Devlog: Week 12
Hi everyone! This week’s topic was interfaces (:
UI is an interesting thing. The player sees it all the time and constantly interacts with it, but… if the interface is good, it usually goes unnoticed. When the interface is annoying, though - everything suddenly becomes very noticeable: both how it looks and how (un)comfortable it is.
I started thinking about how the UI in my game should look and behave. During discussions with friends, I unexpectedly found out that some things I personally find convenient are actually irritating to others.
I’m using classic adventure games - especially the Nancy Drew series - as a reference, so I decided to ask players directly in the relevant subreddit: what they actually find comfortable and what really annoys them. Especially since the interface in that series has changed about five times, so there’s plenty to choose from and discuss :D
There weren’t that many replies, but they covered the entire possible spectrum. The short conclusion is:
you can’t please everyone
(and that’s okay)
There were, however, some very interesting points that made me reconsider certain elements and think about features I might need to add. Key insights:
- The interface should be unobtrusive, but it doesn’t have to be minimalistic (and I don’t like minimalism)
- The player should have a choice: keep everything visible or hide it until needed. So the main UI elements should have three states - hidden, partially open, and fully expanded
- In the inventory, items of the same type should be grouped into a single slot (for cases like “collect 10 stones” - all stones in one slot, with a counter showing how many you’ve collected)
- “Handwritten” text should be duplicated with a regular font
- In addition to automatic notes, there should be an option to make your own notes - most adventure fans keep a notebook and pen nearby, but sometimes that’s not possible, and in-game notes are a lifesaver
For now, I’m thinking through how all of this should work and look in the end, and in the meantime I worked on cursors. This is also a very important part of point&click games - interactive areas should be easy to spot without being too flashy, and a changing cursor feels like the most unobtrusive way to communicate that.
At the moment, it looks like this:
The main cursor is made as a crystal pendulum — in the prologue I’ll show it up close and explain why it plays the role of the pointer. It has three states:
- Idle — for non-interactive areas of the screen
- Active — for areas that can be examined and for items that can be picked up
- Action — for areas that require interaction, such as using items on them
Then there are cursors for movement between locations, made as golden arrows (I’ll tweak them a bit more and add “forward” and “back” arrows), as well as a dialogue bubble — because you wouldn’t poke characters with a dangling crystal, would you? (x
I also had to solve a small issue where the “item in hand” following the cursor messed with focus detection, causing the crystal to always stay in the “active” state regardless of where the cursor actually was. Fixed that — now the item following the cursor doesn’t interfere with the pointer state anymore (:
That’s it for now — see you next week!
And in the meantime, tell me: which games have interfaces you love, and which ones annoy you or make gameplay harder?
devlog
dreamwalker
ux/ui
