I have not yet drafted any ideas for user-interface layouts yet, but I have done a little survey of different ui systems used in various games (that I have recently played). I feel that each of these games have some element that is relevant to our project. I’ll get right to that—research first, though, I need to know what I’m doing.
Here I have a list of ui diagrams from several games. Included with the diagram are some comments that I make about gameplay mechanics to which the interface is related. The way I see it, interface and mechanics are inseparable, and since we still have considerable room for our gameplay to develop I decided that it might help to throw out a few ideas and opinions.
Dynasty Warriors 4
A: Character info: contains a character portrait and health meter. Also includes a “musou gauge,” a meter that tracks a variable that fills up either by charging it or dealing blows. When full, it enables a powerful attack that then drain the musou gauge lasts until you stop the attack or run the gauge to zero.
B: Enemy Unit: Most immediate enemy/attack target. Contains health meter, rank, and army name.
C: A meter that measures the tide of battle, one army vs. the other.
D: map of the area. The map color-codes the area according to which team has control of it, as well as marks the location of the champion characters for each team.
E: Number of kills. Because that’s cool.
This picture provides a better view of the area map and kill counter.
Additional comments: Dynasty Warriors 4 has a good action pace. One thing it had that I felt was relevant to this project was the inclusion of body guards, where you have a team of escorts to assist you. They just do only that though, defend you. There is no mechanism for further control, except for maybe asking them to stay behind. I think that that section could use more sophistication, like if you could order them to heal you or attack only one character, for example. Also, even though you play single player, you are on a army, which includes commanders and many lesser troops, and sometimes even siege weapons. Now if you had the capacity to order those guys and manage them, that would be something.
Neverwinter Nights 2
A: Area Map
B: Spell Menu: contains the list of spells available for the character to use.
C: Box that includes a lot of data and the calculations used in-game. Rarely necessary, if ever.
D: Some buttons that give access to the various menus. And the rest function. And a team ai toggle button.
E: Quickselect Bar: Customizable bar. You get about 12 rows of 10 slots that you can fill with various abilities. These abilities may then be selected by pressing a key 1-0, corresponding to the slot.
F: Camera Mode. You might want to choose a mode that emphasizes either the character or the scene.
G: Combat Mode: Allows user to select the combat mod of the character. Whether it be for stealth, detection, or spellcasting, etc.
H: Character icon. Includes health meter. Usually there would be several of these, since you often play in a party of several characters. The additional ones would be displayed successively underneath this first one.
I: Action in progress: It displays an icon for the action you are performing this turn. I should explain this later.
J: Future actions. Actions you will perform in subsequent turns.
Additional comments: It is essential to note some gameplay issues with this one. One thing is that you can pause the game anytime and issue commands to your characters. This is necessary because the game would be impossibly hard without this mechanism, even if you ignore the fact that your team AI is so awful that you need to manage everything they do (turning of their AI makes it relatively easier). Pausing every single moment, though, is tiresome, and really takes away from the action of the game. Concerning the action in progress icon, although the game is real-time (when you don’t have it paused), it still runs by turns. Every five or so seconds is a little time slot for the turn, so you can select an action for a character to perform and he’ll do it for that turn as long as you give the order within the needed time frame. It sounds cool to mix action pace with strategic turn-based play, but at least the way it is done here, it doesn’t quite work out so well. For one thing, you need the game paused almost always, but then you need to unpause it if you want anything to happen. And so, if you are just a moment to late in getting to a certain character he’ll waste that entire turn. I could go on about this game, but this is enough. Strangely, it is still a fun game.
Kingdom Hearts
A: Enemy Health meter.
B: Menu. Contains a few commands; changes with the situation. For example, “Attack,” “Talk,” “Throw,” “Read,” “Magic.” In the case of the magic option, it will then yield another menu, of all known spells. Spells that you don’t have enough power to cast are grayed out.
C: Character Icon: Contains the character portrait, the health bar, and magic power bar. The status bars wrap around a section of the character portrait’s arc.
D: Allies: Has portrait, health, and magic of allies.
