Foreshadowing in other words...
In response to Xyberman
Xyberman wrote:
Foreshadowing in other words...

No, not really. Foreshadowing is a different animal.

For unsettling, you want to paint a fairly normal picture but then deviate from the norm in ways that aren't quite right. You want to throw something into the uncanny valley.

For instance, the woman talking about the voices in her head could, at times, start having one-sided conversations out of the blue. Or her dialogue could include some odd word choices that don't quite fit the picture of sanity, but do hint at her back story.

Think about random things you might see that would indicate trouble: Signs of a struggle, random blood spatter or hand prints, uneaten food at a table, letters abandoned in the middle of writing them. Think about random noises that could be normal, or represent something spooky, or especially both. Think about musical cues and how you can use them to your advantage. It's all about ambiance.

But most of all, for maximum creepiness you want to deliver on scares almost randomly. A disturbing music swell and multiple visual signs that you're about to get into something bad can be made a hundred times more effective if you only deliver on the something-bad about 20% of the time. (E.g., walking into something that looks and feels like a boss arena, but there's no boss, only signs that something big was injured or killed and then dragged away.) And if sometimes you bring out a scare in a situation where the music and visual cues didn't support it, you set the player's nerves on edge.
You can also redirect the players attention to something else entirely. It's kinda the "look at my right hand so you're never aware of what my left hand is doing" effect. So for example what you can do in this case is, make an area in the game where a player has to get from one rooftop to another by walking across a rope or something. Force the player to have to balance themselves by pushing their analog stick left when the player is leaning too far right and vice versa. Now you've occupied the players brain with a difficult task and anything else introduced in the midst of that challenge is more likely to surprise them. This is the perfect time to play very loud audio of someone screaming from the street below you, or maybe have a zombie leap onto the rope but then fall back off almost immediately ( you're just scaring the person, not introducing an actual battle against a zombie whilst also trying not to fall off the rope, that's kinda ridiculous ). It's like when you're playing League and Dota 2. When you're not in the middle of a trade or all-in with your opponent, it's very easy to keep track of the mini map and back away when you see a gank incoming. However, when you ARE fighting, those are the most opportune moments for a jungler to show up because the players in the lane are investing 100% of their attention into trying to outplay each other and are no longer looking at the mini map, meaning they will be much more unprepared or "surprised" when Shaco appears. BTW, if any of you here main Shaco, you're a cancerous individual and you should feel bad.
Looking for help on a RPG/MUD

http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=2167085
At the moment, I am trying to figure out a HUD concept that would be fit the theme of the game. This is what I came up with so far for the Inventory and Shop menus.

http://i.imgur.com/buxkPD0.png

http://i.imgur.com/UQAEmfG.png
Tsubasa10, for the inventory have you tried doing a Scroll or a Backpack or a Pouch?

For the HUD,I see ninja stars on the Top Left, what are those for? If not "important", you could use Stars or the Paper Bomb things instead of Headbands.

Your positioning of the Health, Chakra and other stuff on the Top Left could also hide an Important thing on the Map.
In response to Lummox JR
ah i see...my mistake. fore shadowing can set some unsettling moods though it depends on how it's done.
In response to 2DExtremeProductions
Thanks for the feedback. The ninja stars on the top states your rank, 5 being the highest. As for the headbands, I agree with you I totally hate them, that is why I am changing them from headbands with text, to something else with icons, like a handseal for the Jutsus button. Regarding the health, chakra on the top left, care to give a suggestion to improve them?
You're welcome!

For the bars, you could go a number of ways.

You could make them transparent.
You could put them one after the other from Left to Right, with space between them.
You could also make them smaller in Height, in comparison to other game assets.
You could leave open space between them if you wish to keep them aligned Vertically in combination with making them smaller in Height, so that it is less probable to cover other assets.

Or a combination of them all. That is, if you want to stick with using Bars like those. You could also make "tiny bars" around the Mobs. You could also go with numbers or even nothing, like instead, using a Visual Representation, like the mobs idle animation could change depending on his Health. You could also go for an extremely simple presentation but have a "Status Page" with a more detailed version.
(^8
How retarded would it look if every ninja had LEAF written on their headband other than a symbol representing their village/clan?

UI is about symbolic and spatial representation of information. Rule of thumb: If a pre-literate child can't figure out your UI by looking at it, you've failed.

Get rid of The Invite, Promote, Remove, and Announce menu buttons.

Convert the text on those menu buttons into icons that represent the activity.

Ditch the inventory titlebar completely. Iconify. Increase information density and reduce non-modal information that isn't relevant to what ALL players are going to use ALL the time.
The problem with using icons like that is you increase the confusion of the UI by a lot if you're not careful. A button labeled "Go To" is obvious what it does. A button with an arrow curving downward to the right to a horizontal line is not clear at all. A bunch of text buttons is ugly; a bunch of undecipherable glyphs is flat out unusable. Course that's a problem that comes up less and less as the player plays more, but it's a gigantic problem right off the bat. For all but the most frequently used, onscreen, innately obvious UI buttons, I would strongly suggest a textual label in addition to the graphic that explains what the button does in a single word. At the absolute least, this is a good use for tooltips. And remember that what's obvious to you is not obvious to the player.
Very good point you got there. The rank HUD is pretty useless. Thanks for the feedback.
In response to Ter13
Thanks for the feedback. As mentioned in my previous comment the headbands will be changed into symbolic icons. As for the "Invite,Promote,Remove and Announce" These are only given to the kages of each village. They are essential, maybe I will change how they are represented, however, removing them is not an option.
They are essential, maybe I will change how they are represented, however, removing them is not an option.

They should be included into modal menus and /commands, not always on screen.
In response to Ter13
Yea maybe that would be a better representation. I will play around with it to see the best possible way to show them. Thanks for the feedback.
In response to Tsubasa10
keep the design of the frame like how you did the inventory and health huds ...simple and clean.
Just a WIP of the design I am going with.

http://i.imgur.com/3BSl492.png
In response to Xyberman
Yea I agree. Will try to make it as simple as possible.
nice that really works out
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