，现在的我们将惊讶地发现在3D游戏中，敌人图像将不包含他们攻击你所使用的武器，也不包含瞄准你的枪的选择。希望我们离其它游戏元素（如健康状况和库存）能够一致地呈现于游戏中的情况不会太远。

以下是关于WYSIWYG游戏设计的7个例子，有好也有坏。

1.在《金刚》中瞄准标线

《金刚》是其中一款删除了HUD元素的游戏。当玩家在游戏中受伤且心跳加快时，屏幕便会震动并变红，这里有一个特定的按键能够检查弹药数，你将通过语音得知相关信息，而与许多游戏一样，你当前的武器选择是呈现于一个武器屏幕显示器上，就像你正拿着它一样。尽管我们可以使用机械瞄准具标准现代武器，但是你将发现自己经常对抗的原始矛与尖利的骨头却是完全不同的情况。

当你准备好投掷一把矛时，你将在预备阵地将其举到头顶。同时，你的其它武器也将延伸出去，就好像你正在平衡这次的投掷。伸出去的手指尖将位于其它游戏中标线所占领的位置。游戏将准确地为你指出目标。

2.Infiltration中的手榴弹

Infiltration（游戏邦注：《虚拟竞技场》中的一个mod）也使用了同样的瞄准机制去投掷手榴弹。让人惊讶的是，许多游戏都未能有效地处理手榴弹，虽然作为标准的FPS军械库中的一种武器，但是处理不当的话却有可能杀死用户。

手榴弹是这些问题性游戏游戏规则之一，即能够提到游戏设计难度，但却未提供等价的乐趣。因为AI执行问题，《潜行者：切尔诺贝利的阴影》并未让敌人投掷手榴弹——Clear Sky的一个功能便是源于添加了这一能力。《军团要塞2》彻底删除了手榴弹，只留下一个类别，因为在许多其它多人游戏中便不断溢出各种手榴弹垃圾邮件。

3.《军团要塞2》中的间谍

spy(from bestgamewallpapers)

Valve的多人游戏是值得学习的，这不只因为其强大的视觉风格，同时还因为Valve的设计师反复讨论了这一风格的彻底改革该如何弥补游戏机制并简化的易用性和可游戏性。间谍所戴的口罩便是最佳例子。间谍的伪装能力被用于《敌占区：雷神战争》以及最初的《军团要塞》等游戏中。但却没有一款游戏更有效地呈现出“我是一个伪装的间谍”的信息，而只是将一个口罩盖在最初的角色脸上，并在口罩上绘制了一个伪装图像。

就像Valve在注释中所强调的，在角色模型周围设置漂浮的指示器只会分散他们的注意力。当你尝试着传达有关敌人状态的信息时请考虑这点，特别是当面对你鼓励玩家直接瞄准的敌人时。

4.《求生之路》中的生命包

许多游戏都带有屏幕上的库存系统，或至少关于你正在使用的武器的屏幕显示。但Turtle Rock Studios的《求生之路》却将这一理念推进一步。角色模式包含了一个生命包的存在或缺失，所以如果你正运载着能够复苏它们的援救工具，你的伙伴便会立刻知道。这能够支持者整体的合作体验，让你不能隐瞒其他玩家，同时也不需要屏幕弹出内容或任何类型的查询机制。

5.《塞尔达传说：风之律动》的游戏提示

许多游戏总是不能有效地处理游戏提示：不管是通过屏幕文本还是源自游戏中其他角色的言语暗示，总是不可避免地会出现一再的重复。就像《使命召唤4：现代战争》便是一个糟糕的例子，在这里你将体验到像个现代步兵不断被差来差去的影响，而《旺达与巨像》在这方面的糟糕设置也导致了神一般的呻吟声被转翻译在字幕上，并且还融入在游戏世界的背景色中，让玩家很难进行分辨。

