mrhands

Sexy game(s) maker

  • he/him

I do UI programming for AAA games and I have opinions about adult games


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mrhands31

I received a request from a game designer to draw a GPS path to a Point of Interest (POI) on the minimap if the player is following a quest in a pedestrian area.

Sure thing, boss!

Except, GPS navigation in the game is for cars, not pedestrians. So the GPS system only draws a line to the nearest road a car can drive on. Once players are out of their cars and into the open world, they're on their own. Furthermore, pedestrian paths are not even available in the exported map data, so the minimap literally can't draw them.

And even if we rebuild the GPS navigation to have a "pedestrian mode," a sizable tech investment for sure, there's another problem. Do you want players to only walk along the line on their minimap without considering alternative approaches to the objective? Because that's what you get when you draw a freaking line on their minimap!

When I dig a little deeper and try to tease out the "why" of this request, it's because players keep getting lost in the quest area when trying to beeline to the big honking "Quest Here!" POI icon on their HUD. That sounds like a quest and/or level design issue, bud! Why are you making it a UI problem!!

Anyway, if you were wondering why AAA games tend to be Like That, it's basically the above, repeated about five million times until the game ships.


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