Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Diegetic, Non-Diegetic, Spatial, and Meta Interfaces

The first game I would like to take a look at and its interface is Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a 3rd person tactical shooter. This game uses very simple UI element of any shooter you see out there today. They use a simple non-diegetic interface that shows you the weapon your using, how many bullets the weapon has, the reticule of the gun because its third person, shows radar on the screen also. It also shows the switch between each grenade, recon drone, or claymore and shows the button you use to switch between theses things. The cool thin about the meta is when you get shot and your hurt, the screen gets darker and darker with blood. It also implements diegetic interface as well. This comes in as it is a futuristic game and use advanced technology never even heard of. The way they use this is the halos around the guns that shows you information on the gun how many bullets you have left. Also they use markers to tell where the players are coming from. The other aspect is sensors which gives the location of the enemy, the enemy shows up in all red. Here is some examples of the interface.
What the game does good? Well the combination of the diegetic and non diegetic interface in a simple manner lets the player utilize the character better, and is just great game design.
What the game does wrong? Well non-diegetic feature of when you get hurt,its to overwhelming and you can’t see anything.
The next game I would like to take about is Silent Hill 2. This game uses basically through all of the game in a diegetic interface. This game is a 3rd person survival horror. In the game you have no hud element in the game, you just see your player and that’s about it. It does have a couple non-diegetic aspects like when you can’t open a door it says door locked. The loading screen to get to the next room is ghostly footsteps walking around a black screen it’s pretty creepy. The diegetic aspect of this game give the game it’s scary aspect. Here are some examples, 
What the game does good? This games diegetic interface allows the player to feel immersed in the game and get really scared, give it that realistic feel, by not having a HUD. The non-diegetic part of the footstep on the screen is sort of creepy and when you interact with anything text pops up, this can help you solve thing throughout the game.
What the game does wrong? Well in my opinion I think there really isn’t anything wrong, this game did a great job with the diegetic and non diegetic features to make it really scary, and this made it one of the best horror games of all time.

The last game I would like to talk about is Assassin’s Creed 2. This game is a 3rd person adventure game. This game uses a combination of diegetic, non-diegetic, and spatial interface methods. The diegetic part comes in when you go into eagle vision which is like a inverted picture look, this can only been seen by the character and the person playing the game. The non-diegetic use is with the HUD screen that allows you to see your weapons, the radar, objective status, also what some buttons do whether you’re on a PS3 or Xbox interface. The spatial part comes in with the things surrounding character in the game to know to assassinate the player or not it usually comes in as a red or yellow color over the character. Here is an example of the interface.
What is good part? The combination asset of using different interface methods allows the player to know what he is doing in the game. By showing him what weapon or where to go for the next objective, or who to kill or not.
What is the wrong with it? The player can sometimes feel overwhelmed with so much going on with the HUD. It might feel really cluttered at times. Also sometimes you don’t know whether or not to kill the person who is highlighted.
In conclusion examine different game interface, whether it is Non-diegetic, diegetic, spatial or meta. This gives me an idea on how I want to start my interface. It really gives me an insight on new terms and learn a new skill in the game design world.





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