Game & Map Screenshots 11

@TKarver13 Nice beginning, but see my post #785 (a few above this one) on the subject of 'pristine' and the paths to the doorways. The reply immediately below mine shows how the doorways should be done.

Hi all,

Doing some UI work for my game, and I'm a little unconfident in my UI creation skills. Would seriously appreciate the help of someone more artistically inclined to let me know where I can improve and what I'm doing right/wrong.

the UI looks good, but the choice is yours, it depends on the game and mechanic.
if you see it fit, use it, if you say, I want it a bit different, play around.

there are many ways to create an UI, but from this look its really nice.

2 very small things, they are just my opinion so you don't have to apply them:

- I see that the box of Drakul is "active" as its pushed a little bit to the left. But I needed some seconds (which is quite long) to realize that, as the left side is diagonal and creates some straight line with the box from Owst. I would move it some more pixels to the left and highlight its background-color a little bit. Maybe some subtle flashing like in Default RPG Maker. Be careful, it could irritate the Player that he thinks he could click on this UI widget.

- Maybe add a border around the 4 menu items in the bottom left, so it's easier to see that these 4 items are connected.

In the end, I look at your screenshot, not how everything works in the game. Animations can cause a lot, so the points I mentioned do not apply anymore.

One thing to keep in mind when designing UI is that the elements should complement each other to make it as easy as possible for your player to get the information they need from it. And generally their focus is going to be on the action and the characters because that's the fun part.

Right now, you have the turn order at the top, the action names on the far left, and the actor status at the bottom right. That means that your eyes are always going to be darting all over the place to find pertinent information.

That's not necessarily *bad* design, but can be an issue to keep in mind when considering where to position things.

@Catog
Hello :)

(Long time no post here)

Here are some small details you could fix to improve your UI:

Focus hierarchy
You'd want your players to clearly see more of the Commands menu. The menu texts should be the most visible and readable, followed by the actor bars, then lastly the turn bar. This is what @Trihan is pointing out.

To easily fix this, swap the font sizes of the commands (Electrocute, Magic Missile, Ignite, Item) with the turn bar ones (Current, Next Turn). Make sure to adjust the size of the icons and selection, too. They should look more connected to one another as well, as @V_Aero suggested.

Margin consistency
The commands menu is placed too far on the left edge. I suggest making its `x` offset exactly the same to the margin between the right edge and the actor status bars.

You may also want to add top and bottom margins to the turn and actor bars, respectively, so they don't stick too much to the edges of the screen. Again, they should share the same margin value, if you decide to add them.

Other opinionated suggestions and nitpicks
- Match the shadows for all battlers. The purple monster has a darkest shadow, and the pink ones have none. Do the pink ones float? In any case, prefer to choose just one shadow style for all, as much as possible.

- Make the selected command's text bolder (In this case, Electrocute) for more emphasis.

- Adjust the `x` offset of the turn bar more to the right to put the diamond shape (where the current battler is) at the center of the screen. This way, it's more natural for the audience to put their focus on it.

- Move Drakul's bar (or whichever actor has the turn) more to the left. The bottom left point of Owst's bar and the top left point of Drakul's bar should meet. Also, while you are at it, apply the yellow glowing outline you did for the turn bar to Drakul's bar, but make it less apparent. This will make it look more emphasized and more cohesive with the whole UI.

- This looks already fine but... the icon for the `Item` command is blue, but the text is white. Is this intended?

Moving forward, consistency is key. Keep it up, and good luck with your game! :)

@Catog I merged your thread with Game & Map Screenshots.

@Kes Yeah, I put that chimney on and then remembered I should probably do the interiors first, so I can see on which sides to put the chimneys on. :aswt: Good points on the paths and treeline up top. I'll edit that a bit further.

Haha! I do exactly the same thing!

Thanks so much for the feedback and advice, guys!! I'll implement the changes and come back with what I've got

I made a map for a challenge on a german bord, task was to make a map on 5x5 tiles:

His mommy protected the holy treasure of the goddess of light for a long time, but after many years the evil adventurers got a lucky hit. Baby dragon will need years to grow as big as mommy, but he is already doing his duty.

The chamber of a spoiled princess who decides she is rather suited for an adventurers destiny than her life of luxuries and boredom.
I only recently switched from Rpg Maker 2003 to MV and would love some advise for my parallax mapping.

