Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #31: OMG DISTRIBUTION DEAL, also new HUD screenshots

[J_C]

Seriously, are we the codex or are we a bunch of whiny babies

You do know that those two mean the same thing, don't you?

 

[Aeschylus]

Screenshot is beautiful, UI looks amateurish at best. Uncentered graphics and text; blurry, unpolished art for the buttons. To be honest it looks like it was thrown together over an afternoon in Photoshop. The dot matrix printer bit for the descriptions is kind of cool, though the font needs to look more organic. Hopefully it will all my polished up (significantly), though I'm tempted to say 'tear it down and try again'.

 

[Rake]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Fallout 1/2/Tactics
BG1/2
IWD 1/2

 

[Bulba]

UI looks fine to me, it's functional.... through that paper shit looks totaly out of place.
ugly buttons.... seriously? inexile should put some naked bitches as icons instead and everyone will be happy.

 

[Ramireza]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Fallout 1/2/Tactics
BG1/2
IWD 1/2

Well, the UI of the Games you mentioned are ok, but not more, FAR away from perfect.

IMO the inventory screen in fallout 1 & 2 where awefull.

Lets just wait until we realy USED the UI ingame.

 

[Rake]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Fallout 1/2/Tactics
BG1/2
IWD 1/2

Well, the UI of the Games you mentioned are ok, but not more, FAR away from perfect.

IMO the inventory screen in fallout 1 & 2 where awefull.

Lets just wait until we realy USED the UI ingame.

I agree about the Fallout inventory.
My point was more that the UI in all those games were solid, it had defined space on the screen and a theme.
Wasteland 2 is like parts of different UIs with no conection to each other.


And BG1/2/IWD had perfect UI. Flawless. Absolutely briliant

 

[Alex]

I like the new GUI a lot! I just think the letters typed into the paper should be more typewriter like. Then again, between these two:

This is your UI now:

This is how it should be:

(snip...)

I always liked the first's GUI better anyway.

 

[Tigranes]

Kem0sabe's page 1 post hits the mark. The UI is currently a clusterfuck: the AP icon, the weapon box, the hotkey UI, the chat field, all of them are operating on a different visual register making it look like the UI was assembled from 4 separate, if similar, games. The fact that all the elements are floating instead of anchored in a solid block makes this worse, though that doesn't necessarily mean you need an IE-like block. It just makes aesthetic cohesion even more important.

To be honest, I feel like this is a basic feedback that should have come within the team already before it went public, and I certainly hope people at inXile weren't looking at it nodding their heads and saying that looks really great, before putting it out. If so I would have reservations about their ability to design a good UI. I'm hoping that it was a really WIP feedback kind of affair.

E.g. JA2 i don't think is spectacular in any means but at least it was consistent and everything meshed in together. FO2 was also quite consistent:

Not only the solid block, but the 'knobs' on the chat window align with those on the HP/AC side; colour palette is consistent; same red buttons, very similar buttons for INV/MAP/CHA/PIP, etc., etc.

 

[J_C]

Sorry inXile, but that UI looks God awful. There is no coherent asthetics with the different parts being in different styles. The AP counter is a huge digital dial for no good reason, the skill buttons are small black and white buttons, and that huge electronics panel in the middle which contains all the buttons is just doesn't look good.

This is not a game breaking stuff of course, but come on, you can do better than this. The gameplay video shown a few months ago had better UI.

Something along the lines of Fallout would be much better.

 

[roshan]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

That UI looks fucking awful. Visually, nothing looks coherent at all, a total clusterfuck. A few specific points though:

1. The green bars on each side of the character portraits - both look like almost the same color, and are arranged in line with the portraits. If you look down to check someone's health, you won't be able to identify immediately which bar it is and who's bar it is. Like other's have said, learn from the Infinity Engine games. Icewind Dale 2 had the bars at the bottom of each character portrait. You know that a character's health is at the bottom, you don't need to look left and right to make sure you're looking at the correct bar. BG shaded the portraits red, again, clearly identifiable.

2. The paper on the right hand side. Having part of it transparent and part of it opaque is disjointing. Also, the dots on both sides. It makes it seem like each line is separate from the following line, like the way *periods separate sentences*. See, notice how the *'s clearly mark the text out, separating it? Those holes have the same effect. Also, on screen it makes it hard to read as it distracts attention from the text, it's too prominent. You should make sure the text stands out, don't have random shit around the text Take Fallout again, for example. You had bright green text, clearly identifiable. And a large dot beside every new paragraph, marking it out clearly out from the previous one.

3. It's silly to have the end turn button at a completely different part of the interface from the action points bar. Put it beside the action points bar - that's where players will instinctively look for it. Not only that, it just makes sense to have the button near the bar since you're placing the information (action points bar) and the decision players make based on that information (ending the turn) side by side.

4. A minimap of that size borders on useless. It reminds me of the one in NWN2 which was too small to make out anything, it was more trouble than it was worth. Just give a full screen sized minimap like the one in the Infinity Engine games.

 

[Grotesque]

Late stretch goal: Leonard Boyarsky will join the team for an afternoon and design the user interface!

 

[undecaf]

The stuff around the weapon image (AP counter, the buttons) and the left side of the skillbar is what ticks my eye the most. It looks too messy and scattered. Not too concerned about the rest or the aesthetic itself.

