Nerd Rage: Bad Controls on iOS devices for games

Like, seriously, state machines are not hard.

Taking a few steps back, I bought a game on the App Store for over $0.99; when I spend more than $0.99, I expect magic and perfection.

When I get a buggy, clunky, and bad user experience, I get angry especially when I paid more than $0.99. Now, I could just sit from my magical armchair of developer perfection and complain, or I could write some crappy code and maybe educate some iOS fools with code. So, I spent 20 minutes to write an HTML5 joystick controller. Here it is world: angry code to do joysticks right.

Put this in your iOS 4 and enjoy the multi-touch-ness: http://ios.jeffrey.io/

Thoughts on good UX for mobile and games:

1. You need to control the event structure and not relegate it to some bounded box model. Bounded boxes are fine for buttons, but for things that need a level of fluidity and engagement, you need to control the entire screen.

2. You need to understand state machines and how to guarantee the absence of a bad state transition. Namely, the controls shouldn't stick nor flip-flop. It should be very simple.

3. You need to understand there are a multitude of thumb sizes.

4. You need to eat your own dog food.

I seriously wish I could get a refund. Argghhh!