@Cardea I'd just tweak the shadows.
You have no shadows for the dolls near the windows but dark shadows for the guardrail in the middle of the room and the piano, for example.

@Cardea I agree with cabfe. In the room with adequate, non-intense lighting like that, thin and slim things tend to cast less or very subtle shadow the farther it is from the light source.

And if the light source is far away, not very intense, and you don't put perspective view in your map, don't even try to skew the shadow.

My suggestion is add darker shadows for objects near the window. Also, fix the guardrail shadow skewness, decrease the opacity then blur it more.

This is a bar in a sweet little desert oasis simple named, The Saucy Sultan:

So I'm making a game in (another engine) for a game jam, but I decided to make the maps in MV first as something of a prototype so I can get my ideas down, since (another engine) tends to eat up a lot of RAM in addition to working the graphics card a lot harder than it's used to.
This is how it looks with just a Save as Image:

And these are some screenshots of how it looks in test play:

This is my starting town, although the player will be starting in the school, the building in the lower left corner.

@magnaangemon01 What I think is helpful when doing maps is to keep in mind the relative proportion of things. So, consider the size of the fountain compared to the size of the school nearby. Either that fountain is truly epic in size or the school is for dwarves. Even the lampost is taller than the school. The doorway + the line above it show the height of that floor to be only the height of a person. I am not arguing for realism - that would be foolish and unobtainable. What I am sugesting is that you need to use your tiles so that the top of the door does not reach the top of the entrance floor. Then think about the height of the floor above it. Again it looks incredibly low, especially as that floor is even nearer to the fountain.

Then compare the size of the school with that tower. ... yes, it's big. Your school is 2 tiles high and the tower is 9. No one will be able to see the screen at the top of it without really straining their neck to look up. btw, if lamps etc. have shadows, so should buildings, it will help to give them the illusion of depth. atm that tower especially looks very flat, with no shadow and the depth = 1 tile as shown by the turrets at the top.

@KakonComp I really like the yellowy desert colors - combined with the orange and red, they also give me 70s vibes. I noticed a few things that bother me: The bar is very wide, I think it would be nicer to make it a bit smaller, more cosy. Or at one or two tables in the upper-right part. The rug at the bar – as far as I know counters are fixed on the floor, so it would be strange to have a rug underneath them. They would also be a PAIN to clean, since there will be spilling of drinks. Also I would change the placement of the windows, so that they are not blocked by furniture (especially by the tall cabinet). You have quite much wallspace, you could use that.
And I would love a bit less symmetrical tables – maybe just place the middle one a tile or two higher? Play around with the chair placement?

@Sleepy Kitten Games Overall I really like the map and they way you placed everything. I especially love the wooden beach houses in your test play screenshots! But I instantly noticed they all overlap exactly one tile – I would vary that a bit more, also the general structure of the houses is very similar. But then again, I do not know wether that is important at all, since you plan to to this in another engine. Another thing that bothers me a bit is the broken up stone pathway. I do not think it is very realistic to have a stone path broken like that – maybe change these paths to trampled dirt?

@magnaangemon01 There are many cool ideas (the billbord on the church and the modern tiles per se), but the proportion of your map seem very off. Cars are as big as benches, the vending machine is taller that one story of the school, the church is absolutely enormous – could it be you combined tilesets for a world view with tilesets for exteriors?

@cabfe and @Raith Thanks for your suggestions! I really struggled with the shadows so your tips are really appreciated. It absolutely makes sense, so I will tweak the shadows the way you suggested. Thanks again!

I did combine world with exteriors as I needed roads.

And I don't know how to resize sprites, so I did the best I could with what I have.

And I've never worked with shadows before, I'll have to look into it.

I just found out I haven't been getting notifications about updates on this thread. Just want to say real quick that everyone's projects are looking amazing! I am floored by a number of them that I am seeing! Keep up the great work everyone!

For my own screenshots, I'm just about done piecing this one together. I have the layout the way I want, so I've moved on to making the custom pieces, such as the dwarf statues that decorate the front of this gatehouse. I still need to make statues to fit into the four alcoves in the wall, two to decorate the ends of the walls, and another one that's going to be a fountain of sorts, where the water pours out of the mountain and into the lakes on either side to feed the moat.

I've been seriously considering widening the walls that come off the main gatehouse by about two additional tiles, and potentially having them run up against the cliff and circle back in towards the main road. This is suppose to be the entrance to a mountain city built by dwarves, so defense is a biggy here.