ID:1324693
 
I really just can't decide, note that every (or none!) of the elements in this skin are liable to change, it is very much a work in progress and not a release yet.

White is meant to be a no-no, but it's the one I'm leaning most towards.
http://i.imgur.com/wNpg4wc.png

Off White looks too, boring just like old BYOND interface (I guess I could get closer to white than this but eh)
http://i.imgur.com/RC7hbx3.png

Grey... fits the style of Castle better but also looks boring
http://i.imgur.com/ObdHUZz.png


Anyone have any other suggestions?
I think you should use on-map GUI. Windows stuff looks way too boring. Even in 90s most games had better GUI than standard.
I thought about it and ultimately decided that there isn't enough window space to show four player's stats and the rest of the hud too, not without creating a huge blackspace on the right side of map.
I'm liking the first one the most, but you can experiment on the displaying and coloring of the statistics you display there.
Here's my edit:
http://i.imgur.com/Rq3CKnm.png

I think black looks better in this case. Those brighter colors are just too distracting compared to the map, since it has such dull colors. I'm glad to the interface improved from what it was though.
That looks pretty nice actually, I might make it off-black though, straight up black is scary.


I'm going to get a tablet and try mocking up some in-window HUDs, I'd love some design feedback when I finally get around to it.
It looks better of sorts, it merges with the map's black background color. Maybe you should change the blue's hue into a more neutral kind, the blue on the hud aswell, no?
Well there's a complete graphical rehaul in the works (That I'm certainly not going to provide screenshots of ;O) so I have to expect you to wing it a little bit.


Just, the design of the interface itself doesn't sit right with me. And I'm struggling to come up with better solutions, at least until I have access to said tablet.
What about, map on the left and output on the right, the interface for buying and commands in the middle (Kind of like it is right now just, without looking like shit, lol)

Then along the top left of the screen tabs showing each player's colour and name, upon MouseOver it shows a dropdown containing relevent information regarding them.

Your own relevant information could be in the middle also, I guess.


I dunno.


It's hard coming up with a design that gives you your own information consistently without needing to do anything, that doesn't look like shit, lol.

I guess the real problem is that there's too much information that needs to be displayed. Like currently you need to at any time know:
Time, Wave, Doorhealth, Difficulty, Gold, Score, Kills, Magic level, Trap level, Hunter level, Archery level and that info again for each player?

What can we strip out from that?

Kills isn't important, score is a far better system than that. So I can strip that out, and difficulty could probably be represented somewhat better somewhere, like a game-info button somewhere.

Do you really need to know your allies' levels? It's handy, for sure, at times. Score you need to know because it's used in the competitive gamemode. I guess score could be hidden unless it's competitive, that would make most sense since otherwise It's a useless stat. You certainly need to know their gold levels for accurately sharing money between players.

That leaves us with:
Door health, Wave, Wave time, Gold, Magic Level, Archery Level, Traps Level, Hunter Level and Score (Situationally) at all times, whilst your allies respective stats can be hidden until you want to view them.



To summerize: There's a shit load of stats that needs to be fed to the player, but I can certainly quarter the information you NEED to see at any given time currently.

As for scores, I'll more than likely make some kind of scoreboard on screen that can be brought up and minimized again.


I dunno I am ramble.
I am a BIG fan of representing things as graphically as possible. I've never, ever, EVER liked the "normal" statpanel interface of BYOND, and the instant I knew how to get away from it, my projects went to full-on, screen-object HUDs, plus the text output area to the right (skins came later, and I never really bothered to use them to their fullest extent to replace my screen object HUDs)

So if this were my game to design, I would represent everything possible (including all stats) in some sort of on-HUD graphic.

For instance, all of the ability levels could be represented by changing the graphics for the upgrade buttons (or adding a second screen object next to or beneath them), that will display the current level of that ability. "Upgrade Archery (Current: [archerylevel])"

And since the stats of other players aren't always important (and might only need to be checked in certain cases), you could just add a click functionality to the player's buttons that will output the value of that particular stat for everyone to the text area.

"Magic Levels:
Player 1 (You): 3
Player 2: 2
Player 3: 7"

Or, you could go with the drop-down creation. So when you MouseOver over your own stat upgrade button (or secondary object displayed near it), it shows everyone else's level for that stat.

And if the specific number value of certain stats is not really necessary (just an overall relative idea of how high you've leveled them), then I would go with bars instead of numbers.

Other things are especially simple. For instance, Difficulty could just be a single tile screen object that is changed to an icon_state that represents the current level of difficulty (a teddy bear or bunny for Easy, up to a flaming skull for Very Hard; obviously, these are just examples)

Basically, what I'm saying is that you can move everything that is currently displayed on the right of your layout (except for the text/chat output) into the middle section (or directly onto the map section itself; which would actually be my personal choice; even if you set up all of your screen objects to display outside of the map view itself, creating a border instead of covering parts of the view)

Edit: Another thing I would suggest is to center the map as much as possible. If your layout will have three sections (like it appears to now), then the map should be the middle one, the HUD should move to the left, and the text area on the right) My own games don't do this, but that's because I only have two main sections of real-estate (map, with all HUD on or surrounding it, and the text area). But if you've got and odd number of defined sections, the map probably should be the center one,
Yeah, I know I want to get away from interface elements too, but the problem is that with Castle, the screen is your play area, you need to be able to click almost every tile that you can see at any given time, within reason.


If it was as simple as just putting a hud element here or there, I would of gone straight for that solution, but it's not quite as simple as that. And outputting information into outputs, isn't awful, but it would be pretty spammy, and wouldn't help spectators particularly much, who DO need to be able to see all players stats at any given time, but also have the benefit of not needing to use the area for playing, so I guess I can fill spectators screens up quite a bit more.


As it stands there is one line of the map that 100% can be used, at that's the very top line, but I'm already using that for health bars (Although I could reduce the size of it somewhat to give some room), so my only other option is to extend the map outwards creating more blackspace for me to work in, but that feels ugly.
You could use only a map element, making it larger than your view size and use the extra black space for huds and such, even add backgrounds visuals around the map. That's what I've been doing for all my projects after RPG.