不管是在《塞尔达传说：风之律动》还是《幻影沙漏》中，细胞渐变动画和简单的角色设计都强调了主角的眼睛。我们会因为视觉图像而自然地被眼睛所吸引，这也是为什么它在广告中如此突出的主要原因，还有一种实际的可能性在于人类的大脑中有一部分是致力于识别人脸，眼睛和眉部构成了识别过程的主要部分。

当在这些游戏中出现一些有趣的内容时，游戏内部提示机制便会悄悄地出现，并且不会弹出任何额外信息。Link的眼睛专注于有趣的对象，并在移动时仍会保持着这种关注，从而引起你出于本能去观察他到底在看些什么。这只有在第三人称游戏中才有可能实现，但在许多情况下出色的技巧也能够排除暗示机制的必要。

6.《毁灭战士3》的互动屏幕

尽管《毁灭战士3》遭到了不公平的责骂——早期关卡的无尽黑暗开通了更令人印象深刻的场景（当你到达地狱时），但存在一个游戏机制应该得到更广泛的使用，不管是在这款游戏中还是最近发行的第一人称射击游戏里。大多数这些游戏都带有一些序列，即包含用按键开门，使用计算机终端或互动黑客游戏。但这不可避免的需要通过屏幕上的弹出内容或独立的子画面（将把玩家带离当前的环境并终端游戏流）进行呈现。当玩家正遭受攻击时，被迫静止不动，并输入个人身份号码时将有可能彻底破坏了游戏的沉浸感。

在《毁灭战士3》中，将枪炮瞄准镜对准终端屏幕，即用一个计算机十字准线替换屏幕上的hud，这在3D环境中是直接呈现于终端屏幕上。这里并不存在任何干扰物：你可以选择四处移动，抬起你的视线和枪支而不是输入一个选择。但遗憾的是，你基于这种方式进行互动的序列非常有限。

7.《The Getaway》中的行车路线

《The Getaway》是另外一款没有过多HUD的游戏，但有些设计决策却显得不是那么明智。这是一款第三人称射击游戏，所以设计师能够通过添加血溅到角色模型上而有效地呈现出他的状态。但当角色受重伤时减慢其速度将创造出一个负面的反馈循环，从而让游戏变得更加复杂。比起《使命召唤2》，《金刚》和《光晕》的快速再生模式，它选择的是休息和恢复命令，即倚靠着墙壁并缓慢呼吸。一杯茶的时间并不适合于紧张的战斗情境，只能够用于突出衍生新敌人的人造触发点。

伴随着意外后果的努力奖励将出现在游戏内部的地图系统中。尽管这是件好事，特别是对于沙盒游戏来说，即所包含的距离有时候会收到地图方法学的驱动，但计划变更更是充满了副作用。当你在一辆汽车上时，游戏设计师决定使用指示灯去告诉你目标方向（即通过左右灯的闪烁）。但这么做却存在许多问题。

首先，你所呈现的信息太过有限，而路径寻找也不是特别出彩。你没有距离指示，只有有限的关于方向的信息。最终你将面临一种情境，即目标出现在你正身后，但是护目镜却只能左右交替。明确这一点的最简单的方法便是开慢点，最好是迂回前进，直到指示器停下来。

其次，也是更重要的是，你可以通过结束于一次轻微的碰撞而消除导航能力，特别是通过倒车，这意味着你结束于一个完全的功能性汽车中，除了破裂的指示灯。这必然会要求你丢弃汽车并找到另外一辆汽车驶向目的地。除了需要面对许多要求你驾驶一辆特殊的汽车到达目的地的各种任务外，这种方法还是不错的。

因此，你最终将获得一个任务简报并面对两次驾驶环节：第一次你需要记住路线，而第二次你必须在有限时间内完成任务。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

COLUMN: ‘The Amateur’: WYSIWYG Game Design

January 16, 2008

By Andrew Doull

The advent of WYSIWYG in word-processing revolutionized the ability of non-specialist users to be able to design professional looking documents without having to know technical details about kerning, DPI or colour spaces. This came about because there was strong and immediate feedback between the user actions and the final printed document. So a user was free to experiment within an sandbox before committing to the final design.

