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Designing Games for Humans Or: A Rosetta Stone for Computers

LD Smith
April 08, 2018

Designing Games for Humans Or: A Rosetta Stone for Computers

An overview of Human Computer Interaction topics, such as short term memory, long term memory, reaction times, input methods, and feedback methods. Comparison of human languages and computer langues, along with lexical scanning and grammars.

LD Smith

April 08, 2018
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  1. Designing Games for Humans Or: A Rosetta Stone for Computers

    Knoxville Game Design 2018 Levi D. Smith
  2. Human Factors • Short Term Memory • Input Methods •

    Feedback Methods • Long Term Memory • Reaction Time • Timing • Decision Making
  3. Designing Games for Short Term Memory • 7 ±2 items

    • Can you memorize these 42 letters? • Humans don’t memorize every character; Words are chunks BQQMF PSBOHF CBOBOB LJXJ CMVFCFSSZ HSBQF DPDPOVU APPLE ORANGE BANANA KIWI BLUEBERRY GRAPE COCONUT
  4. Human Input Methods • Digital (Boolean) • key press •

    mouse click • Analog (float) • joystick • trigger Douglas Engelbart
  5. Alternate input methods • Sketchpad – Ivan Sutherland • Light

    Gun • Wii-mote (infrared) • Not a true pointing device • Kinect • Needs lots of space • Calibration issues • Always listening (and watching?) • Microphone • Dance pad
  6. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) • Difficulties • Difference between a

    lowercase “L” and the number 1 • Capital letter “O” and number zero • Context • Handwriting, Cursive • Barcode readers, QR Codes • Reference points • Standard
  7. Perceived Affordance • Design of Everyday Things • Donald Norman

    • How a human interacts with an object • Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough He’s not really hungry He’s not really going to type an essay
  8. What is a human word? • Collection of characters •

    Characters (usually) represent sounds • Representation of a concept manzana 林檎 りんご apple яблоко 사과
  9. What is a human language? • A collection of words

    • Sequence of words • subject, verb, object (English) • subject, object, verb (Japanese) • Modifiers (adjectives, adverbs) • Prepositions • Exceptions (idioms) • Prosody • sarcasm doesn’t work on the Internet Character Word Language a り apple りんご I ate an apple. 私はりんごを食べました。
  10. What is a computer word? • String of characters (token)

    • Characters are integers or bytes (whole numbers, usually 0 to 255) • ASCII values • Integers are binary sequences • (28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20) • (128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1) A 65 0100 0001 P 80 0101 0000 P 80 0101 0000 L 76 0100 1100 E 69 0100 0101
  11. What is a computer language? • A collection of words

    (tokens) • Backus Naur form (BNF), Context-free grammar • Lexx and Yacc (Flex and Bison) • Turing Machines • Compiler converts language to assembly code (sometimes) • Assembler converts assembly to machine code (image)
  12. Designing Games for Long Term Memory • Long term memory

    amount is unlimited? • Does long term memory fade over time? • Rote learning • Pattern memorization • Enemy movements • Button sequence memorization • Memorization vs muscle memory • Does muscle memory fade over time?
  13. Designing Game for Reaction Time • When something happens, the

    player responds with input (or lack of thereof) • Player reacts to the state of the game • Find the right amount of time to give the player to react • Fitt’s Law • Keystroke Level Model, GOMS
  14. Reaction Time Example 6236 (+0) 6239 (+3) 6240 (+4) 6250

    (+14) 6258 (+22) Frame Number at 60 FPS (Offset time) Hit if not started dodging by here. 13 total frames to react. First noticeable change. Same stance but position changes Stance Changes Flash First hit feedback displayed 0 Hundredths of a Second 5 7 23 37
  15. Reaction Time to Frames • At 60 fps, 1 frame

    = 0.01667 seconds • 16 milliseconds • 1.6 hundredths of a second
  16. Other Factors • Input Delay • PS4 vs PC •

    Display Delay • CRT vs LCD (myth or fact?) • Screen delay, game mode • Network latency • Ping Time
  17. Anticipation and Timing • Reaction times can be improved with

    anticipation (you know it’s coming) • Quick Time Events
  18. Designing Game for Decision Making • Multiple alternatives, which will

    give the best result • On-Rails, little decision making • Open World • Map markers, navigation arrows • Cognitive complexity theory
  19. Artificial Intelligence Opponents • Breaking the rules of the game

    • Abilities not available to the player • Game trees
  20. Is True AI Possible? • Bill Joy – Why the

    Future Doesn’t Need Us, 2000 • Prolog • 1972 • Rules based Engine
  21. Random Number Generators • Is anything truly random on a

    computer? • Random number tables • Randomizer seeded by time is usually good enough • Seeding a random number generator will the same value will produce the same number sequence
  22. Deconstructing a Game • After developing games long enough, you

    will start to see games like this • Deconstructing games into the fundamental data types and objects is a good way to learn how games are made