 

[felipepepe]

The stuff around the weapon image (AP counter, the buttons) and the left side of the skillbar is what ticks my eye the most. It looks too messy and scattered. Not too concerned about the rest or the aesthetic itself.

Yeah, the entire UI has 7 different text fonts/sizes... there's absolutely no harmony between them...

 

[Septaryeth]

I agree about the Fallout inventory.
My point was more that the UI in all those games were solid, it had defined space on the screen and a theme.
Wasteland 2 is like parts of different UIs with no conection to each other.
And BG1/2/IWD had perfect UI. Flawless. Absolutely briliant

I like IWD 2 UI better for some reasons.
I prefer my options stack up nice and tight at the bottom, instead of surrounding my screen with another 2 columns.
Though they may look slightly more...squished, minimizing the space used should be the way to go.

As for DE:HR mentioned above:

Keeping it minimal + consistent aesthetic + matching
(Jensen has augmented eyes so it figures that these things are like pop up windows + file folders)

To break it down, you guys have...
1. Buttons with white background + black symbols
2. Film like pics with black background + white symbols
3. lamp-like text for "15"
4. yellow text for AP and other info around the weapon
5. Sheet paper + black text
6. A red button for "end turn"
6! You guys have 6 different sorts of design meshed up together!
Connecting them up with random scrap metals and wires doesn't make them anymore coherent.

 

[deuxhero]

Yes, but Deep Silver aren't going to do that for free, are they? They would be getting some money besides for making and distributing physical stuff.

This should be clear from even a high school (if even that) knowledge of economics: Scale and infrastructure. Deep Silver already has manufacturing facilities ect and can make a box and DVD (and maybe a manual or whatever feelies WL2 and ToN offered) much cheeper than InXile could ever hope.

 

[deuxhero]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Morrowind is really underloved here. I can quickly move to pick up and drop items with the press of a button, resize it to the needed size, keep my view of the game world free, keep some information up even when closing the menu (not very useful in Morrowind, but in stats based turn based, it'd be great), find more explaination of mechanics via tooltips and a few other things. All It needs is more inventory/spell sorting options and options to select multiple (different) items at once.

 

[Rake]

I like IWD 2 UI better for some reasons.

You and Sawyer

 

[Zeriel]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Hey, I'm going to have to contrast all the "readability" and "modability" feedback you guys seem to have received to design the interface the way you did, and emphasize that some of us just want the interface to pull us into the game. I like heavy interfaces that feel like they have real weight, and belong in the game world they inhabit. Fallout & Baldur's Gate both have great UI's (first BG more than the second) by this measure.

This is one of the things I felt Project Eternity really got right (at least they SAY they did), by realizing that while these are "indy" games with small budgets, we still expect you to nail the aesthetics, because that's 90% of convincing people of a setting.

Clean, ultra-modern UI's with an immense amount of customizability belong in competitive multiplayer games, not singleplayer RPGs.

 

[Zed]

just crowdsource the UI graphics. how it works, the positioning and customization seems fine

I could do it for credits and a signed copy of the game.

 

[Rake]

Speaking of better thans, we'd actually love to get some of that from people: tell us what UIs from videogaming you really like, and what you really liked about it. Cite specific games or show us screenshots. That'd be some great input to have.

Hey, I'm going to have to contrast all the "readability" and "modability" feedback you guys seem to have received to design the interface the way you did, and emphasize that some of us just want the interface to pull us into the game. I like heavy interfaces that feel like they have real weight, and belong in the game world they inhabit. Fallout & Baldur's Gate both have great UI's (first BG more than the second) by this measure.

This is one of the things I felt Project Eternity really got right (at least they SAY they did), by realizing that while these are "indy" games with small budgets, we still expect you to nail the aesthetics, because that's 90% of convincing people of a setting.

Clean, ultra-modern UI's with an immense amount of customizability belong in competitive multiplayer games, not singleplayer RPGs.

100

 

[AN4RCHID]

The new UI is okay. A few criticisms I have:

1. I don't like the embedded CRT screens. Both the green and black gun thumbnail and minimap in the first demo looked a lot better.

2. The AP counter is hideous

3. Why paper? Why is it translucent? Why isn't the text courier or something more typewritery? IMHO, an old DOS prompt would be way cooler.

4. Finally, it bugs me how there are gaps everywhere and nothing connects. I prefer 'dashboard' UIs like in Fallout. This way also wastes a lot of space. They could easily fit the minimap in one of the bottom corners if they just moved all the elements together.

 

[Roguey]

I'm enjoying the angst over the addition of a distributor.

inEPTile continues to employ the worst artists, so no surprise with the UI. I do approve of how one can move the portraits closer to the action bar.

 

[Septaryeth]

I'm enjoying the angst over the addition of a distributor.

inEPTile continues to employ the worst artists, so no surprise with the UI. I do approve of how one can move the portraits closer to the action bar.

"continues"? Such as...?

 

[Roguey]

"continues"? Such as...?

All their games have a terrible art style and this one's no exception.

 

[Zed]

"continues"? Such as...?

All their games have a terrible art style and this one's no exception.

I find Torment to be an exception, from what we've seen. But who knows, maybe that game will have clipart for UI.