Update #54: Art Update - Work IS in Progress!

[IndiraLightfoot]

Been playing M&M X a bit lately. And some aspects of that UI is pretty interesting (bad part is that it's a big dashboard along the bottom that makes a letter box of the gaming screen with blinds in the upper corners):

There's a party of four, and they all share one big invo. The selected portrait is shown as a manikin beside the invo, and when you right-click an object, it gets equipped. In a way, a shared invo makes sense as a party carrying capacity abstraction. In M&M X you can hire pack horses that make that invo even bigger. Perhaps it would be possible to have a party invo in PE, and if you have a lot of strong party members the number of invo slots literally increases, and if you get a pack mule, it gets even bigger.

 

Another thing is a shared action bar at the bottom. Just click on a portrait, and the action bar becomes that character's - with its unique shortcuts of potions, weapons and spells.

[Mico Selva]

 

You forgot to explain why.

It's hard to explain taste; but here's my attempt...

 

* Circled portraits with small circles. No, give my my portrait BG-style, just a rectangle.

* Portraits 'float' and so do icons next to them.

* Seperate twirly stamina bar. Again, I rather have it be a flat line if there needs to be one than shapy and floaty.

* Ugly wasted space top and bottom to finish off floaty half-circle display, waste of room. No need for that if just like BG.

* Wasted space bottomleft.

* Combat log integrated into fixed HUD, taking screenspace, always.

* Actual usable items too small compared to major waste of space fluff graphics.

* Lots of wasted space on "journal", "inventory" etc circle.

 

That's about all I get now looking at it...

 

Thanks for the explanation.  I can certainly see your point, and yes, it does depend on personal taste a lot.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Mico Selva

[Billowe]

Registered to post some feedback about the UI mockup. Really excited about the game, and everything looks great so far...

 

But while I understand a mock-up is a rough representation of some ideas, this one feels really dated to me. I realise you are making an old school RPG, but hopefully that doesn't/shouldn't extend to every corner of the execution.

 

Some people will love this look, but please try to cater for different tastes by letting people customise the UI to some degree. Simply being able to disable the frame and decorative elements, opting for a clean, simple design if preferred. Let people move, scale, hide and tweak the opacity of different elements.

 

Decorative, fleshed out UI designs can work, but very few developers have the kind of time and talent to do it well, in my opinion, only Blizzard really springs to mind, and D3 took 10 years!