Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

The major problem for Harmonix was that, aside from that one scene in Minority Report, there weren't any real solid examples that the team could look at for inspiration. "It was the type of thing only existed in research labs," said Ryan Challinor, the sole user interface engineer on Dance Central, at a recent talk at the Montreal International Game Summit. And because the control scheme was so new, it was also difficult to do much in the way of designing on paper. Instead, Challinor and his team had to focus on rapid prototyping, putting ideas into practice in order to see what worked and what didn't.

The main goal was to create a menu system that didn't make players wish they were using a controller instead. One of the first ideas the team came up with was clickable buttons. You would move your hand over an option and then extend your arm to select it. But the lack of any real feedback made this problematic. "In practice pressing on air feels terrible," explained Challinor. It also turned out that many players would actually move the cursor when pushing to select, which would result in pressing the wrong button.

 

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