Magnetic Billiards Help System

Blog posted by JPickford on Mon, 15 Dec 2008
Subject: Magnetic Billiards: Seriously Casual

In addition to a full set of tutorial 'lessons' Magnetic Billiards features an always-available help system.

To learn about any game feature you simply right-click on the corresponding screen element to bring up a window containing a full explanation. For example, you click on the Tariff Panel to find out what the Tariff is.

The text is hot-linked all over the shop allowing access to detailed explanations of all the games features. Most of the articles feature lovely hand-drawn illustrations.

I haven't worked out how many windows you can open at once (there's no hard-coded limit) but you can get quite a lot on there. It'll automatically close the oldest one if you open two windows with the same article.

There's no video of this because It'll probably look a mess at Youtube quality. Suffice to say it's all smooth and scrolly and everything jiggles around pleasingly when you waggle the mouse.

Long articles can be scrolled through with the mouse wheel or using the left button to drag-scroll the window.

There's will also be a full virtual manual which be accessed by clicking a book icon which will be on screen at all times.

We're planning on retro-fitting this system to Naked War too.

Tags: prototype, ui, tutorial, game design

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