Can the user interface of my game be improved?
Thursday, April 2, 2015 - 06:11
This is the User Interface Design to my game. But My question now is, I've run out of ideas at the moment so guyscan this user interface be improved and how ?
Attachments:
From the initial small preview it looks kinda cool.
When you enlarge it I get mixed messages.
I kind of like the ascii mix to the design, but not sure what you are aiming for or if you actually intended to have an ascii look or just didn't know how else to do it.
Anyway - I am not an artist, but for those who are - perhaps you should explain what look/style you are trying for so the artists can help you achieve it.
At the moment all you get is your image and it is hard to make suggestions as you are not sure if some of your design is intentionally styled a certain way or not.
The user interface is not there yet, but its slowly getting there............it looks nice in places, the overdrive stuff stands out ok, but overall its needs more work. The icons look dark and dreary at the start because the interface has been set up so when you obtain all the items and spells in the game, it all lights up like a christmas tree with nice bright colors..
As for the white lines, they were put there as guidlines to line up all the icons i hadn't removed them, I may have to turn them into thin white lines to tidy it up.
I've now added the Pieces of Eight font to the game Dialog text window for a test screen. Take a look at the link now. (Top Link). And what the game would've looked like if I went for a bigger screen size (Third Link).
Not to mince word with Boogle but I would definitely lose the Ascii lines. To me it looks odd to have so much high res art surrounded by text borders. I would go with a bevelled windows or panes around everything with a light grey or brown fill.
Other than that, without knowing what all those icons are or do it's hard to comment on how well laid out it is, except to echo your own comment that it is very busy, lit up like a christmas tree really nails it.
i do think the bigger screen is a good direction but it does depend on what the gameplay is. If the game is mostly spent clicking things in the ui, then shrinking all the icons and what not might not be the right decision.
just my 2 cents...
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Capbros, would it be possible for you to show me an example of this bevelled 3d windowed look you are talking to me about? I would like to see an example.
The game originally started off from just plain asii text, then I overlayed it with ascii graphics which is why i still have those ascii lines there (I will change them to solid thin lines and see if that imrpoves it...), and finally the last stage was to change it to hi-res graphics. The icons at the top are your different overdrive progressions and the icons down on the bottom are all your different magic spells. The runestones are used for summoning companions to help you out in battle in the lower levels of the game. But you have to beat them in battle first before you can summon them. If you don't want to farm runestones to use the undead to fight in battles after you first defeat them then you have to spend 300,000 gold in the dragon realms region at the magic store to buy Rise of the undead spelll and you can't get access to this store until you first collect up 200 dragon orbs to gain access into the region, and if you're only level 37 oh boo boo, the store which contains that spell won't be open until you are are over level 50....
re: bevelled look, I wasn't thinking anything fancy, just standard windows stuff. A quick search on OGA turned up these sets any one of which might work well for you:
http://opengameart.org/content/ui-pack
http://opengameart.org/content/ui-pack-rpg-extension
http://opengameart.org/content/match-3-gui
http://opengameart.org/content/new-blue-gui
http://opengameart.org/content/fantasy-ui-elements-by-ravenmore
http://opengameart.org/content/pixel-art-user-interface-elements
(note first four are CC0, last two are CC-BY 3.0)
thanks for the description, sounds like an interesting game, and the context certainly does help. I'd say since the game is fundamentally a text adventure, you probobally do want to stick to the more gui/less picture route.
Some notes on the layout:
Having the bottom row of spells larger than the top row is odd. I would make the two rows the same size, adding a third row if you needed to.
Overall, I'd say it's just very busy, seems like you are trying to cram every possible element of the game onto one screen. If it was a simpler game that might work, but here you might do better splitting things up into tabs or something (so a tab for actions, a tab for current rune progress, etc. etc.) keeping just the basic immediate status stuff visible at all times.
just my 2 cents...
https://withthelove.itch.io/
I have all the icons all over the place because I'm still umm figuring out what to do with them all !!!
For this is not a windows GUI interface where I can move windows around, because I don't know how to open up a windows gui screen in batch code yet to display all my game graphics in so it be possible for me to have sprites and animation in the game and possibly also scrolling my game screens, so i had to use the windows dos console instead to display my graphics in where everything is fixed and static.....
I think the Ravenmore's set will best suit the game for the diaglog text screen would look nice if I added this into my screens with the Pieces of Eight pirate font for the text diaglog.
wow! you are making this game in batch code? Well in that case, maybe sticking to a single screen is best!
In that case, I would just advise you divide the screen up into discrete rectangles, one for each related group of UI icons, text, meters, etc. Currently (as with the spell icons) you have different UI elements overlapping each other. Better to put each UI group in it's own disctinct box.
