Interface Design Requirements
- Introduction
- Required Functionality/Suggestions
- Example
Introduction
The point of this document is to solicit interface designs, given some guidelines. In this case a picture is worth 1000 words! Before you submit any idea, make sure it meets the requirements below or has a great reason not to. As always, if you plan on working on this or need information or have feedback, contact James Margaris
Required Functionality
- Must be newbie friendly! I should be able to jump right in and switch weapons, reload, cast spells, etc right off the bat.
- It should be clear what every onscreen icon does and how to activate it if it is activatable.
- All common functions, such as reloading, switching weapons, choosing spells, etc, should be usable without having to remember what the hotkey bindings are. This does not mean you can't have hotkeys. For example, in Unreal Tournament you can switch weapons with the number keys, but you can look onscreen and see which number corresponds to which weapon. The idea is that common functions should not be buried in the instructions or the key bindings! I shouldn't have to remember that when playing as the Elf F7 is fireball! (You can assume that people know the fire and alt fire keys, jump, move, etc)
- The interface must take into account that different classes will be able to equip different numbers of items, weapons, and spells.
- Assume the player has one fire key and one alternate fire key.
- Try to take up as little screen space as possible.
- An interface that looks nice and fits with the fantasy theme is nice.
Things that MUST be onscreen:
- HP meter
- Magic Meter
- Compass Rose
Example
This interface looks bad, but gets the job done in terms of functionality. This should give people some idea of what we are looking for, in terms of functionality. The main advantage of the system described below is that it is uniform and very easy to select and activate weapons, items and spells. The downsides are that it might not have enough slots for everything without things being crammed in tightly and doesn't look very nice. (Even disregarding the fact I did it in MS Paint)
Weapon / Item / Spell Selection
My ideal is that weapons, items, spells, and special abilities would all line up at the top or bottom of the screen and be activated by the number keys by default. (Maybe -/+ as well, even ` if needed). Items would be arranged at the bottom of the screen in a consistent order from class to class, with like items/weapons etc grouped closer and with different borders or some other graphical indication.
The ordering would always be something like:
Armor/Shield (Might not need to be selectable, just replace if they get something better)
Hand-to-Hand Weapons
Ranged Weapons (maybe merge these with HTH weapons and not distinguish between them?)
Spells
Special Abilities
Items
Different classes could have different numbers of each of these. So an Orc might have 2 slots for HTH weapons, 2 slots for ranged weapons, 1 special ability and 4 item spaces. Pressing '1' would activate the first HTH weapon, pressing '3' would activate the first ranged weapon. Each of these groups would be grouped on screen and color coded and have some form of easy identification. So the Orc screen might look like:
|_1_|_2_| |_3_|_4_| |_5_| |_6_|_7_|_8_|_9_| ... |___|
Hand-to-Hand weapons would always appear in silver boxes, range weapons will appear in green boxes with ammo meters running down the right side, items would appear in potion-shaped containers, etc. (Something like that anyway) In the picture above from left to right is 2 HTH weapons, 2 long range weapons, one special ability, 4 items, and a non-selectable armor at the end. If a class can only equip certain types of weapons, icons representing that type could appear in empty spaces and perhaps flash a red 'x' if someone tries to pick up a non-compatible item. For example if the only weapons the Sorceress can equip are staffs a ghostly staff icon could appear in the '1' slot when no staff was currently equipped. (I say ghostly so that it won't be mistaken for an actual equipped weapon)
The reason I propose this system is that it is a very uniform interface that would be easily decipherable. If you want to select an item and throw it way, hit the number and the throw button. If you want to use a special ability hit the number and left-click. It allows for different classes to support different numbers of weapon, items, spells etc while still being readable I think.
One of the biggest issues I had with Tribes 2 (demo) was that there would be icons on screen and I would not know if they were items or weapons or what and I didn't know how to select or use them. With some weapon configurations the last weapon(?) would have infinite ammo but I never figured out how to select it - maybe it was a shield, I really have no idea. I couldn't figure out how to repair things, how to place mines, etc. Under this scheme it would be very straightforward, if you want to select something and use it press the number key, if it doesn't select it must be a non-selectable item like armor. Even a flag in CTF would work nicely in this approach, a the flag would simply take up an item slot, if you want to throw it select it and throw the same way you would any other item.
The main downside I can see to this is that you have a maximum of 10-12 or so selectable things total. That means a spellcaster with 8 spells might have room for a single HTH weapon, a single long-range weapon and 2 items. That sounds like enough to me, I would rather that than have a few more items at the cost of non-obvious key bindings.
