Datasheet

20
Part I: Getting Started
Figure 1-5:
The initial
prototype
of the main
menu.
Moving through Traffic
The process of prototyping your game on paper
gives you a great opportunity to think through
how you want the game to work before you
commit anything to code. Here are some of the
thoughts we had while designing Traffic:
✓ Originally, we saw the game mechanics
as being a choice among cars driving for-
ward, cars turning, and the player direct-
ing traffic. However, this simply wasn’t fun
enough — more than half the cars didn’t
need to do anything to win points.
✓ There wasn’t enough to indicate which
cars should go where. We thought about
adding blinking indicator lights on the cars
but didn’t feel that these would be visible
enough.
✓ By adapting the game into three lanes
going forward, we could have more cars
onscreen at once without overloading the
player in terms of the possibility of having
them crash. This, in turn, allowed the player
to concentrate on managing more cars.
✓ We decided on a simple, brightly colored
theme and designed every aspect of the
game’s look around that. The buttons
would be reminiscent of traffic lights, the
cars would be seen from the top-down, and
we’d keep the amount of clutter onscreen
to a minimum.
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