You are correct about Ravenmore's set, you will need to give credit if you use that piece, you'll also need to abide by the rest of the terms of the CC-BY 3.0 license which includes some provisions related to DRM, see: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/anti-drm-waiver.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
I don't even use DRM as I think DRM is used if you gonna put the game up on steam, so I might look at the other interface sets instead.
if I remove the magic spell icons down below, then there's plenty of space for those rectangle tab menus to go all along the bottom. of the screen.
Whether steam /requires/ games to use DRM or not is subject to some debate, though in my opinion you are better safe than sorry.
even if you use one of the CCO works, you really should give credit to the original artist somehow. It's not required, but it's the right thing to do. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a shout out in the credits page or the readme file for the game.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
I've decided not to use the Ravenmore's bevel assest, Instead I used a couple of CCO public domain button assets instead for doing the bevelling effect and an CCO asset from Flare . Now what you are trying to tell me is that I need to credit all CCO works I use or its copyright infringement trouble of the rights of the authors which you fear, well that sounds like a silly load of nonsense.
CCO license has no author rights at all...So I am free by the law to give credit or not to because its a public domain license.
So I don't reocognize authors rights under that license because the law don't recognize their rights therefore it is not mandatory for me to have to credit all those authors who release their work under CCO. So If we choose to credit them its only because we're gratitude for the contribution they made to the public domain.
Therefore under this license, if you wish to credit you can and don't get into trouble and if you don't want to credit then you won't get into trouble.
But under CCO license the law simply says the choice to credit those authors or not is us up to us and we won't be in any trouble since CCO is a no rights license. so there's no copyright infringement, because under that license there are no rights !!! So the authors who release their work under this license have got no rights anymore unless they change to a different license other than CCO.
Where did capbros say that? I didn't find anywhere that said it was the law to credit CC0 or that you HAVE to?
capbros was only saying it is polite to given them credit even when it is listed as CC0.
i.e. You don't have to, but you should to be nice.
Some people list CC0 because they don't want to keep answering queries about how it can be used - e.g. DRM etc. It is easier for them to list it as CC0 to avoid all that mess, even though they would still prefer it if you have them credit.
Well He did say said 'better to be safe than sorry' so I got the impression that he was saying we could be in trouble with the law if we fail to credit authors of CCO assets. even though he id say its kind to credit even if you don't need to. but Those people who do release under CCO should understand that CCo is a license of zero rights, and yes that license does avoid all the legal hassels with the other issues with all these rights and stiuplations.
Let me just say - you are 100% correct - you don't have to credit at all for CC0 - and some people releasing CC0 will not care at ALL if you credit or not, these are just opinions and you of course are free to do what you want.
BTW - When giving credit - you don't need to force it down the users throat - most people have it as a small link on a splash screen and/or a menu button link etc, or in your example it might be a seperate credits.txt file.
When I grab image resources - I add a line to a credits file each time(even when it is CC0) - (which takes only a few seconds) - that way I do it when I am finding resources and it is not a nightmare at the end of the project.
At the end of the project all I then need to do is grab my credits txt file for that project and dump it into the project somewhere, normally as a menu item button.
Umm I actually embedded my non CCO credit list inside the game code itself. (for now.) instead of in a seaprate credits list. But here's the problem with the credit system that I see. If you're doing a small game project, then the system works all fine. if you only using a few game assets. 50 or under.
But if you have hundreds of CCO assets Why cant' we write something in our credits like. "All Game Assets (unless otherwise noted) and their respective authors have kindly released their materials under the Creative Commons CCO Public Domain License". and then just provide the main link back to the site. Surely that takes care of all those people rather than having to list down every single person and their asset individually.
For the type of game I'm making, the credit list could wind up being over a megabyte in size just to list everybody of every asset in the game. Who wants to sit there for ages scrolling through all that in the credits screen, you be there for ages just like watching the film credits, they take a long time to get through.
'Better safe than sorry' was in reference to using CC-BY license stuff on Steam which may or may not violate that license's anti-DRM clause.
As far as crediting other people's work, Boogle's right, I wasn't talking about copyright law or license issues or anything like that. Like I said, it's just the right thing to do. It doesn't even have to do with the original artist and whether they care about being creditted or not. It's about you yourself not taking credit for someone elses work. Well, I don't know how to say more without an ethics lecture or cussing, so I'll just leave it at that ;)
As for the effort and/or technical challenges involved, maybe it's a lot of work, but another way to look at it is to think about how long it would have taken you to create all those works by yourself from scratch. Then maybe keeping a list of names of people whose work your using doesn't seem so bad by comparison. :)
ps:
The OGA site does have a 'collection' feature which you can use to track the work you're using and auto-generate a CREDITS.txt file, see this recent discussion:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/feature-request-automatic-license-file...
