I just had the pleasure of judging the best games of the month! Some of the games had dialogue systems, and among them I found some good examples to demonstrate the different ways dialogue box UI can work in games. Game dev posts about dialogue boxes typically focus on the visual aspect of how to style text that's presented to the player, so I want to talk about the functionality instead.

There are a handful of ways to design the input mechanism for dialogue boxes, and I'll say right now that they're not all equally good! There are some clear winners here, and it has everything to do with letting players read at their own pace. One design principle I try to stick to is to never make the player wait, because waiting isn't a fun game mechanic. But don't feel bad if you got it wrong, because even big studios screw this up! Skyward Sword's dialogue was so slow that I resorted to hacking my Wii to make it faster.

I'll try to come up with a code that's somewhat reminiscent of the Myers–Briggs personality types, so that the options for different dialogue systems can be quickly identified.

T: Typing effect

Often referred to as text scrolling or animated text, this is where the letters are each revealed one at a time as though someone is actually typing out the text in real time before your eyes. This option is so common that I'm sure there are more games that have it than those that don't. It's understandable why developers would want their text to come to life like this so that there's always motion on the screen to grab players' attention, but don't be so sure it's necessary! The alternative to the typing effect is to have the text all get displayed at once, which ensures that it will never be too slow even for the fastest readers.

S: Skip to the end

If there's a typing effect, this is when you can press a button to instantly reveal all the text so you don't have to wait. I highly recommend it to make typing effects unintrusive.

F: Fast forward

This is when you can hold a button to make a typing effect go faster while not being instantaneous. It's rare but I've certainly seen it. It can be acceptable if it's fast enough for even the fastest readers, but problems arise when the player has already read the dialogue before and now they can't quite skip it.

I: Instantly advance

This is when you press a button and instead of going to the end by revealing all the text, it actually skips past the text by advancing to the next bit of dialogue before you can read it. It's a bit of a flub, because if the player doesn't get to read the dialogue then the game might as well skip the whole cutscene instead of just skipping ahead a little.

P: Press a button to advance

This is when you have to perform some kind of input to continue on to the next bit of dialogue once all the text in the current bit is displayed. This is a great way to let people go at their own pace, especially for slow readers.

W: Wait to advance

This is when the dialogue continues on to the next bit automatically after some predetermined delay. You need to pick either W or P or else the dialogue won't advance at all. Technically you could have both, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense design-wise.

So without further ado, here are the examples from October.

Too skippable: Bloodlust: Santa Monica (Definitive Edition)

TIP. That's T for Typing effect, I for Instantly advance, and P for Press a button to advance (if you wait for the typing effect to finish). It's unfortunate that this game has the "I" problem, but the dev did say it will be fixed in an update so it may already be fixed by the time you read this.

Not skippable enough: HALLOWEEN HUSTLE!

W for Wait to advance. This is an interesting example because it doesn't have a typing effect so the wait isn't that bad, but it still needs to give more control to the player.

Just right: The Bugs Manor 🦋 - Prologue

TSP. That's T for Typing effect, S for skip to the end, and P for Press a button to advance. This is arguably the best way for dialogue box UI to work, though I personally am also happy with just P and no typing effect at all.

And there you have it, folks. I don't mean any disrespect towards the games I mentioned or their developers, I just wanted to teach devs about these principles and I saw an opportunity. I have a huge amount of appreciation for the game devs on Newgrounds and I hope they keep making games.

Just a rendition of the classic game, Flood. Works on Windows, but to really experience everything you'll wanna install it on an Android device. The code was written in Lua using Corona. Download here.

Music by Kassich

Sound by beskhu

Of course you have! Everyone has!

Well I made a NEW TUTORIAL just for that!

Just released a new game. I made it over a year ago, and finally got a sponsor. It was for Player.IO's $10,000 game contest where we had to make a multiplayer game. I wasn't in the top 10 so I didn't win anything, so I put it up on FGL. It didn't get any bites so I was about to release it for free, mostly for the sake of Adoxographist and my two artists who did a good job on the game because I wanted to showcase their work, when I started seeing some bids. Lucky me.

I am not proud of this game at all. Some people like it and want me to do more work on it, but that's not going to happen, because I have absolutely no enthusiasm for this project. It's not my best work. It may be my worst.

You may notice some bugs, especially with the online multiplayer aspect since it's so hard to be in control with that sort of thing. Who knows what types of connections you'll encounter? I do pride myself with making bug-free games, so this may have to be an exception.

I actually had to make the sponsor's version of the game with the free trial of Flash CC since the API he wanted me to incorporate wouldn't work with Flash CS4. My free trial has run out, so that's one thing that makes it difficult to make any edits or improvements.

PLAY AME FURY... if you like.

So Goin' Mental has been out for a week or so. It was originally a game jam game back in December when the theme was hallucinations. But the team had an absentee programmer so after the jam test-object asked me to sign on so that their work wouldn't go to waste.

