To put all posts in a nutshell:
The GUI of a RPG should be simple to access, easy to handle, nice to look, but very informative...sounds easy, huh
?
Landfish was right. Every non-rectangular shape has a certain attraction...it looks better, don't know why. But if you make a "rounder" menu, you should be aware not to waste too much space of the screen for the shape!
Just try to find an intermediate way between efficient menu and nice-looking menu
...
How to do the easy handling? Well, you'll know what actionpoints are, i guess
...
Try to imagine an actionpoint-system behind the menu(s).
Very important actions should be accessible through 2 actionpoints, less important actions should be accessible through 3 actionpoints. Take a mouse drag, a mouse click, a mouse double-click or a keyboard input as one actionpoint...
How to make it informative? Well, that's your turn
...
That depends on the RPG you would like to make. In a Diable-Style hack&slash game you won't need stats like "Charisma" and so on...but in an Ultima-Style game "Charisma" is necessary...
As to the handling of food/mana/healingflasks and so on:
I aestimate you allow a whole party to walk around, not only one single character...I won't make the use of healingflasks automatical...I would rather insert a button into the status bar for example that says "Heal (selected) wounded party members" (put it into a self-describing sprite
), and next to the item should be a number indicating the available healing resources and the needed ones. Did you get the idea?
Then you can implement another item saying "Restore Mana" and so on...
Only to make sure I explained it very well, I'll describe a "sample scene" now
...:
After a fight, three of your comrades are heavily wounded. You want to heal them, but you don't find the healing flasks in the inventory. You don't want to search for them, so you simply select 2 of the members (because the item says you have only 2 flasks left) you want to heal and press the item on the bottom of the screen -e voilà- the selected members are healed and the two flasks are spent!
You have two mages in your party and you want to restore their mana level. So if you don't select one, the routine behind the "Restore Mana" item should auto-select all mages/wizards and other classes using mana and should restore their level using the resources available.
So, I know that's pretty much, but I hope you can use that anyways
Yours,
Indeterminatus
--consuetudo est quasi altera natura hominum...
Edited by - Indeterminatus on June 27, 2000 11:24:30 AM
