Alright, the UI is a bit of a pet peeve of mine in game design. And any game designer who has half a brain would probably have an issue with it too. I mean let's face it, not all of us are big fans of Blizzard, and tend to be hypercritical of them (I think far too critical, most times), but at least their UI is fairly clean. It's easy to see what's going on at all times and figure out what to do.

Even without those unneeded and mildly frustrating tutorials (use the attack button to attack!), the UI is pretty much self-explanatory to anyone who passed kindergarten. At the very least, a few minutes of playing around should be more than enough to have most of it figured out. And this is what we have: a good UI.

Now people who design custom maps have most of their work cut out for them, as they did in sc1. The UI is right there, no special meddling required and it works just fine. But having spent some time on sc2 b.net, I now understand that UIs need to be difficult to implement, so that people who don't know what they're doing won't screw it up and we won't have crap like this at the top of the ratings:



And I know this isn't a UI. But for goodness sake people, were you high when you designed this? Friends don't let friends photoshop when they're dropping acid. Please. You make artists weep. This -- with a very professional and well done logo. WHAT THE CRAP. Anyone who looks at this should jab that cancel button right away (which is finicky anyway) and not look back.

For the good of you grand people, I pressed further into this "magical" game which the top reviewer claimed, "This game is the best thing to happen since penis."

Well Mr. MeoW, I think your ability to judge a game is about as good as your ability to use sentences. But okay, what makes this game so great. I had a look:



I have no bloody idea what's going on in this picture. What are all of these buttons and gizmos? WTF do I fucking do. Well this screams bad level design, I'm forced to return to the topic of the UI. Would anyone playing this game for the first time have any idea what's going on? No, I don't even know what the units are doing because instead of having an explanation of what the unit is, I'm left with a dumb acronym and a bunch of D- rate garbage filler of some teenager trying to be funny.

And keep in mind. This is THE top rated game and has been top rated for some number of weeks, perhaps months. There is no excuse for this trash. I am mad, because this person is clearly not trying to design a game, they're trying to encourage game designers to lobotomize themselves.

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I mean at this point, I know there's a review section, but it's too poorly done. Which isn't your fault Blizzard, but there does need to be a system where more quality reviews can be read and rate things better. When the top reviews are snappy one-liners without any real critique or substance, that's not a reviewing system, that's a /b/ circle jerk.

Thanks.

Do you think the UI in Temple Siege 2 is good? I feel like its a bit better than this xD

TS2 has an okay UI design, at best.

You would have to try to get a worse UI than the above.

Good answer.

The new changes I'm making to TS2's UI will make it a lot better for people who have no idea what's going on. It's a weird fine line where we want it to be minimalistic so there isn't random crap in the way and yet things can't be too small/hidden for people who don't know certain things exist.

Sacrieur, I laughed out loud. Nice post there.

The point of minimalism is to make things simpler, not necessarily out and out of the way.

For TS I recommend switching the command card and information panel. Command card should have a more appealing interface with an obvious spell tree in the center, placing unit upgrades along with available research upgrades in the same area. on the left and mana/hp upgrades on the right. Also eliminate the need for research buildings at all.

Keep the information panel on the right side which can offer stats about a current player.

Quote from Sacrieur

For TS I recommend switching the command card and information panel. Command card should have a more appealing interface with an obvious spell tree in the center, placing unit upgrades along with available research upgrades in the same area. on the left and mana/hp upgrades on the right.

- we have 15 buttons available, first 5 of those are used by the default commands
- 15th button is hardcoded to be the cancel button for targetting modes
- hotkeys other than default have their static position and should be maintained (like QWERT for default commands)
- changing button positions/size per selected unit might be possible, but would add noticable delay of approx 250ms in real time. Might not work, with multiple units selected because we might not know which unit type has the current focus on via TAB.
- we have units like the probe that do not make use of a tree.