The problem with developing a console game on the PC (or coming from PC gaming) is that you become accustomed to the smaller fonts and sharper graphics only to see your vision become a blurry mess on the target console platform. I get frustrated with this because PC games can get away with tiny fonts and enormous amount of text and graphical information in a much more compact space – thus letting more of the gameplay itself visible. Console games almost always have to have large almost kindergarden-level fonts to be fully legible regardless of TV they are played on. It may even subconsciously hurt the “maturity” of a game by succumbing to this design constraint – just think about paperback novels for kids, teens, and adults and notice the type and spacing between the three gets smaller as the audience gets older.
That said, enough of my test audience has pointed out that the font may be a bit too small to read on a TV, and I’m using a 32″ HDTV (which they were playing on while making the comment) so I can’t imagine how illegible it would be to someone on an SDTV. I decided to just suck it up and change the font and increase its size so there would be no question to readability; this is an RPG with a lot of story to tell after all.
One other thing I am doing, after a lot of consideration, is condensing the statistics. After playing Persona 3 and Persona 4 I realized that there is plenty of room for customization and optimization even with a smaller number of attributes to worry about, so I’ve reduced the primary stats from seven to three. This keeps the three training Disciplines concept more in focus, as now each Discipline is directly related to a stat: Body replaces Strength and Vitality, Mind replaces Agility and Intelligence, and Soul replaces Willpower and Leadership. Dexterity never really fit with the game structure anyways so it is now obsolete. There are still 5 secondary statistics, Attack, Defense, Resistence, Serenity, and Luck, all derived from a combination of the three Disciplines and further enhanced by equipment choices.
I seem to be getting a lot of requests to put out a demo, and I may do that for the PC soon with the completion of the starting area once I am happy with how Arashi animates and plays.
UI scaling or font size scaling option!
Both UI and font scaling rely on vector graphics to work properly. My UI is not drawn with primitives and has custom pieces attached to it that are all transparent bitmaps, and the font is a bitmap as well so that it looks clean and less “system”-y like many game fonts. Adding CG illustrations to the UI rather than rendering a 3D model doesn’t help, because illustrations don’t scale down well unless the original resolution is very high, and I only have 150 MB to make my Xbox 360 version (for now) so space is a concern.
Additionally, if it were that easy, more people would be using it in these console games. This is a 30-year old problem that has never found a mainstream solution and I’m just developing part-time and I do more than programming. It’s rare to see a game targeted to console support any form of scaling, and I don’t mean just indie titles. AAA games have been terrible about this aspect, especially when crossing the HD to SD threshold – BioWare’s games are nearly illegible on a smaller SDTV. It’s not an excuse, it’s just a fact I don’t have the time to tackle it and I’m not enough of a hardcore programmer to even care lol.
The best I can do is make two sets of design elements, one for PC and one for console.