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Best Practices
in Game Design for
the Ultra-Mobile PC
by Matt Gillespie, Michael Finkel
and Victoria Bailey
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The Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) will expand the market for PC games that run on Microsoft Windows* XP, as long as developers consider certain design requirements to ensure a good user experience. In most cases, a single version of games can span both the UMPC and traditional PC platforms. 1 Introduction The Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) platform is of increasing importance as a target system for game developers. Because these systems run on Microsoft Windows* XP Tablet PC Edition, they don't require
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Best Practice: Ideally, games designed with the UMPC in mind should use text sparingly and consider the UMPC screen size when choosing a font. Likewise, icons should not rely heavily on fine details, so different objects are different enough to be easily distinguished from one another, even on the smaller UMPC screen. In places where increasing text size enough would compromise other elements of the game, allowing text size to be adjustable may be a good solution, allowing individual playe
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2.3 Game Window Size Issue: If game windows use a fixed size, rather than automatically resizing themselves to fill the full UMPC screen, parts of the game may not be visible all at once, and, in some cases, certain parts may not be reachable at all, as shown in Figure 2. This situation is made more complex by the potential for players to use the 800x480 or 1024x600 resolution enabled by the UMPC's wide screen, since those aspect ratios must be matched to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio emp
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movement controlling the cursor). This issue tends to arise particularly often, for example, in games that shift the user's perspective so that the cursor is always at the center of the screen (which is common in first-person shooters). In such a scenario, when the player touches the screen, the cursor may jump around the screen erratically, instead of moving to where the user touched. Best Practice: If the game tracks movement of the cursor from point A to point B, it must be able to int
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Issue (Game Resolution Larger than Screen): In those cases where the game window takes up more than the full vertical space of the screen, the touch screen may be incorrectly mapped vertically instead of horizontally, as shown in Figure 4. This scenario typically causes the touch screen to be mapped to the whole game window, rather than just to the visible section. Again, clicks do not correspond to the area of the game window that the user intends. Figure 4. Having part of the game wind
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3.4 Accommodating Right-Click Functionality Issue: On a typical UMPC touch-screen, users perform right-clicks by holding down the click on the screen for a longer time than for a left-click, which can cause users to inadvertently left-click when they mean to right-click. Moreover, it is impossible to perform a left-click and right-click simultaneously. Best Practice: Developers should provide alternative user interactions to replace right-click functionality, such as using double-clicks o
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4.2 Limiting the Need for Diverse Command Inputs Issue: The UMPC form factor provides for a limited number of inputs, relative to the full keyboard and mouse available from a standard PC. Even those games that are designed to be run on a PC using a joystick may require the use of multiple buttons that are included on a typical joystick controller, which may not be available from the UMPC. UMPCs also have issues with games that incorporate keyboard shortcuts as a key game play component. No
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5 Conclusion Game developers and architects providing support for the UMPC platform in mainstream game offerings can develop a discrete set of design considerations that address common issues that arise during the development process. The best practices described in this document provide a foundation for that effort. Because Windows-based UMPCs run a full version of the operating system, it typically requires less effort to provide this support than a full port to a separate operating env
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