Mobile Game: User interface

User Interface
This blog entry shall cover the user interface component of the racing simulation game that my team is developing as Galactic Games first foray into mobile games development.

As noted in my previous blog posts, the game we are developing is a port of an existing racing simulator for the PC platform. My team is porting the game to the Windows Mobile platform as an offering for both Pocket PC and Smartphone devices.

Input
The PC version of the game allows the player to control the game via a joystick or keyboard combination. Menu selection and navigation can be achieved via the joystick (if connected) or mouse.

For the mobile game port, the game input method is via hardware keys that are found on all Windows Mobile devices, as part of the platform hardware specification. Six buttons are required (left, right, forward, reverse, brake, accelerator) and the actual configuration of the buttons can be assigned by the user from default. The user may use control menu selection and navigation via the touch screen and/or hardware buttons. We will simplify the game menus from 6 main menus and 32 submenus down to 3 menus, 12 submenus for the mobile game version. With a simplifcation of the menus, the number of game options and configurable items will also be reduced in line with an overall simplifcation of the game.

Display
For the PC version, the game runs in full-screen mode at the highest resolution that the PC the game is running on can sustain. For most PC's this equates to a resolution of 800x600 or higher.

The highest resolution Windows Mobile platform available is 640x480, with the bulk of devices being 320x240. To cater for the lower screen resolution, the game engine programmers have been instructed to modify the engine to check the device resolution and scale the graphics to suit. The game will run in full-screen mode, with the option of being presented in landscape or portrait format.

Sound
For the Windows Mobile version of the game, all existing sounds will be carried over as both WAVE and MP3 formats are supported. In most cases, the sounds will be converted from stereo to mono, in order to reduce their size and reduce demand on the CPU during playback.