Games, as a visual medium, should have an equally strong correspondence between the visual elements and in-game state. But this is often forgotten due to the difficulty of implementing this connection. Instead, game-designers fall back on the various short-cuts adopted by other games in their genre, such as targeting reticles, health bars and ammunition counters, while forgetting that these are not necessarily intuitive for non-specialist game players.

While I don’t advocate the complete removal of HUD elements (for a great article on this, see “Off With Their HUDs!: Rethinking the Heads-Up Display in Console Game Design”), anything that takes the player away from concentrating on a single game-space can interrupt their ‘flow’ and ruin the game experience. These can include awkward inventory systems, such as those in Mass Effect, on-screen text, which as the commentary in Portal notes is rarely read, and map screens or alternate views. Luckily, the industry is moving in the right direction and we would now be surprised to see a 3D game where enemy graphics didn’t include the weapon they were attacking you with, and the option to sight down your own gun. Hopefully it won’t be too long before other elements of game-play, such as health state and inventory are more consistently shown in-game.

Here are seven examples of WYSIWYG game-design, good and bad.

1. Target reticules in King Kong

King Kong is one of the games highlighted in the above Gamasutra article on removing HUD elements. The screen shakes and reddens when you are injured and the sound of your heartbeat increases, there is a dedicated button press to check the ammunition count, which is audibly reported to you, and your current weapon selection, as in many games, is indicated with an on-screen display of the weapon as if you were holding it. But while modern weapons can be sighted down using iron sights, the primitive spears and shards of bone you will frequently find yourself fighting with are a different story.

When you ready a spear to thrown, you’ll raise it above your head in an alternate position. And at the same time, your other arm will stretch out, as if you were balancing for the throw. And the fingertip of this out-stretched arm will be in the position normally occupied by a target reticule in other games. The game is literally pointing at your target for you.

2. Hand grenades in Infiltration

The same aiming mechanic is used in Infiltration, a mod for Unreal Tournament, for throwing hand grenades. It’s surprising how many games do hand grenades badly, given that they are one of the few weapons in a standard FPS arsenal capable of killing the user if mis-handled.

Grenades are one of those problematic game conventions, that increase the game design difficulty, without necessarily providing equivalent fun. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: The Shadow of Chernobyl does not let the enemies throw them at all due to implementation issues with the AI – one of the features of Clear Sky is that this capability has been added. Team Fortress 2 removes grenades entirely except for one class, due to the incessant grenade spam that plagues many other multi-player games.

Have a look at this video on hand grenade use that Dsylecxi puts together as a part of the article The Best of Tactical Gaming: Infiltration.

3. The Spy in Team Fortress 2

Valve’s multi-player game of mayhem is worth studying, not just because of the strong visual style, but because the designers at Valve have repeatedly discussed how the radical overhaul of this style look was done to complement the in-game mechanics and simplify the ‘pick-up-and-playability’ of the game. The masks worn by the Spy are the best example of this. The Spy’s disguise ability has been used in other games such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the original Team Fortress. But nowhere has the information of ‘I’m a disguised Spy’ been better represented than by putting a paper-mask on the original character, with an image of the disguised class on the front of the mask.

As Valve notes in the commentary, having floating indicators around the character model just distracted attention from the model itself. Consider this any time that you attempt to convey information about an enemy state, particularly an enemy one that you should be encouraging people to target directly.

4. Health-packs in Left4Dead

Many games have an on-screen inventory system, or at least, an on-screen display of the current weapon that you are using. But Left4Dead by Turtle Rock Studios looks to take it a step further. The character models incorporate the presence or absence of a health-kit, so that it is immediately obvious to your companions if you are carrying aid able to revive them. And this supports the overall co-op experience, by making it impossible to hold-out on the other players, while not requiring either an on screen pop-up or some sort of query mechanism.

