Game & Map Screenshots 11

Take everything with a grain of salt.

Major Problems with the UI:
Right now the UI feels haphazardly put together. Major problems I can see from the get-go:

1. The text is unreadable
2. The colors are too harsh.
3. The portrait art bleeds out of the edges.
4. Lack of unifying theme that tells anything about your game.

First tip, give yourself "guaranteed margins." Here is an example:

Now, the distance from the edge of the screen should generally be off limits. If possible, windows would be touching the edges of it, but any window or contents should generally NOT be inside this area.

However, I feel it is important to stress that while this is a rule of thumb, it is not an unbreakable law that is set in stone or anything. If there is a legitimate need to allow a window and/or it’s contents to exceed these invisible borders (especially if it was during a transition or something similar) then that takes precedence.

I guess, in general, windows should not exceed these boundaries while at rest.
Like the windows, this space would be coherent in between all the menu screens.

Reasoning: this will give the menus a feel of spaciousness instead of being claustrophobic! It allows itself a fair amount of tolerance for composition as while windows/contents would not normally exceed such boundaries, the same is not true for other visual elements. (arrow cursors pointing offscreen, inactive windows hiding away, etc)

Second Tip: Standardization of common elements.
A UI has to work as a whole and has a unifying theme and it's the job of your UI artist to mention this in the first place. Ideally you want to do the following:

1. Determine the core visual styles of your UI. Basically you have common elements that blocks out information that gives a pattern for your players to extract information from.
2. Have a standard font type, size and colors that helps convey important information to your player. Normally you have the header type font, standard font (mostly for dialogue and bulk of the readable information and so on.
3. Remember, Menu and Battle UI has to be consistent to unify and give a professional look to your game. One cannot stand out without the other. Without knowing how your general main menu UIs look like, it's hard to suggest the exact issues of your battle UI.

My general suggestion is to put individual windows on the character facesets. Examples of what I mean:

I haven't posted here in ages. It's been what, six years? Lovely images, everyone :D

@masterlobo, I really like yo colour scheme, sweetie! I can't for some reason get a closer look, but I like the trees and flowers as well... The houses look all identical, and I'm not 100% I like that, but I guess it could be good... like, if the people of Manahill all live in tyranny and everybody's expected to conform to strict rules and all that? Otherwise nice work! I'm really hot on yo game's graphical style on the whole! :biggrin:

Working on a battle hud. Wonder if I should have some sort of background at the back of the hud or leave it as is.



Still working on it, but it's close to how the end product will look like. Each character will have a different colored box. I can also either get rid of the background boxes entirely, or just have a black background that's slightly transparent.

@foolyg Doesn't really make sense to put a locker in front of a window like, I think.

Edit: Now that I tested using different colors, I see that it's not a good idea. Having red, pink, or green background in the boxes will blend in with the HP/TP gauges and the heart symbol. Can't use yellow, either.