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Ok thanks for clariying that,
At the moment my game is just only 1 player between just the player and the hundreds of enemies with random encounter level progresions so every now and again when you go through the invisible checkpoints,
So I would like to throw up some notes about the CC0 the way I read it, not nessarily the way it is.
As a reminder I am not a lawyer.
Quote: Tozan
--------------------------------------------------
So I don't reocognize authors rights under that license because the law don't recognize their rights therefore it is not mandatory for me to have to credit all those authors who release their work under CCO.
--------------------------------------------------
This is a mistake. The problem is not really with the authors though. It is with your peers. Your attribution is your first defense that the assets you use are not stolen. If you fail to attribute your assets you may be forced to find them again in an "or else" setting.
Though just to reiterate it is common practice and good form. When writing a research paper you sight your sources even if they are public domain. Why not here?
Quote: Tozan
--------------------------------------------------
So the authors who release their work under this license have got no rights anymore unless they change to a different license other than CCO.
--------------------------------------------------
To the best of my knowledge it is currently unknown whether or not the author of a creative work has the right to release his work into the public domain in any jurisdiction. So with that said in your jurisdiction the law might (or might not) recognise their rights.
Thankfully the CC0 is not just a public domain dedication though. It is also a license. This license gives you many of the rights you would have had if the work was in the public domain. Though, how many you actually get will change based on your jurisdiction.
As one final resort the CC0 also contains a promise:
"Should any part of the License for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose."
excerpt from the CC0 Licence section 3
So unless you are required to pursue a different license agreement it is pretty much public domain for all intents and purposes. (I have heard that there are some jurisdictions where the license is completly invalid and some corprate environments that will not allow it.)
To say that more clearly the author effectively can not change the license of the work. However they can give you a copy under special terms that as far as I know always trump the public domain (legally speaking). However, this would require your consent, which I imagine is rare in this setting.
Quote: Tozan
--------------------------------------------------
but Those people who do release under CCO should understand
that CCo is a license of zero rights, and yes that license
does avoid all the legal hassels with the other issues with
all these rights and stiuplations.
--------------------------------------------------
Almost...
Section 4a states that trademark and patent rights are not waived.
Section 4c warns that parts of the work may not actually be CC0 >.>
There is also a chance that in some jurisdictions there are other rights that would not be affected by the CC0, but I do not know of any.
==================================================
Off topic:
As one final warning it might be possible in your jurisdiction for something in the public domain to be put back in the private domain.
Since things in the public domain belong to the public the public can do with them what it wishes. Including hand them over to some one else. Since the government is the representation of the public this choice is in their hands. If that bothers you you might want to lobby about it.
That by the way is why I think OGA needs another non attribution required license.
This is a mistake. The problem is not really with the authors though. It is with your peers. Your attribution is your first defense that the assets you use are not stolen. If you fail to attribute your assets you may be forced to find them again in an "or else" setting.
When the author says their work its free for you to use it because they released it under CCO, they have already given their permssion for. you to use the asset, some mention they want the credit and some don't so it creates a grey area of confusion for us. Therfore, this argument is not about stealing the asset, its about not giving the credit because not all the authors ask for their credit. So we have to do these credit lists of everything. I don't work in the commercial industry so I wouldn't know all the ins and outs about the crediting side of it...I don't mind doing the credit list for cco stuff, its just a little bit more work...
Okay, first off I would like to apologize. The tone in my first post on this topic was... harsh. Sorry about that.
Okay, to clarify that issue. In theory you do not have to credit anything in the public domain. I know of two problems with not citing your sources:
If someone claims you stole their intelectual property (IP), like another game company or a publisher, they can try to sue you. Last I heard what is at stake is everything that you made with the stolen IP (including money and awards) AND any damages you might have done to them. So larger companies do have a motivation to do this. With that at stake do you feel comfortable saying I can find my sources if I need them?
To be fair this is not likely to be a problem, I just felt I should mention it. If someone else tries to sue me over copyright I would like as much help as I can get and with a well cited credits page I would feel less vulnerable.
Anyway, as a reminder, I am not a lawyer and most of what I know is based on reading license agreements and what I over hear from people (most of which are also not lawers). So take it with a grain of salt I guess. That said I really do not know enough about you or your project to make even reasonably targeted legally relevant advice.
==================================================
So to try and help by being actually on topic...