Additional comments: You have two allies that will always follow you around. You can enter the pause menu and set up some AI guidelines for your buddies. What would be really cool, though, is if you could set up some shout-outs that they would automatically respond to. No I have not played Kingdom Hearts II, so I don’t know how that works. Also, I wish there was so more dynamism in the basic combat—if you were a magic miser, like me, you’d end up clicking x a bunch. I could have used more variety on that end.
Warcraft 3
A: Hero Icon. Although warcraft 3 is an RTS, you also have a hero, a powerful unit that you command within your army. The hero icon contains a thumbnail portrait of the hero, along with miniature health and mana meters. It flashes red when the hero is being attacked.
B: Just some menu bars, e.g menu, quest log. Clicking this icon will select the hero and cause the view to center on him.
C: Time of Day. Since time of day makes some difference in warcraft, this is displayed. It doesn’t show an exact number unless you move the mouse over it, instead it has a sun or moon icon moving slowly across it.
D: Some Statistics: Food usage, Gold, Lumber, and Upkeep. Upkeep is a statement on a simulated tax on your gold income, that increases as your army’s food usage reaches certain critical values.
E: Minimap. Small map, shows basic lay of the land, and any marks any enemy or friendly troops within your visible range. You may use the minimap as a means of issuing commands to a certain location.
F: Portrait of selected unit. Flashy 3d portrait of unit (or unit type) selected. Also has health and mana data.
G: Selection info. In warcraft 3 you may have up to 12 units selected at once. If you have only one unit selected this window contains the attack and defense statistics of the unit. If more than one unit is selected it will display the array of unit thumbnail portraits. Thumbnails include health and mana bars. If there are more than one type of unit selected you may quickly scroll through it to select a desired unit type and issue a general command to that unit type in the selected group.
H: Inventory. Heroes may hold up to 6 items. Most other units do not have any inventory, in which case this section is just decoration.
I: Command Card: Contains buttons for all of the commands you can issue the select unit (or unit group). This can be as attack, stop, move, level up, build, etc. In the case of level up and build, for example, clicking on them will then have the command card jump to another set of options. (e.g. you select build on the cc and then it shows you what you can build).
The picture above has only one unit selected. This unit is the hero--he's the big man on screen. A player may have more than one hero.
Additional comments: Even with all of the comments I can make on it, Warcraft 3 is still one of my favorite games ever. The multi-player aspect isn’t that great though. Too many players like to focus solely on their hero, who has immense power, and gets more powerful with experience. I’ve always felt that the hero should be an asset in the army, not the army itself. Also, nobody likes “Upkeep”; when you begin getting around that margin you tend to avoid training units, since you don’t want to incur that upkeep tax until you have to, and it puts a damper on your spirits. On the other hand, it has the secondary effect of causing the player to focus on upgrading their individual troops and improving infrastructure at these intervals, which isn’t so bad.
Diablo 2
A: Allies. Contains little portraits of your allies. Includes health bar.
B: Health orb. A glass orb filled with a red fluid meant to represent the amount of health you have in proportion to your maximum.
C: Attack/Left click action. Displays the symbol for the left click action. This action always takes the form of some sort of basic attack e.g. poison dagger, or just the plain old “attack”.
D: Contains statistics on the characters experience until level up, and the amount of stamina left. Stamina is the energy to run the character has.
E: Some menu buttons. Has some buttons that allows you to access various menus for you character. Also has button for the automap. More on that later.
F: Belt. Displays pictures of four items in that you can quickly access by pressing to the corresponding number 1-4. Depending on what belt your character is wearing, there are also a few backup slots, where if you use one of those items the one in the backup slot will take its place.
G: Spell/Right click action. This holds the action, usually some sort of spell, that you activate when you right-click. Clicking it yields a chart of all available spells, where you may move the mouse over a spell icon and click an F1-F12 key, making a shortcut.
Diablo 2 under a higher resolution. The automap is turned on.
