It’s either new spellblade weight levels, or the battle UI overhaul. I haven’t decided which one yet
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ok. ill be glad whichever it is.
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You can also read the post here!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/35532577
I want to start replacing the placeholder UI assets in the battle mode with something more final. M y plan is to produce mockups, take feedback, and refine those mockups. When I’m satisfied with it, I’ll implement it into the main game. This update will just be UI, I will be doing animations in a later update
This is the first mockup! Mostly I wanted to focus on streamlining it by removing all the extra detail and information. I also think it would be cool to have backgrounds for when you’re in the level (but I’m not gonna make a different background for each level, I’ll probably have a selection of 3-5 BGs that I’ll recycle). I haven’t yet checked the colors for colorblindness accessibility, but I’ll be doing that as I refine the color scheme (kinda worried about those yellows!)
Here’s some things I’m thinking about:
- How much more information can we remove from the UI while retaining the player’s ability to make informed decisions?
- How can we make the game easier to understand for beginners, so we don’t overload them with information?
- How can we communicate more information subtly with shapes and colors, than with attention-demanding text?
What you guys think about it? What would you like to see in the game’s UI?
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Looks good, even though it’s a mockup.
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yea no not very real…
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well what did you expect, it’s april fools day.
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I think the only two parts of the mock up I have an issue with is the capacity meter not being fully listed, as that does tell you when to wait or where to use the character rather than turning it into a “pray for it not KOing” them when you do use them. The other is the time limit on the character’s move (the 12 on the sword attack for the Thief) as I don’t know how much time it actually means, is it five seconds away from being normal or is it one second before normalcy so maybe that can be tweaked a slight bit. Other wise everything else looks nice and detailed enough to give some atmosphere you are in a dungeon,
If yellow is a bit too much then maybe decide on some certain things being yellow (like the banana) while making others (the only other "optional yellow here is the magic attack stat) something else (in final Final Fantasy the spell Thunder or majority of offensive magic is usually under the Black Magic menu, so maybe make it with a black background considering I don’t see anything others with that). I could be wrong and it still works fine regardless, though hopefully it gives the idea of other colors then.
Also if this is somehow a April Fool’s joke, well done as it is really believable.
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Don’t know if this is an April fools joke or not, but if it isn’t, I think it looks pretty good. Main thing I don’t like are not being able to see exact numbers for the capacity bar and the font choice.
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Yeah I wasn’t 100% sure I could get away with removing the capacity numbers. But I figured for the first mockup I’d see just how far I could go with removing information. I’m thinking I’ll bring it back, but only show it on the adventurer you have selected
My hope is that the motion of the circular cooldown timer would be enough to imply how much time is left without having to display the number
I think I want to change the fruit icon to an orange. It would pop more with the white, and match the background of the fruit-type enemies
Black isn’t very eye-catching, I think I can probably get away with a more orange-y yellow?
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The new UI looks awkward to me, but it just feels like it’s because I’m just used to the old UI.
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So I spent more time looking at this and I don’t think I care for the new hp/power icons in this particular mockup.
I find the readability on them to be a bit muddy? I think it has to do with the circular shapes combined with the white silhouette icons. Right now the current builds icons are well defined and distinctly colored and are easily distinguishable at a glance when things get hectic. But I think the new ones are potentially kind of visually noisy when you can’t afford to be eyeballing them. The only immediately distinguishing about them being the color of the circle.
More of an aside, but do you think an options menu where ui elements could be potentially turned on and off could be a possibility down the line at some point? I think UI’s are pretty tricky to nail down as some people like things simple, and others detailed.
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Is there something specific that makes it feel awkward?
I agree, the more I look at it the more I really hate how all the ability icons have the same circular silhouette. The old icons have much more easily readable shapes.
I kind of like the idea of keeping the food type icons circular, to reinforce their common category
Generally I would like to avoid option menus as much as possible. The more options you have the more different configurations you have to test, maintain, and plan for. If an options menu is added, it will be probably be right at the end of development
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it looks very persona ish (probably the offset backgrounds and the off angles) having an icon for weight would be good but I think it looks great only thing i would change would be straightening the UI but thats my taste not yours.
maybe something like a Minecraft Texture packs could be made where you have the base theme and you could unlock other themes later but that would be better for the final version or an executable version. could do skins like that as well. (an ice witch would be cool).
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I like it, my only critique would be that I think the background needs to be slightly darker to contrast against the UI more.
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I’m not sure I want a weight icon. Its an extra icon that doesn’t communicate any character-specific information
Yeah this would definitely be a thing for much later if I decide to do it
Ooh, yeah, I like this
So I found out that the Spell-blade can solo The Abandoned House in about sub 20 with about 215 points into capacity and 101 points into attack. And that stage grants almost 7000 weight per run, so… new grinding spot.
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Also, If anyone needs a quick means of calculating how much weight you need to reach certain level, I have just the thing.
You will need Open Office for it (unless of course recent versions of Microsoft office can open it), and you will have to put in the levels for each stat of the character you want to level so you can get the total level, but it can easily calculate how much weight is required to reach a certain level.
Even contains a simple calc on about how many solo SpellBlade runs of Abandoned House are needed to reach that amount.
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You can also read the post here!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/35828181
I incorporated a lot of feedback into this one, but the main things I wanted were: making the ability icons more clear and adding some more visual information. Mockup 1 was about stripping out as much information as I could and with Mockup 2, I want to swing the pendulum back to more information. In subsequent mockups we will home in on exactly how much we want.
Here’s what I’m thinking about:
- Are there now too many things competing for the player’s attention?
- Are the weight icon and the segments on the bars necessary?
- Are the new ability and type icons visually appealing?
Please let me know what you think!
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Looks good! I don’t think the segments on the capacity bars are really necessary if we’ll have exact numbers.
Quick question, though. Why is part of the bar on the thief white?
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from what I can tell, I assume that represents fullness after attacking an enemy
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