Welcome Pioneer to the eleventh episode of our blog series from now on and for all eternity called Weekly Apart. Yes, the community of our Discord server has spoken and honestly the name has grown on us since last week. Today's post is all about the creation and refinement of our user interface. While far from being completed we're fully aware that a UI can really make or break a colony/building sim - and by delivering an intuitive and clean experience we're making sure the former is the case for Dawn Apart.
Before we dive into the nitty gritty of hotkeys, buttons, and submenus, we would like to once more encourage you to follow us on the social media channel(s) of your choice. There is really cool stuff to discover from trade commercials for in-game machines to videos of stuff getting blown to smithereens and even more goofy content like Pioneer Luke getting hit by a floor tile (help us turn this into a meme!). Seriously, make sure to like any video, say hi or ask questions in the comments, we'll make sure to respond to everyone.)
6 Principles of a good UI
While we're not exactly veterans when it comes to game development, we're lucky to have extensive knowledge and experience in conceptualizing and designing sharp and snappy UIs. In fact, our developer in charge has come up with his own set of principles when it comes to creating great UIs, namely Feeling, Looks, Understanding, Fastness, Forgiveness and Iteration (or FLUFFI according to an online acronym generator:))
So let's go through each principle: First and foremost, the UI has to feel right. This includes clicking and hovering sounds but also intuitive controls that are clear from the get go. Here, reinventing the wheel is certainly not our goal. Being fans of base building games ourselves, we of course respect and adapt certain established practices. Secondly, it has to obviously look great. That’s why, while we are creating the UI wireframes in house, once we have it fine-tuned, we'll most likely hand it over to an established graphics artist to reskin it. Then there is the motto of "seeing is understanding": Everything you see must immediately make sense and intuitively lead you to your intended goal - fast, which is the fourth pillar. Finally, you have to iterate until all those elements fall into one cohesive place.
Everything at a glance
So how is this philosophy applied to Dawn Apart? While there is not enough space here for a deep dive, let's focus on the five key areas that will fill the edges of the screen as illustrated by a screenshot of WIP fireframe above. In the upper left corner an event list will keep you up to date. Think of it as a news hub that informs you about the next estimated landing time of the dropship, new available upgrades for your research tree or developments in your colony like employee of the month awards or unfortunate lethal workplace accidents. On the upper middle section of the edge of the screen is arguably the most important UI element gameplay-wise, namely the Lucrum meter, which determines your sphere of influence granted by the precious resource and an energy counter which measures your current consumption of electricity.
On the upper right corner, no surprises here, are buttons to pause or speed up the game. The main controls will be located on the lower left edge of the screen, namely construction, terraforming, bulldozing and a level view navigation that enables you to switch between different heights when building vertically. Finally, the lower right side of screen gives you a closer look at the stats of individual pioneers (among other things their health, their loadout, their loyalty to the almighty Kobayashi-Schwarz Corporation and the next time they have to go to the can) as well as machines (tier level, energy consumption, crafting recipes).
While we are still tweaking the UI and making constant changes please be assured there definitely won't be any Clippy-like mascot offering help and annoying the crap out of you:). We can’t wait to share the final result, but to make sure that the UI ultimately adheres to the principles mentioned above, we need beta testers. If you are interested in checking out early builds and putting our UI really to the test, make sure to join our Discord server (calls for testers will be put out soon). And if you have recommendations for best (or worst)-case examples or general thoughts about UIs in base building games, let us know in the comments. Until then see you next week!