As a note I am not trying to be rude. I want to help, I just do not have a lot of information to work with. Sorry if this comes off poorly.
It is clear that you have a good idea about what the player will be doing and when, but you have not posted a why. Is your game about filling meters and collecting runes or is there some goal. Are you discovering new worlds, looking for a lost family member, seeking revenge, or trying to make a name for yourself?
Once you have established a loose story (do not "write a book") and a mood, things like choosing how to design your GUI or what abilities you need to have become easier. For example:
Also if you find that some of the features you planned to include do not sit well with the story or mood, it might be a good idea to save them for a later game allowing you clear up room with your GUI.
Anyway, I hope that helps and sorry about the offense earlier.
It is clear that you have a good idea about what the player will be doing and when, but you have not posted a why. Is your game about filling meters and collecting runes or is there some goal. Are you discovering new worlds, looking for a lost family member, seeking revenge, or trying to make a name for yourself?
The whole thing is one big McDonald's wackjob farm. It is an exploration rpg grind game, The game is a little like Final Fantasy, the goal; is to find and locate the whole Interstellar Network of Dimensional Rift Gates that caused the monster invasions on your world and on on other worlds but you can't destroy the final boss unless you are at a high enough level, and have the most powerful weapon in the game, and have everything all maxed out before you can take on the final boss, which is why you have to grind up the levels and progress through the different worlds to locate all these transport gates and disable their power cores and shut them down...
I would've liked to have addedd a sidekick companion, but it won't work without proper ineractive animation cutscenes. And I would've liked the game to have voice and text diaglog also but I wanted the diaglog to be mature just like Kotor II so enemies can complain when they are getting hit, or express their opinions but can't find those kind of assets.
Another idea I'm thinking of implementing in some of my screeens is to toss out at random goodies for the player to eat, lollies and cakes and candy, and drinks, so along with mature, you also got the kid bonus theme to keep up your health instead of jus only collecting up hearts scattered around in the game for rewarding just the health.... (the goodies idea has not been implemented in the game yet).
I've decided to allow the game to have more than just one party member, friends of the player who want a peaceful world, not one being overrun by aliens from the other side of the galaxy who have no manners. I decided to add the party option as an attempt to try to piece together some kind of a storyline and also o allow you to start with what party member you choose to play.. The storyline is not strong enough at the moment because i don't have all thse other elements.,
I also designed a new user interface for the game.
A little late here as Saliv's pretty much already said all this, but I had it typed out and then ran off without hitting send, so I'll post anyway just on the off chance it helps.
@Tozan: I think Saliv's point is that if you don't credit or at least keep track of where you got your art from, you'll have no defense if someone does claim you used their work improperly. As an example, suppose someone claims that's their space man your using in screen5.jpg. If you've kept track of things you can say 'No that's from xyz work published as CC0 by 'so and so' on website.com. It's not perfect, but it's a much better defense than just 'No it's CCO by somebody esle I got it from the internet somewhere.' So overall point is just that you may have a selfish reason to credit people (or at least keep track of your sources) even if the work is CC0.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
i plan on doing a list for the public domain assets I use. This is just talking about only copyrights, not about trademarks, but I believe If somthing falls into the public domain and a commercial company comes along and tries to slap a (C) on it without altering the pd image, they I don't think they beable to copyright it for its not a new creation or derirative work. So I think they can only slap a (C) notice on it if they make any substantial changes to the pd image or create a new derirative work with it, so I don't think they can copyright unaltered pd images straight out from the public domain. Once it falls into the public domain then it stays there. Or should stay there for everyone to also use. well that's what I think how the law should work..
Also I have issues with those who release something and say its public domain when its not really public domain (that's rather annoying) and i also find that those game models people been uploading on blender swap that half of what they are uploading on there you might find a really great quality model you want to use, and find out, that it was only a fan blender art !!!, which means I can't use it, and its not very likely they got permission from the company to make the fan art so I am NOT going to take the risk. I want my stuff to be either Creative Commons and Public Domain.
I changed the User Interface and removed all those blocky ascii lines, so I have opened up the game area more.
What's the situation with using astronaut pics from the public domain if they come from nasa sources?
.
"If a NASA image includes an identifiable person, using the image for commercial purposes may infringe that person's right of privacy or publicity, and permission should be obtained from the person."
From: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html
Generally speaking people have the right to control how they are presented in media (look up privacy and publicity rights for more details). So if you use an identifable person in a non "fair use" way, with out their permision, they can sue you. This is separate from copyright so the public domain has no effect on it.
NASA is a special case though, because almost every person in every NASA picture is identifiable just because of how exclusive the posibilty to be in those pictures are.
==================================================
Capbros is correct about what I was getting at.
