UI design (WIP)

[MisterMoxxie]

Looking for tips and suggestions on my new UI design.. black space would be filled by the play field.

The status bars at the top are as follows - left to right; Health, Stamina, Light (see below*), Magic/Mana, Experience.

The 12 spaces below (4 of which are occupied) are for displaying status effects or conditions that are currently affecting the player. The shown status effects are as follows; Poision, Perception buff, Speed buff, Strength debuff. You would be able to mouse-over each 'icon' for more detail.

The stats listed below are player stats; Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception, Stamina - and combat stats; Damage, Defense, and Speed. Neutral stats are in white, buff stats in green, and debuffed stats in red.

Below that are 3 hotkeys which the player is able to assign for using common items without going into the inventory or related screens. Hotkey 1 is assigned to a "Healing Potion", hotkey 2 is assigned to an "Oil Flask" and hotkey 3 is empty.

On the bottom portion is your 'current target' area. This would show the info you know (or do not know, as indicated by question marks) about the current target (or last target hit).It also features 4 status effect areas for possibly known status effects currently applied to that target.This would clear out and be empty space once that target is killed.

*Light is used in my game instead of a 'hunger' type mechanic. The player carries an oil lamp, which must stay filled. Letting this burn out reduces the FoV to only the tiles North, East, South and West of the player (not even diagonals), making navigation and combat very difficult, if not impossible.

Let me know what you think!

Message log at the top : https://i.imgur.com/1v7Ahl5.png
Message log at the bottom : https://i.imgur.com/GI3dUBx.png

Edit :: A poster on reddit requested a mockup with the message log on the bottom, so I added that link as well. Now I'm not sure which I like more. 

[Krice]

In this case it would be quite easy to make it optional to switch the location of message area, and also the side stats area from left to right.

[mushroom patch]

The UI mock-up you have looks very dense in what I would hope is useless information on a turn to turn basis. While it is traditional to list stats like str, dex, int on the HUD, it is almost never useful for that information to be displayed every turn of the game. The standard for including something in the HUD is "is this useful to the player on a turn to turn basis?"

You have a lot of space devoted to a busy looking collection of bar gauges. At least one of these, "light," should definitely not be there. If the player is given vivid feedback like reduced FoV on the map when they're low on light, you don't need a separate gauge. If for some reason players need granular information, give them a turn number in the lamp description as in moria/angband -- that is not information that is useful on a turn-to-turn basis. I don't know what "stamina" is, but I've never seen a game that had a second kind of magic points like this where I thought it was a good mechanic. I suggest removing that. I would not give so much space or emphasis to "XP to next level" or whatever X is. That is just visual noise, better represented by a simple number somewhere, say a percentage. With two bars you're at a good place, but I think it would be more legible if they ran horizontally, even if there is a loss of resolution.

The spacing of the text is pretty irritating. I guess you're trying to center characters in a square grid. That makes sense for the map, but it is not good for display of normal text. I suggest that you think of a square as consisting of two cells that can each hold a monospace/terminal font character with the possibility of placing a single character centered instead. This can be done with unicode wide characters even in a standard terminal.

I think you're on the right track providing hotkeys for items and monster information in the HUD. I would think about how to put more of that kind of information into the HUD legibly and reduce the space devoted to and overall amount of player information that does not change much from turn to turn.

[Krice]

and reduce the space devoted to and overall amount of player information that does not change much from turn to turn.

Why do you need to reduce that space? What if you have that space. Then it's better display something on it, even if it doesn't change "from turn to turn", because the other, worse option is creating a command to display that information. It increases the complexity for no reason.

[mushroom patch]

@Krice: You are an imbecile, Krice.

[Krice]

@Krice: You are an imbecile, Krice.

Really that's the best you can do? Why don't you just go away and let real game developers handle this. There must be something that even you can do, hard to imagine though what, but something else than this.

[mushroom patch]

lol

[MisterMoxxie]

The UI mock-up you have looks very dense in what I would hope is useless information on a turn to turn basis. While it is traditional to list stats like str, dex, int on the HUD, it is almost never useful for that information to be displayed every turn of the game. The standard for including something in the HUD is "is this useful to the player on a turn to turn basis?"

See, here you almost got off on the right foot. I was actually discussing this point in a thread on reddit about my interface design. I was considering reducing it to only the combat stats being shown in this main hud, and offloading the character info (including XP) to a separate screen. At this point in your post I was still on board.

You have a lot of space devoted to a busy looking collection of bar gauges. At least one of these, "light," should definitely not be there. If the player is given vivid feedback like reduced FoV on the map when they're low on light, you don't need a separate gauge. If for some reason players need granular information, give them a turn number in the lamp description as in moria/angband -- that is not information that is useful on a turn-to-turn basis. I don't know what "stamina" is, but I've never seen a game that had a second kind of magic points like this where I thought it was a good mechanic. I suggest removing that. I would not give so much space or emphasis to "XP to next level" or whatever X is. That is just visual noise, better represented by a simple number somewhere, say a percentage. With two bars you're at a good place, but I think it would be more legible if they ran horizontally, even if there is a loss of resolution.

