PC Gaming Standards
- Thread starter Final8y
- Start date
Some for the list that have bugged me time and time again:
INPUT:
All keyboard keys should be re-mappable, along with all mouse buttons including scrolling with the wheel. I shouldn't have to use key mapping software to set up controls the way I like.
GUI:
If you are making an RPG, don't hobble PC players by making them use a GUI designed for gamepads. I don't want to scroll through 300 items when I could just click on one with the mouse and drag and drop.
I also don't want size 50 fonts.
INPUT:
All keyboard keys should be re-mappable, along with all mouse buttons including scrolling with the wheel. I shouldn't have to use key mapping software to set up controls the way I like.
GUI:
If you are making an RPG, don't hobble PC players by making them use a GUI designed for gamepads. I don't want to scroll through 300 items when I could just click on one with the mouse and drag and drop.
I also don't want size 50 fonts.
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Input i have seriously considered a few times, this actually might go in. It bugs me no end that I can't map backspace to talk, for some reason I got used to that many years ago and whenever I can't map it, it really gets on my nerves!
GUI is too hard to enforce fairly, there are a lot of things I'd like to add like FOV and GUI but some of these things are design decisions for the game and I don't think it's fair to interfere with that. It's too hard to draw the line between what is a consolised HUD and what isn't, all the fringe cases would be a massive pain to handle. Although I fundamentally agree with the principle, I can't stand crap GUIs left in over from console ports or multiplatform development.
GUI is too hard to enforce fairly, there are a lot of things I'd like to add like FOV and GUI but some of these things are design decisions for the game and I don't think it's fair to interfere with that. It's too hard to draw the line between what is a consolised HUD and what isn't, all the fringe cases would be a massive pain to handle. Although I fundamentally agree with the principle, I can't stand crap GUIs left in over from console ports or multiplatform development.
Associate
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The submit form on the front page isnt working right now, until i've fixed that you can submit game info to me on the forum or through PM
I agree on most of your GUI points but I think there is often a degree of arrogance on the part of developers when they make claims such as FOV being purely a design decision. There are several different aspect ratios out there so I think we can reasonably expect FOV to be user-selectable. Team Fortress 2 is an example of a game that allows the user to change FOV in the in-game menus.
It looks like your main challenge will be to identify aspects of GUI that you can reasonably expect standards for. As you say, it's not all that clear-cut.
Yeah it does support AA.
Sent in by e-mail and copying here 
Hi there Frosty.
A suggestion for your site!
I think another listed compatibility could be the below.
Window Modes.
What is it?
Window modes are the ways in which a games content can be displayed on the screen. Traditionally Full-Screen is the default and native mode of a game. Full-Screen is where the game populates the entire desktop with it's game selected resolution. The other popular mode is windowed mode in which the game populates a window inside the desktop space at the games selected resolution.
More recently a newer mode known as Windowed Borderless is a window which fills the screen as full screen would but acts as a window.
Why is it important?
Window modes offer an additional layer of reconfigurability which can be tweaked for the users preference. While full-screen has no draw-backs when fully immersed in a game session the other 2 windowed modes offer advantages when multi-tasking may be desired or required.
Windowed mode although detracting from the overall immersion experience has advantages. Such an advantage is seamless interaction simultaneously with the desktop. This could be e-mail or instant message clients or web browsers. Windowed modes are popular with MMO or other strategy games in which a reliance on external web page based information is key to progress or research. The delays alt-tabbing out of a full-screened game and potential risk of "losing" the game through freezing or graphical artifacting can be frustrating.
Window mode also offers users the option to play games that may run at a max resolution lower than that of their monitors native resolution without having to scale the image. Scaling almost always present an image quality downgrade, severity depending on the quality and type of monitor.
Window mode is less pleasing on the eye when gaming however Windowed Borderless modes do away with this problem while retaining the windowed mode technical implementation.
It should be noted that some games when in a windowed mode will lose focus if the mouse cursor is dragged out the window's area. The generally desired behaviour is for mouse focus to remain intact until the user issues an alt-tab command where the desktop cursor will once again be activated. This latter point is especially important for FPS games in which loss of mouse focus would be a constant issue when aiming in a 360 degree arc that would bring the cursor outside of the windows borders.
What are the criteria for pcgamingstandards.com?
