An Artist's Rendition v3.6
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The UI Still Burns. UI Problems in Soul Calibur IV

I’ve been enjoying Soul Calibur IV the past couple of weeks, it’s been frustrating but fun and challenging in such a way that I’m still coming back to try to perfect it. Unfortunately, my online game has been horrible and as such I’ve sworn off it. Instead, I’ve just relegated myself to only using grabs against the CPU – especially when fighting against Vader’s Apprentice – when I get too frustrated that I can’t land any moves at all!

But there are some things that are really distracting me when I’m playing the game, and I’m sad to say that It’s the UI. Sure it nice and polished, but there’s just too much of it sometimes, and sometimes there’s not enough.

Story mode is nothing more than a series of predetermined fights sandwiched by flat loading screens with random text and icons. I was really disappointed by the execution of this mode. It definitely seemed like one of those ideas that was never going to have enough time to execute properly, so it gets added with minimum fuss with the use of UI. For example, the beginning story on most of the characters could have been cut in half with the other half done as in-game cut scenes. The character showdown/loading screens could have been as nicely polished as the Arcade version, but instead is left as a dull screen with icons and skill points. And the chapter screens: do they really have a point? There isn’t a lot of extra plot dialog before and after the fights for them to make any sense! Like I said, this mode was really disappointing.

Story Mode loading screen with character info. Very Flat compared to the Arcade loading vs Character shots. Image source: Kotaku.

On the other hand, the Character Creation mode could have done with a little more options and information to keep it from being overwhelming. Starting off, you’re taken to the same Character Selection Screen as any other mode, but if you’re new and you’re not reading the manual, how do you know that selecting a regular character just creates a new wardrobe for that character but to create your own character you need to select the button with the male and female portraits in the middle?

If you do end up selecting an existing character, it might then be a surprise to see that the several options in the Model Information page are disabled and unchangeable. This makes sense in context since you aren’t creating your own fighter but adding a wardrobe to a current one, but how are you supposed to know that? This is a usability problem that I’ve yet to see a good solution for. Should you just not show all the options if they are unavailable? Show them but leave them to be selectable or unchangeable? Show a hint somewhere as to how to enable them? Are they unlockables? I think on this case, it would have been better to only show the options that can be changed for the current fighter. I know a couple of people who were puzzled by their inability to change these options their first time creating a character.

Custom Characters have all options available

Notice the black options on the left side

Also, you have to be careful when creating a brand new character. Depending on the decisions you make for your fighters basic traits, changing one piece of clothing could leave you without enough skill points for a skill that was added depending on your traits. I’m not sure what the idea behind this was, but I was surprised that the mode wouldn’t let me save and exit after creating my first character because I didn’t have enough skill points to fill a skill! It was odd, because I had yet to assign any skills to this character, yet I was already over loaded on them!

These are really just minor points. The character creator is rather well done over all, allowing you to change most of the major colors in just about anything, selecting from a variety of equipment, and allowing you to pick different skills for each character you create. But there were definitely some minor areas where they could have polished the experience a little more to alleviate some possible areas where users could have become confused and frustrated.

Is this really necessary? Can you tell what it’s for? Image source: Kotaku.

11:02 pm | User Interface , Video Games
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Another credit under my belt

It’s just 4 more weeks until Tiger Woods 09 will be available for sale. Because I’m not a seasoned veteran just yet, I’m still somewhat excited about the third game I have helped create and the first title I’ve worked in its entirety. I came in close to the end of the cycle for last year’s Tiger Woods 08, so while I was excited I had done some work on it I feel even more so for all the extra work that I did for this years release.

Very excited at what the public is going to think of our features this year. Take a look at what we’ve got prepared in 09:

While this years release of Tiger Woods isn’t on my birthday, like it was last year, it’s still coming out around that time. You can expect to see it on store shelves August 26.

