Kickin' it into High Gear

We're all very aware that we're rushing headfirst toward our deadline. Why can't time just go slower for the next couple of months? Two months is not a lot of time to get from where we are to where we want to be. But we expected this.

This Sunday was a lot of discussion. I met with the artists and let them know that we are going to have harder deadlines so we can really start to churn out assets. We also talked about methods and technical issues like modularity* and particle effects**. 

I got started on some menu concepts. I feel like menu artists and menu art are probably the least appreciated of game artists (maybe technical artists are). Even I admit that menus aren't really something you really think about until you try making one. Menus are the part of the game that are totally necessary, but aren't the game, so they're extremely overlooked.

Well I'll tell you now, menu/UI creation is hard! 

These are the bare bones concepts I've done.

The Player Customization screen, where players can customize what their ice character and fire character will look like in-game. They can also put in their username and number.

The lobby screen. Multiplayer games usually have lobbies where all players join up before the game starts. Here, the host picks the map (time limit, and number of players). Players can also see each other and talk to each other. And yes, that is a map of Middle Earth.

A lot of this was also just discussion between Alex, Chris and I about the information that needs to be provided and a lot of technical things. It's my job, basically to structure and decorate the information in such a way that makes it intuitive to the player and easy to look at (if not fun to look at).

These are some new in-game UI concepts I did just for the hell of it. I remembered getting some complaints about the current one from someone, although I can't remember who. The only thing I would change about the current one is adding in a timer, an indicator that tells the player what half the game is in, and some polish. But I did these anyway just to see what would happen.

The left one is an asymmetrical idea that reflects the architecture of the two different mage groups. The banners are inspired by environmental elements we're working on. The right one is basically what we have now, only the timer is integrated through banners that hang down. If the left banner is hanging down, it means the game is in the first half. If the right one is down, the game is in the second half. I expected players might get confused by this, but also argued that if someone brand new to football saw football on TV one day they'd have no clue what was happening. (Funfact: I'm 21 and just learned how football works this past Superbowl...)

The team liked the left one more, and also suggested that we don't need an indicator to tell players what half the game is in. I disagree for a couple reasons. 1.) I feel like all games state the obvious for one reason or another. Fighting games tell players what round their in and how many wins each player has. This is not to mention sports games, which always have an indicator of what quarter/period/half the game is in. 2.) Players just joining the game wouldn't know unless they had an indicator, asked, or just waited out the timer to see if the game went into half-time or ended.

The left one also takes up too much space. Here's what I notice when I look at game UI: UI artists make a point to save screen space. Sure, UI looks good, but it's almost always just sleek and to the point. We've looked at Team Fortress 2 before, but let's look again.

Notice how the UI is pretty much just rectangles and information? I looked at a few games, and all of them had simple shapes and numbers (pretty much). I'm all for cool-looking, fancy schmancy 2D art, but this is not the place to do that. UI is for feeding players information at a quick glance. I saved as much space as I could with the UI last semester, but I still feel like it takes up too much space. Not only that, but I have to add more information to it. I think this is where we need to sacrifice nice drawings for, well, rectangles.

This takes a lot of finagling, but you can count on me to figure it out! 

Until next time. 

P.S. We totally passed greenlight and celebrated at Longhorn Steakhouse.

* Modularity - a technique game artists use that allows assets to be reused and "fit" together. Good example of a modular set for a church: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/medieval-church-modular-set-3d-ma/639363

** Particle Effects - game engines can create these animations for many different uses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_effect