UI Design
Coming up for air here briefly. The "big project" at the day job is consuming 50-60 hours a week, and so my game development hours in my so-called "free time" have been a little restricted the last two months.

The new game is coming along slowly. Once again, I'm mired in user interface stuff right now. It's not very sexy, but it's very, very important. I spent some time over the weekend booting up old games to take screenshots, and downloading screenshots of those games I haven't had. Man, GUIs have come a long way. I'm still not an expert on the subject - I really need to read Brent Fox's book, "Game Interface Design" (it has lots of Outpost Kaloki screenshots in it, I hear...).

But browsing through a little history of UI in game design (with a focus on roleplaying games) was fairly enlightening - you can see the evolution take place. You can see some massive changes taking place once the mouse became standard equipment, and as you were no longer limited to 320 x 200 resolution. A lot depends on the kind of game - an action-rpg has different needs from a more cerebral, turn-based RPG. But there's a few tidbits I have been picking up (and I'd invite anyone reading this to add their own contributions):

* Less is more: The older UI's tended to crowd out the game graphics. More modern UIs try to show only as much UI elements as absolutely necessary in the standard game screen. Pretty much your core risk-reward-action decision-making stuff, and links to more information. Your key stats (like health and stamina), and what action will take place if you click the mouse buttons right now. (I do wonder how much of this is based on the graphics obsession the games industry is struggling under right now - as prettier pictures than the next game get harder and harder to achieve).

* Be consistent in style / design, as well as in behavior. That should be obvious, but sometimes gets overlooked.

* 90-degree corners are bad. Nice, rounded, non-rectilinear stuff is much prettier (but more work to make the computer display it properly).

* Show smooth transitions between states where possible. It's very jarring to just see things jump into new states. If a target drops in health, it's more satisfying to see the healthbar drop smoothly between the old health level and the new one than to suddenly see it jump to the new level. If you click on a button, having a short delay to show the button being pressed down and playing an audible "click" is more satisfying - and often preferable - to having an instant response to the button press that doesn't show that feedback.

* Show feedback on what the player is doing. Things like highlighted buttons when they are hovered over with the mouse. The same is true of highlighting in-game characters or objects when the mouse is hovering over them if clicking on them will allow some kind of interaction.

* When all else fails, appeal to conventions: Even if it's been done in a crappy way by every other game out there, people are at least used to it being done that way and won't have to re-learn a new system.

Old & Busted?: (Dungeon Master 2, Bloodstone)




Less Old, Not Hot: (Diablo 1, Ultima 7)



New Hotness? (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Knights of the Old Republic)

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:54 PM (Permalink)