10:26 pm | Video Games
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The sad state of Windows Mobile

Kate and I recently upgraded our phones. This is the second time around that we get identical phones (well, almost identical, mine is red). We ended up getting the Samsung Blackjack after an afternoon of going to all the cellular stores having Kate play with all the keyboard phones. I had actually been eying the Palm Centro because of its bigger and touch capable screen as well as built in threaded messaging, but decided against it as I had a friend run in to problems running Opera mobile on it. I’m also not a big fan of Blackberrys, so I too decided I would give Windows Mobile a try, thinking that because it’s a windows device, there should be a good amount of decent software for it. I was mistaken, to some extent.

One of the nice things about the Windows Mobile platform, is that if you’re capable, it’s somewhat simple to create your own custom home screens. There aren’t too many resources available, or plugins for that matter, but it is a possibility. The home screens are simple xml files that contain information on which plugins to use as well as simple layout information. All the home screen files are kept in \Application Data\Home folder of your phone. You can just place a new file there, and the display settings will read it up. I just used the ones that came with my phone as reference, and moved some stuff around to create something that I found useful.

Decent software has been a little bit harder to get a hold of then I originally thought. While there seems to be a renewed interest in creating good applications for the windows mobile platform, it seems to all be directed purely at copying the success of the iPhone. This means that all the really nice applications are touch only. I tried downloading some of the applications at I (Heart) Windows Mobile.com but couldn’t use any of them because they are touch only. I actually encountered that with several applications I installed. Thankfully, the creators of iContact added regular input to it so that I can still use this application without the touch feature.

Even iContact makes me feel like a secondary citizen. Without touch input, I can access some of the buttons on the screen! Use of the soft buttons, as well as the back button in windows mobile devices is not consistent at all. ExtremeText, the application I’m using for threaded messaging, doesn’t do anything when I press the back button, same thing with the IM app my phone came with. One would hope that pressing back would take you to the previous screen, but this apparently needs to be done in the app level.

Setting up ActiveSync in vista has been really simple though. So, at least that’s a nice break. It’s really nice to be able to sync your pictures and music from phone to your computer. Syncing is so painless, I’ve been thinking about trying to get podcasts to load onto my phone. I did have one snafu though trying to connect sync through bluetooth. After syncing with the computer through a USB cable, and setting up the bluetooth connection, you still have to run the ActiveSync app on you cellphone to connect. Still simple, but an extra step I hadn’t though of until I googled it.

10:56 pm | Gadgets and Hardware
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UI Fail! Winamp

I know I’m not the only person that runs windows with the task bar somewhere else besides the default bottom of the screen position. While I’m particularly taken to have my task bar at the top, there are many a developer I’ve seen use the taskbar on the side as well. And why shouldn’t people be able to move the task bar? It’s such an easy thing to do in Windows, back in the heydays of Windows 95, it was as easy to resize and move the bar as it was to just select something inside of it.

So why is it that more then 10 years since it’s original inception, we still see things like this:

That’s Winamp’s update alert visible under my top oriented task bar. Tsk. The Winamp developers are apparently unaware to the fact that this is a very probably place for the task bar to be, but they care not. Winamp will incessantly keep placing that damn alert window at the very top of the screen whenever the program is opened, even if i bother the move the window down before closing the program.

The worst part is not that the window appears when Winamp starts, but rather that under Windows Vista, it can’t be closed to easily. The task bar in Vista, unlike that of previous Windows versions, can’t be shrunk manually. To close this errant window, I have to make the task bar auto-hide, be careful not to get too close to the edge for the task bar to show it self again, while I try to press the (x) to close the window. I can’t even right click on Winamp and un-select the alert window, like I could un-select the Playlist window to hide it.

I seriously doubt the Winamp developers really wanted to make closing that popup such a pain, but due to their lack of forethought about different monitor and task bar configurations, they have made what should be simple, rather complex. And that’s a problem for me, because as Jeff Atwood stated, we […] tend to radically underestimate the impact of the dozens of small events in our lives throughout the day. Every user interface for your application should always be simple and straight forward to use. As tools, applications have to be as out of the way as possible to let the user do what they want with the application. When an application adds just a little bit of annoyance, or a little bit of uneeded complexity, it’s UI is failing you.

