Calling Artists - we need buttons for the IE Mod

[Bester]

Stainless Veteran I admire your effort, but I'm not good at giving bad feedback to people who are giving their best and doing it for free for the community, sacrificing their own free time.

It's just that at this point I'm not sure if we should continue, because I'm unsure of whether we can reach the quality of the original icons, which is a prerequisite for custom icons to be used in mods.

But if you feel like continuing knowing that there's a possibility of nothing coming out of it in the end, I think:

- the icons are monotonous color-wise. If you look at the original icons, they use the same dark gold color, yes, but use very contrasting brightness variations of it to give depth to some icons, light reflections/shadows to others, etc. They're not homogenous color-wise at all. Yours aren't either, but they're much much more bland.
- background's color is out of place. Something closer to the original would work better I think.
- icons of different styles are mixed in together. Map and Select All - are especially standing out. I understand Select All is from vanilla, but being of lower size made it look ok. Now the the size is bigger, it would be more appropriate to have a drawn hand there, not a schematic representation of one. Also are standing out: Attack, Cancel and Options. For Attack I would again suggest a less schematic one, more detailed, kinda like that dagger from this image or like the sword from the original one.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Stainless Veteran I admire your effort, but I'm not good at giving bad feedback to people who are giving their best and doing it for free for the community, sacrificing their own free time.

It's just that at this point I'm not sure if we should continue, because I'm unsure of whether we can reach the quality of the original icons, which is a prerequisite for custom icons to be used in mods.

But if you feel like continuing knowing that there's a possibility of nothing coming out of it in the end, I think:

- the icons are monotonous color-wise. If you look at the original icons, they use the same dark gold color, yes, but use very contrasting brightness variations of it to give depth to some icons, light reflections/shadows to others, etc. They're not homogenous color-wise at all. Yours aren't either, but they're much much more bland.
- background's color is out of place. Something closer to the original would work better I think.
- icons of different styles are mixed in together. Map and Select All - are especially standing out. I understand Select All is from vanilla, but being of lower size made it look ok. Now the the size is bigger, it would be more appropriate to have a drawn hand there, not a schematic representation of one. Also are standing out: Attack, Cancel and Options. For Attack I would again suggest a less schematic one, more detailed, kinda like that dagger from this image or like the sword from the original one.

I don't know if I understand you correctly. Do you want new icons in the style of BGII, or in the style of PoE?

The end result should be that a single button takes the entire line to itself and maybe slightly more vertical space as well. What you should aim for is something like this, except you'll have 12 buttons and not 8: [screenshot with BGII buttons follows]

 

[J_C]

I don't know if I understand you correctly. Do you want new icons in the style of BGII, or in the style of PoE?

He wants BG2 style icons in the style if PoE. :trollface:

Stainless veteran, i think your new icons looks great.

 

[Jools]

I messed around a bit too. This is a WIP, and still needs a backdrop (I already have something in mind) and the icons. I took the frame and leaf motif from the character portraits on the right, and made a frame for the buttons. Is this maybe more similar to the "style" you were looking for, Bester ?

 

[Ellef]

Stainless Veteran's new icons look OK to me, but I have no artistic vision at all. They definitely need to be logically organised though.

 

[Sensuki]

I liked the custom icons in the middle of the buttons, but I think the button background needs changing at least.

Baldur's Gate 2 probably isn't the best example - BG1 and IWD1 had better icon art IMO.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Ok, the icons demo is ready. The HUD UI is still work in progress, I planned to finish it too, but it got too late.

 

[Severian Silk]

The original looks better to me IMO. :whatever:

 

[PirateScum]

What about something like that?
Did only 5 icons for now, apparently.

 

[Jasede]

The lines and details need to be thinner, more fragile.

 

[Immortal]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop begins to realize it's actually hard to make a UI that universally pleases everyone - News @ 11:00.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop begins to realize it's actually hard to make a UI that universally pleases everyone - News @ 11:00.

 

[Immortal]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop begins to realize it's actually hard to make a UI that universally pleases everyone - News @ 11:00.

I know this is like the go to response around here whenever someone says something you don't like but it really doesn't apply. Good UI Design isn't an easy or quick process and is extremely subjective, it is the bane of most software developers. Whoever is doing the UI mock up at Obsidian is pretty talented and did make a functional First Step UI with clear context.

If you are curious this is a great place to start: http://bokardo.com/principles-of-user-interface-design/

A lot of money and time goes into UI design from companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple (Who recently started copying Google).

My point is, It's very easy for a bunch of Photoshop amateurs to sit around shitting on the UI and saying all the things that are wrong with it, then as soon as they take a stab at it, 10 more people show up and say they hate that UI. Then someone else makes a UI, people complain, rinse, repeat.

There is nothing wrong with that, this is an iterative process where slowly better UI's are made and maybe one will be accepted more then others, or not. I just love how "edgy" this thread started about how dogshit Obsidian is, only to have stainless's UI get completely shat on as well. It's easier to sit around and bitch about something you don't like, than make something objectively better - especially something as subjective as this.

