Regarding the issue of a UI, a little-appreciated fact is that a lot of the difficulty of RTS games is somewhat trivialized if you can zoom out to the map level.
I might suggest that, if you're trying to build the ideal UI for an agent-bolstered mega-multitasker, you might similarly want to focus on the 'big picture' view being as available and as intuitive as possible.
(Incidentally, this is something current monospaced terminal environments are very bad at.)
If execution is a solved problem then, both in RTS and programming, all that remains is synthesis. Give the user the best possible overview to achieve this.
To any reader wishing to acquire these skills through gaming: May I also suggest playing Go?
In a very loose way, it's an abstract game that resembles RTS macro with none of the micro.
You must carefully choose your fights, constantly strike a balance between commitment and flexibility, while never losing sight of the big picture across a large, 19x19 board.
In that sense, it's a game that evokes a very 'synthetic' kind of thinking, your brain being almost 'pulled' in all sorts of different directions as you struggle to make sense of an evolving situation.
And, unlike chess, the board situation is very hard to evaluate in terms of who holds the advantage- just ask the makers of AlphaGo! It requires real intuition and complex, deep processing.
Go is cognitively intense, and in a way that's very much different from (say) chess, and, I believe, in a much more transferable way also.
Of course, RTS games remain the king of complex cognitive demands. Everyone who can should play them!
Loved the parallels! Who knew that playing Age of Empires II as a kid would prepare me for my job 20+ years later
Regarding the issue of a UI, a little-appreciated fact is that a lot of the difficulty of RTS games is somewhat trivialized if you can zoom out to the map level.
I might suggest that, if you're trying to build the ideal UI for an agent-bolstered mega-multitasker, you might similarly want to focus on the 'big picture' view being as available and as intuitive as possible.
(Incidentally, this is something current monospaced terminal environments are very bad at.)
If execution is a solved problem then, both in RTS and programming, all that remains is synthesis. Give the user the best possible overview to achieve this.
A very interesting post- thank you!
To any reader wishing to acquire these skills through gaming: May I also suggest playing Go?
In a very loose way, it's an abstract game that resembles RTS macro with none of the micro.
You must carefully choose your fights, constantly strike a balance between commitment and flexibility, while never losing sight of the big picture across a large, 19x19 board.
In that sense, it's a game that evokes a very 'synthetic' kind of thinking, your brain being almost 'pulled' in all sorts of different directions as you struggle to make sense of an evolving situation.
And, unlike chess, the board situation is very hard to evaluate in terms of who holds the advantage- just ask the makers of AlphaGo! It requires real intuition and complex, deep processing.
Go is cognitively intense, and in a way that's very much different from (say) chess, and, I believe, in a much more transferable way also.
Of course, RTS games remain the king of complex cognitive demands. Everyone who can should play them!
Such a great insight. It'll be interesting to see how interfaces change over time.