10:03 pm | Software , UI Fail
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A Case against big software.

I had a strangely satisfying problem I had to solve earlier this week. It involved needing to burn an image of Windows Vista SP1 to a disc. While that’s usually not a problem to someone with Nero or EZ CD Creator, it was a problem for me because I’ve long since stopped using either. Instead, I use a nice freeware program called CDBurnerXP (what is it with burning software and weird capitalization?). And while CDBurnerXP is usually not a problem for me when I burn the Juno Soundtrack for Kate to listen to in her car, I realized why someone might actually need a burning utility that knew every damn file extension under the sun. Here is where the problem was, the file extension of the disc image was .img, CDBurnerXP only seems to ready ISO!

However, this is when the entire thing became hugely satisfying for my problem solving abilities. Without thinking about it much, my first instinct was to see if DAEMON Tools could read the .img file extension of the Vista SP1 DVD image. And while the extension wasn’t in the list of valid file extensions, it was able to read it just fine, thereby creating a somewhat roundabout way of burning a simple disc image file. So in essence, one program was emulating a DVD Drive from an image file, while a second program was reading that emulation to create yet another image file so that it could burn that to an actual disc.

To my surprise, it all worked pretty well, especially since my dying computer didn’t even crash at the thought of doing all that work. The reason this entire little problem was so wholly satisfying to me was two-fold. First, it sometimes still amazes me how when things just work, it makes people happier. This experience was just reinforcing some of the concepts Joel Spolsky talked about in the first chapter of his “User Interface Design for Programmers.” Secondly, it also made me feel pretty good that I didn’t have to resort to big software to get stuff done; two small, free and very specialized applications gave me the results I needed.

11:14 pm | Software
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Good Brews

I’m a big coffee drinker. And I do mean it. I usually drink at least 3 cups of it a day. Technically though, because these cups they aren’t “cup size,” it’s probably closer to six to eight cups of it every day. However, most of the coffee i drink doesn’t tend to be very good. At home, I tend to drink Maxwell House most of the time because it’s the cheapest with a flavour I can stand. Only when I’m feeling particularly good do I get anything fancier, though that usually means Eight O’Clock Coffee and on the rare chance the Christopher Bean’s Jamaica Blue Mountain Blend.

As a side note, over the holiday break I had bought some of the Christopher Bean’s and left it at my parents house, when they got back and found it they were pleasantly surprised.

So, as you can see, even though I think I have a pretty good taste for coffee, I know it’s very limited. This is best exemplified with my love for Tim Horton’s Coffee. For some mixed reason of nostalgia for Canada and dislike for most restaurant’s coffee I just love Tim Horton’s Coffee. Although, in it’s defense, the blend of coffee Tim Horton’s sells really is particularly very good, especially considering that this is the equivalent of Dunkin Donuts in Canada and their coffee is terrible - I was really surprised to learn that they were going to start selling it in grocery stores, people actually want it?

However, living in Florida makes it very hard to get a can or so to keep for a while. I usually only have any in supply whenever anyone in my family goes to Canada - it’s customary to return with at least two big cans of it, on for yourself, and another one for anyone else. We really love the stuff.

So, it was somewhat surprising that his past Christmas I got two cans! It was quite awesome really. Kate was able to get a large 34oz can on eBay while my Mom was able to find me a 12oz can from the Canadian Store in London England (Tim Horton’s if your reading this, you should sell your coffee worldwide through your website). No had to travel to Canada to get any this time around!

Currently, I’m slowly making some every morning from the 36oz can with my 4 cup drip coffee maker. Which is fine, since Tim Horton’s coffee was made to be made in drip machines and still taste good. At work though, I have the smaller can which is course ground so it makes it perfect for the French Press John and I use to make coffee at work. This is by far the best way to have coffee at work since it’s fresh and doesn’t accrue bitter burnt coffee flavors while it stews in the gigantor coffee thermos.

08:29 am | On Life
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