In theory you are right Tozan once something hits public domain it should (but again does not always) stay there. However, sometimes two very similar works are created completely independently of each other. In this case one of them could be public domain and the other proprietary. If you use the public domain one and the party that owns the other one finds you, with out having discovered the original one, to them your work will look like a "derived work", which is something copyright law does cover. This is where the publicly available credit comes in handy they can check to see if your claim is legit before even contacting you. However, if you do not have this they may choose to persue legal actions. In which case you can not prove you made it (because someone else did) and you may not be able to prove someone else did because things happen. In which case it becomes a question of wether or not your work is a derived work based almost exclusivly on how similar they look, which again they took action because they thought they could win. To be honest though this is a very unlikely case scenario and I have never even heard of a case where this happened (I have seen similar stuff on youtube, but then trademark law is usually also involved).
The weird other side is when two people make a derived work of the same public domain work (a likely example would be if you made a game about mythology). In which case even though both people are aware of each others work and that they do not infringe on each others IP, the less informed fans may accuse one of the works of ripping off the other. This is actually really common, but probably less harmful.
==================================================
P.S. I like the new interface ^.^
If you use the public domain one and the party that owns the other one finds you, with out having discovered the original one, to them your work will look like a "derived work", which is something copyright law does cover.
But they would be wrong to jump the gun if the person got the image not from them but from some other pd source. But what if the site that you credit for the pfd image suddenly goes out of business or goes bankrupt and the link is no more active anymore to show you're got it from a pd source? Maybe this was one of the reasons why this site was set up to avoid these kind of problems as the world economy is changing and things are dissapearing. Don't sound like pd is safe anymore except under Creative Commons.
Now back unto the topic, my interface. Can anything be done to improve the text. at the top of the window?
The UI looks very cluttered. I don't agree with the choice of letters or other characters instead of simple lines as dividers.
I would suggest watching a new player play the game. You will get feedback and see if they have any problems.
Still Cluttered? What? I thought i fixed that problem.
I apologize I was looking at the old one. The new one corrects the clutter and is much improved.
I still believe watching a new player trying to use your UI is important and will help you to improve the UI.
Sorry I should have read through the comments before posting here.
Oh I see, ok, I might change also the spiders as well since I'm making all these tweaks. Here's what its starting to look like.
In the second screen I'm not sure about using this Text Dialog cloud, I used that to try to avoid clashing with the brighter detailed background.. (Well it worked in Dragon Age.)
I'm working on the Undead Soldier and I've started off his single player campaign in one of the cemetries. He will also have his own set of overdrives and not all the undead will be on his side.
But I've run into a problem, I have the guy's skull but not the rest of his body. !! so I had to use a zombie body (temporary) until I can find him a body that will suit, do you guys know where I can find a body to suit this undead soldier?
Here's what I have so far for the undead campaign. You start off in one of the cemeteries. but you cannot leave the cemetery yet to explor the rest of the game world until you first collect up twenty Steel Helments scattered all about the cemetery. Along the way there will be these Silver knights to try to stop you from collecting up the helmets. So that's as far as I've got in starting the undead campaign.
Switching between Party members in the game is now working. I can now switch between the pirate's campaign to play that or swtich to playing the undead soldier's campaign.
Paid or unpaid work, as I'm working on a new game project now. A Sci Fi Rpg storyline game.
I'n new here, so maybe this is a silly question: is this realtime 3d rendered, or some fancy z-scaled 2d isometric engine? looks great btw.
No this was an old project. those old graphic screens were done with the Gimp. I decided not to continue on with that old project. The new project that I'm working on now, is a Rpg Sci-Fi type game for Unreal Engine 4 and I think this one is quite weird and some of the dialogue in it is funny.
Here's my new project
http://www.tozan35.weebly.com
The whole entire storyboard of this game is online for people to read.
This game first started off as a batch file game as well, , but its being translated slowly now into Unreal Engine Code. i think this project is alot more improved and that's why I stopped working on the old one.
That is a huge project, and great looking. Maybe on you Project page you should Add an Abstract or Quick-About and a Screenshots Section that gives a first Overview.
Wish you lotsa success with this project. Good engine choice.
Yes this one is a large project. My music is also avaliable to download from the music section of the site as well. Abstract???? Quick About? Not sure what these terms actually mean, because I've not heard them said before, but show me some screenshots to give me some idea.
I did add screenshots on the beginning page, and adding them also into the different worlds when I make them in the engine...... I don't have professional mappers yet to make the game look top notch, but I do have some voice actors who lent their voices for some of my characters in this game which is now up on the casting call website under Tesseract Prime.