5. In-game tips in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

In game tips are generally handled badly: either through on screen text or a spoken suggestion from another character in the game, which inevitably gets repeated over and over. For bad examples of this see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare where the you get to experience the full impact of being ordered around like a modern army grunt and Shadow of the Colossus where the worst of both techniques results in the weird groans of a god-like voice translated in sub-titles which fail to contrast against the washed out colours of the world around you.

In both the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Phantom Hour Glass, the cell shaded animation and simple character design emphasize the eyes of the main characters. We are naturally drawn to the eye as a visual image, which is why it features so prominently in advertising, and there is a real possibility that humans have a separate part of the brain devoted to processing faces (The fusiform gyrus) of which the eye and eye brow form a significant part of the recognition process.

When there is something interesting in nearby in either of these games, there is a simple in-game tip mechanism that occurs silently and without popping up extraneous information. Link’s eyes focus on the object of interest and will keep focused as you move, allowing you to instinctively triangulate what it is that he is looking at. This is only possible in a third person game, but a brilliant technique that obviates the need for a hint mechanism in many circumstances. The fact that the art design supports this shows incredible foresight.

6. Interactive screens in Doom 3

While Doom 3 was perhaps unfairly slated – the unrelenting darkness of the early levels opening up to more impressive vistas once you make it to Hell, there is one game mechanic that should have been used more widely, both in-game and in more recently released first person shooters. The majority of these games have some kind of sequence involving opening a door with a keypad, using a computer terminal or an interactive hacking game. But this inevitably is implemented with an on-screen pop-up or separate sub-screen which takes the player out of their immediate environment and interrupts the flow of game-play. This can be critical when the player is under fire and forced to stand still and enter a pin code, or breaks the immersion by making the sequence take no time at all.

In Doom 3, moving your gun sight onto a terminal screen replaces the on-screen hud with a computer cross-hair, that is displayed directly on the terminal screen in the 3d environment. There is no interruption at all: you can chose to move around if you wish, and raise your gaze and fire instead of entering in a choice. It’s a pity that the sequences where you interact this way are so limited and uninvolved.

7. Driving directions in The Getaway

The Getaway is another example of a HUD-less game, but some of the design decisions look less sensible in the critical light of release. It’s a third person shooter, so the designers were able to show your state of well-being by adding blood spatters to the character model. But by slowing the movement of the character as they are progressively more injured, they add a negative feed-back loop that makes the game harder if you are overwhelmed. And instead of having the rapid regeneration models of Call of Duty 2, King Kong and Halo, they instead opted for a rest and recovery command, which involves leaning against the wall and taking a bit of a breather. The cup-of-tea-timeout pacing of this is hardly well-suited to what should be a tense fire-fight and just serves to highlight the artificial trigger points which spawn new enemies.

The prize for effort with unintended consequences though goes to the in-game map system. There isn’t any. While this can be a good thing, particularly for sand-box style games, where the distances involved can sometimes lead to a drive by map methodology, the intended replacement is full of side-effects. When you are in a vehicle, the game designers decided to use the indicator lights to show which direction your target is, by blinking left or right turn. The problems with this are manifold.

Firstly, the information presented is far too limited, and the path finding not particularly brilliant. You have no indication of distance, and limited idea of direction. You can end up in a situation where the blinkers alternate left and right by turning a few degrees because the target is directly behind you. The easiest way to figure this out is by driving slowly, preferably around a roundabout, until the indicators stop. Hardly the stuff of adrenaline-filled car chases.

Secondly, and more importantly, you can disable your ability to navigate by ending up in a mild collision, particularly through reversing, which can mean you end up in a completely functional vehicle, except for broken indicator lights. This inevitably requires that you ditch the car and find another to navigate to your destination. Which works fine, except for the multitude of missions that require you drive a particular vehicle to your destination.

Consequently, you end up getting a mission briefing and doing the driving section twice: the first time to memorize the route and the second to do it within the allowed time limits. I learned to navigate my way around inner London through playing this game well before I ever traveled to the city. Luckily for everyone, my interaction with commuter traffic in London was limited to the Underground, taxis and buses.(source:gamesetwatch)