... do what they’re telling you. This came up at GDC when talking to the Mawsoft guys so I thought I’d blog about it here.

Community is big these days. You’ll hear lots of designers tell you that it’s important to build a strong community and listen to them, because they are your core users. And I agree with that.

But in UI design it’s important to understand that what a user says and what a user is telling you can be two different things. It is rare that a user outright lies for no reason. There is almost always a root cause for what your users are saying. The trick is to find that root issue to truly get what the user is telling you. And it is often a bit different than what their words are saying. Read the rest of this entry

I’ve cleaned up and released a little MIAW xtra that I have found extremely useful called Lingo ScriptHelper. It does two things:

1. Provides “search all” with a results window. You can click on the results and it will open the script window with the search phrase highlighted. Very useful when looking for a piece of code that uses common phrases.

2. Provides a list of all your scripts, and the handlers inside them, along with the parameter variables they use. Very useful for looking up what arguments a handler takes without having to open a new script window.

The screenshot above shows the search results truncated, but if you hover over them with your mouse the entire line pops up as a Tooltip.

Of all the little tools I’ve written, this is by far the most useful one. I left the file unprotected, so you can edit it as much as you want to suit your needs. I’d love to hear what people do with it.

Check out the Lingo ScriptHelper page now!

Game designer Justin Chin is posting art from his work-in-progress story Fuel and Fire -- at least one pic a day for the entire month of April. The stuff is very cool, modeled in SketchUp and tweaked in Maya. He often sites how the art came together, what tools he used, and behind the scenes bits. I’m anxiously looking forward to the days ahead, as he’s got a really great vision for the look of his comic. Check it out!

I’ve been Punk’d. By Google -- they got me good! But ya’know what I want to know? How long has Google been playin’ me? I know it’s been going on for more than just April 1st. Read the rest of this entry