4.1 Planning Layers

Planning layers is a hard process that many people don't even know where to start. In this section I'll use an example of a game where I had to create layers to be effective. There are several lessons that can be drawn upon which can be formulated in a 4 step design plan.

Character layers in games

In middle school I played an mmorpg has playable character from a wide range of classes like assassin, mage, alchemist etc. Each character can use skills, equipment and items which can be assigned to a skill bar. This skill bar had 36 open slots which is effectively a layer.

I was very competitive and played against other players using the characters skills. To be good at defeating other players, the hotkeys needed to be assigned so I could effectively hit keys quickly and situationally. Additionally, some classes have favorable or unfavorable advantages, so I learned multiple characters, a total of 12 classes. All these character profiles create multiple layers, but the layer activator is the character selection at the title screen.

So in order to use all these characters to win more versus other players I needed an effective layer strategy to place hotkeys. These are some common layer patterns that I used to become highly rank:

• put lower cooldown skills near my dominant fingers

• put combos skills near each other

• have common functionality skills on the same key(i.e. all movement or self protect spells on the same key for all characters)

• have common equipment/items on the same hot keys across characters

How to plan a layer

• Find the shortcut list

  • In the game, each character had their own set of skills

  • In other cases, shortcuts or hotkeys can be looked up

    • for example chrome shortcuts

• Filter out useful hotkeys

  • In the game, movement, low-cool-down, class-defining skills are placed near my resting position

  • In other cases, frequently used keys, like movement keys should be placed near the keyboards homerow

• Group similar functionalities together

  • in the game, skills that you can chain/combo together are placed next to each other

  • in other cases, hotkeys that have similar functionality or relationship are placed next to each other

• Use existing patterns across layers to decide on where to place hotkeys

  • in the game, movement skills are placed on the same hotkeys for different characters

  • in other cases, keys discussed in chapter 5 are placed in the same location across layers