 

[Sensuki]

It's hard to do a good U shaped UI with the assets and functionality that Obsidian has implemented.

There's some good bottom bars been made though.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Grotesque's mockup actually pretty much has it down. It's not perfect but I think that pretty much everyone who is looking for a U-shaped UI would agree that it is better than the stock UI. Unfortunately at the moment it is too difficult/Bester is not interested enough in making it work so we will have to wait until we see something like it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wish we had more stuff externalized, so people could do actual modding, instead of begging any available programmer to decompile and hack Obsidian's assembly dll.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop begins to realize it's actually hard to make a UI that universally pleases everyone - News @ 11:00.

I know this is like the go to response around here whenever someone says something you don't like but it really doesn't apply. Good UI Design isn't an easy or quick process and is extremely subjective, it is the bane of most software developers. Whoever is doing the UI mock up at Obsidian is pretty talented and did make a functional First Step UI with clear context.

If you are curious this is a great place to start: http://bokardo.com/principles-of-user-interface-design/

A lot of money and time goes into UI design from companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple (Who recently started copying Google).

My point is, It's very easy for a bunch of Photoshop amateurs to sit around shitting on the UI and saying all the things that are wrong with it, then as soon as they take a stab at it, 10 more people show up and say they hate that UI. Then someone else makes a UI, people complain, rinse, repeat.

There is nothing wrong with that, this is an iterative process where slowly better UI's are made and maybe one will be accepted more then others, or not. I just love how "edgy" this thread started about how dogshit Obsidian is, only to have stainless's UI get completely shat on as well. It's easier to sit around and bitch about something you don't like, than make something objectively better - especially something as subjective as this.

Eh, mate, I never said that I was anything but amateur, and never claimed that my buttons was finished, either. I planned to tweak them, to find something that will look both good and in line with PoE design, and I know that it's an iteration upon iteration and iteration. It's just that Bester and I kinda misunderstood each other at first, and all my three iterations really haven't resonated with him. Well, such is life, I guess. You, on the other hand, arrived in this thread like a prince on white horse and shat on all people's efforts. Very edgy, very original, and so very contributive.

 

[PirateScum]

Wasn't this all about a BG/IE style of UI, nobody said anything about usability.

Spoiler

 

[Blackguard]

Ok, the icons demo is ready. The HUD UI is still work in progress, I planned to finish it too, but it got too late.

I really like your design though the inventory button is bit "messy" for my taste. Would prefer a simpler design for that button.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Ok, the icons demo is ready. The HUD UI is still work in progress, I planned to finish it too, but it got too late.

I really like your design though the inventory button is bit "messy" for my taste. Would prefer a simpler design for that button.

Actually the thanks go to my girlfriend. She is very hyped up about PoE, so I showed her the thread and she made sketches which we then scanned and I processed a little in Photoshop. I warned her that a lot of the detail will be lost and we're better off with simpler shapes, but she sort of waved me away because she was making the drawings for the fun of it. The Cancel and Options icons need more detail to fit in with the others, but we had already done 6 icons and I wanted to post the preview the same night. Once we can test wider buttons in the game we'll go back to them.

I like how BGII's icons seem to overlap the buttons' borders a little, so we intentionally went for that, and I think we may have overdone it for a few icons. This could make it difficult to line up the final buttons.

Initially we tried blue-colored icons, but they looked too out of place with the dark background. I'll experiment with BGII style of blue icons when I get to making a lighter background texture.

I also gave her the hint about Renaissance style, hence the mask for stealth and the little bust for the character screen.

BTW if we ever find a way to mod in sketches for the item description window, she can output lots of those very fast.

Spoiler

Wasn't this all about a BG/IE style of UI, nobody said anything about usability.

I sure agree with that, I won't be using a u-shaped UI myself, but I really want the combat log in the center, or as close to the center as possible. I don't care about the action buttons because I use the keyboard shortcuts.

 

[Sensuki]

AwesomeButton - those buttons say "90s Adventure Game" to me. Not a bad thing either.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Cool, that's pretty much what I wanted. There are hands/fingers to remind people of PnP games in addition to the "writing on a paper sheet" icon for the journal. I thought that the no parking "X" sign used in the default icons was anachronistic.

BTW, I watched the interview today where Josh talks about how they knew they had to do a skeuomorphic interface and they also wanted the elements to look and sound as if they are made from the respective materials. Funny thing then, that they actually ended up with an interface where (not forgetting the skeuomorphic stuff of course) buttons have hover effects with 0 delay, plus an annoying clicking sound I've always found that to be breaking the style.

I wish eventually we could negate the hover effects by making the hover images the same as the "mouseout" images and have buttons sink a couple of pixels in when clicked using a slightly repositioned image for the pressed state, or an image with an inner shadow effect applied, pretty much like in the IE games. But I guess wider/bigger buttons are not going to happen for now.

 

[Severian Silk]

Why do you need a U shaped UI in the first place?

 

[Bubbles]

Why do you need a U shaped UI in the first place?

UI = "U Interface"

 

[Immortal]

Why do you need a U shaped UI in the first place?

UI = "U Interface"