Additional comments: All of the options for quick selections really helps make this game work on the action level. The spells and the belt are important things you need to toggle. Also, I liked how they added the ability to instantly switch between weapon sets. In one situation you might want to focus on spellpower and equip your magic gear, in another you might want to use a strong up-close attack. Diablo 2 at its best allows the player to choose how he wants to play his character, and that is what’s great with its system.
It uses an automap feature for navigation. It works by overlaying on outline of the map over the scene, marking the position of your character on the automap at the exact position of your character on the screen, effectively centering him on the map. It might sound distracting but it works pretty well, though at times I wish I didn’t need it so much. If there is something on the automap you want to approach, you just have to move your character to where it is placed on the automap—since movement is all incremental you’ll be going in the right direction, it this goes on until the position of your character reaches the position at the automap. This feature, though, would not work so well in strategy games, since you might want the player to command some troops to far off places.
Starcraft 2
A: Menu Buttons: Includes tabs for the menu, and the like.
B: Idle workers: If you have any idle worker units, this icon shows up, with the number of idle worker units displayed. I forgot to mention Warcraft 3 also has this feature. If you click on this, it takes you to one of the idle workers, automatically selecting him.
C: Minimap: contains all of what you currently know of the map. The scouting you have done, the greater you are aware of the going-ons of the map. Can also be used to select a location for a command.
D: Unit information. If only a single unit is selected it displays all of the attack, defense, health, and energy information of the unit. If more than one unit is selected it displays all of the unit portrait thumbnails in groups according to the unit type. Again, you may scroll through the unit types and issue commands.. There are no health bars, but health information for the individual unit is conveyed by having the portraits colored from green to red, green for much life and red for low—otherwise the portraits are monochromatic. Another big difference between SC2 and WC3 here is that the number of units you can select is virtually unlimited. The window only holds 24 portraits, so when you have selected more it generates tabs on its left, so you can still access those units.
E: Unit group tab. In starcraft and warcraft, when you have a unit/some units selected, you may press control + num and be able to instantly access that group anytime by pressing the chosen number. In starcraft 2, it also makes a tab, which can also be accessed by clicking it. The tab includes the fast-access number, a sketch of the dominant unit in the group, and the total number of units in the group. This is a feature that I really like.
F: Unit Portrait. Contains a flashy portrait of the selected unit. No information, all looks.
G: Command card. Works just like the command card in warcraft 3, with buttons for attack, move, etc.
H: Hero Icon. You rarely have heroes in starcraft 2, but the option is there. It shows a hero theumbnail portrait along with a health meter.
I: Economy: Has sleek windows displaying amount of minerals, gas (your resources), and the food usage.
Additional comments: Remember how I said I really like the “unit group tab” feature? It’s true. I don’t use it much since my memory is usually good enough for my purposes in this game, but I definitely see potential in this mechanism. At least the way I’m playing Starcraft 2, there isn’t much need for ultra-tight control of specialized groups. I’m taking if I wanted to send one team over here to take out this thing, while having another hold this position, while a third prevents some other guys from making it over. I haven’t seen this kind of action in Starcraft 2, but it is something that I can imagine and it sounds fun.
Now suppose you can redesign your unit tabs: what if you could give that team their own team name and a portrait to represent them? It might sound like it’s all polish, but if you are working with highly specialized teams it could be very useful for the player to be able to immediately recognize which team is which if he wanted to quickly give an order to them. Of course, in order to have that ability to deal with such aesthetic features, the player would need some time that wouldn’t be better off spent managing other aspects of the game—the player would need some in-game downtime. I like that idea actually. It lets the player prepare himself so he can let his strategy come to fruition and rely less on getting his twitch down. In fact, I’ve always liked that part in a game when you get defeated by some challenge and then you have to step back to the drawing board, and reformulate your strategy. I am not a big fan of the whole “I was sooo close,” if the “so close” part was all just a function of luck in the first place. A game shouldn’t have to much of a luck factor: a player needs to be able to make decisions to direct the result of the game.===========================
Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to all of the makers of these games. I might have some critique for them at times, but I still like all of them so very much.
Also: my youtube channel; I've added some videos of what I have done on blender.
http://www.youtube.com/user/superbum900?feature=mhsn
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