Unfortunately they designed a game that could not be coded in four days, which was the time limit of the jam. They didn't know that because they had no programmer to tell them that. I knew it wasn't a four day job but I still underestimated the amount of time I would have to spend on it because I kept thinking of it as just a simple game jam game.

Anyway, I finished the game back in May and I put it on FGL. It sat there for a long time and finally started getting some low bids. Not satisfied with this, we asked Tom if he'd like to sponsor the game and he did. He didn't beat the highest bid but we went with it anyway because we like Newgrounds so much.

It's clear that people find the game to be very difficult. Time and again we'd have to go back and make it easier. It's usually because people can't figure out what to do, which really makes me sad. I'm a big retro gamer and old games made you figure them out on your own all the time. None of us wanted to put in these hand-holding changes but we had to because our players aren't willing to experiment and figure things out. The fading text at the bottom of the screen? The flashing arrow next to the spiky ball that shows you that it's moving towards you? The flashing exclamation point above the worm's head that shows you that it's about to lunge at you? The glow around the worm that shows you when it's vulnerable? The giant help panel in the level select screen? None of it was there originally. The game seemed obvious enough to us of course. The worm already shook its head with its mouth open when it was vulnerable or with its mouth closed when it was about to lunge at you. But we have no confirmation that even a single tester was able to figure out how to beat the worm on their own. I still don't know if anybody actually gets it. People still probably don't realize that you're supposed to make the worm lunge at the bomb instead of activating the bomb yourself after the worm lunges. That's a hint by the way. We even had to put in announcements when you start each round because apparently it's not obvious enough that you've entered a new round from the music changing and the background changing and the enemies changing.

ANYWAY, PLAY THE GAME HERE

I'm pretty sick of this game though. Every time I have to go back and touch things up it triggers PTSD symptoms.

No. I don't wanna go back there. Don't put me back in DON'T PUT ME BACK IN THE BOX AAAGGGHHH!

Looks like another game jam is coming around, and having made a game for the previous game jam I have some advice for participants.

You have to make sure your game idea is ridiculously simple and easy to make. Projects of any kind will take longer to complete than anticipated, not just games. Since we have 3 days to make a game, try thinking of something that can be made in one day. Believe me, no one ever complains about being finished too soon or having too much time. Developers too often set out to make their ideal game when they lack the means to do so. We have to be humble about this and concede that we can't make the game we really really want to. 28 teams participated last time, but only 10 games were made. If you can make any game at all, that alone will be a triumph. And while teams have succeeded in making platformers, I would recommend against that selection of genre.

Also, I think I made a mistake last time when deciding to try for a sponsorship instead of going the ad route. I site-locked the game to Newgrounds so that I'd still be able to sell it eventually. I was able to get a sponsorship for my game Pactime so I found myself under the impression that it's easy for any game to get sponsored, but this is not the case. Games made for game jams are made so quickly that it's probably better to go with ads than to try for a sponsorship. I doubt many of you will even consider sponsorships anyway but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

The game we made last time is called Strange Thoughts. We had to put symbols around the title because it was already taken by an animation.

Play my new game, Lil' Jose's Build-a-Bot.

It's an art collab featuring 18 robots drawn by 16 different artists. Collect them all for a secret bonus.

Tharos's tips: You can use WASD instead of the arrow keys as long as you're not in full screen.

Also, you can hold down space bar instead of just tapping it to open cranes and pick up parts.

My first game has just been released. It's called PACTIME.

The game can be controlled entirely with either the mouse or the keyboard. Here are the hotkeys:

ENTER: Start game from main menu or go back to the main menu from the medals or game over screen
SPACE: Switch control type from main menu, pause the game while running, return to main menu while paused or in medal screen, or retry from game over screen
ESCAPE, DELETE, BACKSPACE: Open medal screen from main menu or clear all medals from medal screen
P: Pause game while running or resume game while paused
M: Toggle mute
Q: Toggle quality
U: Toggle music from pause screen (v 1.2)
E: Toggle eating sounds from pause screen
G: Toggle ghost sounds from pause screen
T: Visit Twitter from main menu
F: Visit Facebook from main menu
K: Visit programmer's site from main menu
A: Visit musician's site from main menu
Z: Visit gamezhero.com

PLAY IT!!!

I'm working on this game with TinyStuffz. Here's a look at a bunch of blue rectangles and maybe a green one too. There's also a red area and a bunch of little circles, and the lady has four arms and two heads. See if you can guess what it all means.

I just released my first animation today, so check it out. I also made a cardboard cutout of my character with moving body parts!

The kanji at the end is the actual Chinese translation of obscenity. I looked it up.

By the way, I'm a programmer, not an animator. So don't get the wrong idea. I just think it's a good idea to practice animating for when I make games solo.

And I did all the voices.