The game should offer Full-Screen and Windowed modes within the games configuration menus. Windowed Borderless is often the most favourable windowed mode however it is less supported overall. A launch parameter in the game shortcut/.exe or config file hack is usually acceptable to get a borderless windowed mode environment available due to it's desirability.
Hi there Frosty.
A suggestion for your site!
I think another listed compatibility could be the below.
Window Modes.
What is it?
Window modes are the ways in which a games content can be displayed on the screen. Traditionally Full-Screen is the default and native mode of a game. Full-Screen is where the game populates the entire desktop with it's game selected resolution. The other popular mode is windowed mode in which the game populates a window inside the desktop space at the games selected resolution.
More recently a newer mode known as Windowed Borderless is a window which fills the screen as full screen would but acts as a window.
Why is it important?
Window modes offer an additional layer of reconfigurability which can be tweaked for the users preference. While full-screen has no draw-backs when fully immersed in a game session the other 2 windowed modes offer advantages when multi-tasking may be desired or required.
Windowed mode although detracting from the overall immersion experience has advantages. Such an advantage is seamless interaction simultaneously with the desktop. This could be e-mail or instant message clients or web browsers. Windowed modes are popular with MMO or other strategy games in which a reliance on external web page based information is key to progress or research. The delays alt-tabbing out of a full-screened game and potential risk of "losing" the game through freezing or graphical artifacting can be frustrating.
Window mode also offers users the option to play games that may run at a max resolution lower than that of their monitors native resolution without having to scale the image. Scaling almost always present an image quality downgrade, severity depending on the quality and type of monitor.
Window mode is less pleasing on the eye when gaming however Windowed Borderless modes do away with this problem while retaining the windowed mode technical implementation.
It should be noted that some games when in a windowed mode will lose focus if the mouse cursor is dragged out the window's area. The generally desired behaviour is for mouse focus to remain intact until the user issues an alt-tab command where the desktop cursor will once again be activated. This latter point is especially important for FPS games in which loss of mouse focus would be a constant issue when aiming in a 360 degree arc that would bring the cursor outside of the windows borders.
What are the criteria for pcgamingstandards.com?
The game should offer Full-Screen and Windowed modes within the games configuration menus. Windowed Borderless is often the most favourable windowed mode however it is less supported overall. A launch parameter in the game shortcut/.exe or config file hack is usually acceptable to get a borderless windowed mode environment available due to it's desirability.
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I agree there is some arrogance when it comes to FOV, there is a lot of really lame problems with it. Bioshock was a notable problem, not only did it use vert- for widescreen which meant no increase in hFOV but they also used a base FOV which was tiny which componded the problem and made standard 16:10 look absolutely stupid.
They later claimed it was a design choice, which i think is a load of rubbish quite frankly, first of all they thanked Racer_S for his FOV hack and wanted to get in touch and offer him a video card as some kind of reward (if memory serves) and also before the game was released they addressed concerns on their forums about widescreen vert- by specificially detailing what they were going to do, and completely ignored this fact.
It's obvious that the low FOV was left in from their console version, highlighting the very real issues with multiplatform design, anyway I digress.
I'd very much like to lay down some standards for GUI design like centering HUD on middle monitor with eyefinity, making sure FOV is at least 85-90 degrees for FPS games on 4:3 and then scaled properly with wider aspect ratios.
Sin_Chase I got your suggestion via email and actually replied, I think it's a very good idea, especially helpful for MMO style games where people tend to play windowed a lot. I wont be doing any more dev work on the site for a while but I will consider this when I next make major changes to the DB.
They later claimed it was a design choice, which i think is a load of rubbish quite frankly, first of all they thanked Racer_S for his FOV hack and wanted to get in touch and offer him a video card as some kind of reward (if memory serves) and also before the game was released they addressed concerns on their forums about widescreen vert- by specificially detailing what they were going to do, and completely ignored this fact.
It's obvious that the low FOV was left in from their console version, highlighting the very real issues with multiplatform design, anyway I digress.
I'd very much like to lay down some standards for GUI design like centering HUD on middle monitor with eyefinity, making sure FOV is at least 85-90 degrees for FPS games on 4:3 and then scaled properly with wider aspect ratios.
Sin_Chase I got your suggestion via email and actually replied, I think it's a very good idea, especially helpful for MMO style games where people tend to play windowed a lot. I wont be doing any more dev work on the site for a while but I will consider this when I next make major changes to the DB.