I disagree 100% on the 'light' bar not being necessary. Yes, you do have vivid feedback such as a reduction of FoV to tell you your oil has run out.. but that's once its run out. At that point you are spending at least one turn with a heavy disadvantage against the AI which - especially further into mid/end game - could  be plenty to throw an encounter in the other direction.

The spacing of the text is pretty irritating. I guess you're trying to center characters in a square grid. That makes sense for the map, but it is not good for display of normal text. I suggest that you think of a square as consisting of two cells that can each hold a monospace/terminal font character with the possibility of placing a single character centered instead. This can be done with unicode wide characters even in a standard terminal.

The... the spacing of the text.. as in.. have space between lines in order to distinguish differing sets of information? If you're talking about their being two spaces in between the character stat listings and their numbers.. I mean, yes, technically I could center all of that and it would look fine. But so far - and I expect this trend would continue - you are the one and only person in any of the discussions I've posted about this design to mention the "irritating" spacing of the text. And I'm still not even 100% sure what you mean.

I think you're on the right track providing hotkeys for items and monster information in the HUD. I would think about how to put more of that kind of information into the HUD legibly and reduce the space devoted to and overall amount of player information that does not change much from turn to turn.

You actually closed on a decent point, after all.

I almost took some of this advice to heart.. until I saw you calling Krice an imbecile below, and wondered what age group I'm working with here. That's when I decided to do a quick review of some of your posts.. you know, the kind where you say Dwarf Fortress couldn't get off the ground today, when it's community is just as active now as it's ever been.. or a post where you literally say nothing more than "Nethack is bad.". This is when I realized you're not exactly the type of person whose advice I'm looking for, or opinions merit much thought. Thanks for your time, though! I appreciate your.. effort, I guess? 

[mushroom patch]

Well, Krice is an imbecile, nethack is bad, and dwarf fortress wouldn't get off the ground in today's environment. I give it to you straight. Not everyone can handle it.

By all means though, talk it over with roguelike philosopher and real game developer, Krice. I think he will give you the kind of attention you seek and deserve.

[MisterMoxxie]

Well, Krice is an imbecile, nethack is bad, and dwarf fortress wouldn't get off the ground in today's environment. I give it to you straight. Not everyone can handle it.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with nethack being "bad". My point was that both in that post, as well as parts of your earlier post here you fail to elaborate at all. You state your opinion, which is great if that's what somebody asked for, but here it isn't what I was asking for. I.E. your comment about the 'irritating' spacing of the text. Thats a fine opinion, but how about expanding on that? Why? What's 'irritating' about it? Considering the entire thing is technically text, maybe you could be a bit more specific about what exactly you're talking about?

And dwarf fortress did get off the ground in today's environment, so I don't know what you're talking about there.

[mushroom patch]

Dwarf fortress got off the ground in 2007, my good man.

If it is clarification you want, the text has poor readability because of its horizontal spacing. You are placing characters with proportions similar to a standard terminal cell in square cells. I suggest that you consider your square cells as consisting of two cells with terminal-like proportions, a left and a right half. When displaying normal text, you can then get the usual spacing you see in terminal displays. When you want to display characters on your map, you can instead place them centered in the square tiles. This can be accomplished even in a unix terminal by using unicode wide ascii characters, but obviously it can be done in SDL or other similar graphics packages. The point is that your square grid can coexist harmoniously with legible terminal-style text.

[MisterMoxxie]

If it is clarification you want, the text has poor readability because of its horizontal spacing. You are placing characters with proportions similar to a standard terminal cell in square cells. I suggest that you consider your square cells as consisting of two cells with terminal-like proportions, a left and a right half. When displaying normal text, you can then get the usual spacing you see in terminal displays. When you want to display characters on your map, you can instead place them centered in the square tiles. This can be accomplished even in a unix terminal by using unicode wide ascii characters, but obviously it can be done in SDL or other similar graphics packages. The point is that your square grid can coexist harmoniously with legible terminal-style text.

So it's the font. You don't like the font being used.

These mockups were put together in REXPaint, using whatever the default font package there is. Sorry if you're not a fan of it. Again, you're the only person to mention this anywhere, so I have a difficult time believing that this would be an issue to literally anyone else.

[mushroom patch]

Wow. You put together a mock up that does not accurately reflect what your design and you whine when someone takes you seriously. Have fun with Krice, dumbass.

[MisterMoxxie]

Actually, I put together a mock up that is focused on layout and design, not the spacing of the characters being used.

And people wonder why this forum is falling into inactivity. 

[Tzan]

Log at the bottom.
Stats that dont change every turn dont need to be shown, but you can if you want.
The letter spacing was literally the first thing I noticed, there is too much space between letters, its hard to read.
I did study Graphic Design in college.
I like the space reserved for current target.