I set to work making a simple interactive version of my login section so the user could actually try starting the game and choosing a character instead of just watching the video show how.
I havent done too much interactive as my flash skills are not as good as they could be but what i have done works how i expected. The user can start the game or quit to the desktop (i havent made create character or delete character clickable as i never got any footage of these sections recorded and it would have been far too hard to make interactive)
Once the user starts the game they can switch between the 2 available characters and login using either (however it will only login as the same one due to recorded footage) they are also able to go back at any section to the start screen.
As i said its not huge amounts of interactivity but it does demonstrate a whole section.
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Some Feedback Recieved! (USER TESTING)
Its been a while as i had other work to get through and although i recieved my feedback over a week ago i havent had time to update the blog till now, so here we go!
As my target audience was MMO players i had shown a few MMO players (particularly WoW ones) my swf file last week.
In terms of feedback its just some comments i recieved over msn with people telling what they thought was good and bad or where it could have been improved. Everybody i asked to view it all commented on the chat log options that i had incorporated they agreed they liked the fact you could bring up a small menu and change font/font size and the colour as this would be easier in certain situations (for example green text in a forest place would need a contrasting colour in between). My video is maybe not the best example of what you could do with it due to my flash limitations but my video shows the basic idea of what i was trying to achieve and this seemed to be successful.
I was informed that the character status sheet looks a little like the World of Warcraft one, this is actually exactly what i was hoping for. I didnt want to just copy the warcraft one (same color/skin/fonts) but i wanted it to mimic the Warcraft one but in a FF theme so the layout is roughly the same (obviously there are differences in games so not everything can be same) while keeping in theme with the rest of the UI so i take this comment as a compliment. As its the same as the WoW one the person who plays this game immediatly picked up where everything was and what it all meant and would have no problems carrying out simple tasks within game such as changing equipment even though having never played the game before. Also i did choose someone who had never played WoW before and they seemed to understand what everything meant on screen and it was all clear to read and easy to figure out.
This section alone tells me ive achieved what i initially stated in my proposal, I wanted the UI to be easy to pick up for new players with nothing to confuse them, while veterans would be able to jump straight in and adapt to the different game without anything drastically new to learn.
I did have to explain a few things to the people i asked as most of them had never even seen FFXI before so they wasnt sure how much id changed it. The one who had played it before and had quit after a few minutes due to not being able to find anything in the UI and having difficulties with controls commented on how much the battle section in my demonstration was improved. They could understand much easier now that they only had to drag whatever skill they wanted into whatever bar they want and then clicking that hotkey would activate the skill instead of fiddling with macros. I told them if they UI was real they would be able to change each action slot to whatever key they wanted within the options and they was pleased to hear this as not everyone wants to use shift+number keys or ctrl+number keys.
I didnt really recieve anything else worth typing here as i belive my video makes the UI easy to understand so there wasnt much feedback recieved about the overall finished piece and just simple comments such as thats good or that makes sense.
I told them it wasnt totally finished and that i will be making an interactive version of the login system so when thats finished and incorporated ill let a few of them try that.
As my target audience was MMO players i had shown a few MMO players (particularly WoW ones) my swf file last week.
In terms of feedback its just some comments i recieved over msn with people telling what they thought was good and bad or where it could have been improved. Everybody i asked to view it all commented on the chat log options that i had incorporated they agreed they liked the fact you could bring up a small menu and change font/font size and the colour as this would be easier in certain situations (for example green text in a forest place would need a contrasting colour in between). My video is maybe not the best example of what you could do with it due to my flash limitations but my video shows the basic idea of what i was trying to achieve and this seemed to be successful.
I was informed that the character status sheet looks a little like the World of Warcraft one, this is actually exactly what i was hoping for. I didnt want to just copy the warcraft one (same color/skin/fonts) but i wanted it to mimic the Warcraft one but in a FF theme so the layout is roughly the same (obviously there are differences in games so not everything can be same) while keeping in theme with the rest of the UI so i take this comment as a compliment. As its the same as the WoW one the person who plays this game immediatly picked up where everything was and what it all meant and would have no problems carrying out simple tasks within game such as changing equipment even though having never played the game before. Also i did choose someone who had never played WoW before and they seemed to understand what everything meant on screen and it was all clear to read and easy to figure out.
This section alone tells me ive achieved what i initially stated in my proposal, I wanted the UI to be easy to pick up for new players with nothing to confuse them, while veterans would be able to jump straight in and adapt to the different game without anything drastically new to learn.
I did have to explain a few things to the people i asked as most of them had never even seen FFXI before so they wasnt sure how much id changed it. The one who had played it before and had quit after a few minutes due to not being able to find anything in the UI and having difficulties with controls commented on how much the battle section in my demonstration was improved. They could understand much easier now that they only had to drag whatever skill they wanted into whatever bar they want and then clicking that hotkey would activate the skill instead of fiddling with macros. I told them if they UI was real they would be able to change each action slot to whatever key they wanted within the options and they was pleased to hear this as not everyone wants to use shift+number keys or ctrl+number keys.
I didnt really recieve anything else worth typing here as i belive my video makes the UI easy to understand so there wasnt much feedback recieved about the overall finished piece and just simple comments such as thats good or that makes sense.
I told them it wasnt totally finished and that i will be making an interactive version of the login system so when thats finished and incorporated ill let a few of them try that.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Awaiting some Feedback. Paperwork begins!
Havent changed the flash too much, just a couple of tweaks. I still need to make something interactive which is undecided as of yet, ive shown the movie to a couple of people for user testing and ill wait till i get all the responses before i post any feedback.
I've made a start of putting the document together, ive made a lot of notes that needs structuring and ive taken photos of the sketches i made.
Nothing else to report as of yet
I've made a start of putting the document together, ive made a lot of notes that needs structuring and ive taken photos of the sketches i made.
Nothing else to report as of yet
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Back on Track
Everythings remade in 1024x768 and ive had a very busy week syncing it all together, im currently sat at a 5 minute .swf which ive got down to 9.9mb ( i initially had a 10mb limit goal in my mind)
My old 800x600 which was only half the length was already around 15-16mb because i had a video playing in the background even though there was no in game movement needed it was just showing each new menu i had designed. So this was all changed to only have a screenshot as the background and video when needed.
my .swf is "finished" in terms of content i was intending to incorporate but theres still a lot of tweaking to do, some text doesnt look right and some of the graphics may be resized here and there but this will just be a case of updating files in the library.
i will finish these tweaks over the next week or so and get back to the paperwork side as ive neglected that for quite a while and i need to get further into that before we get to user testing, i also need to remake something at the start of my movie into something interactive but again this will be at a later date and i shall update the blog when anything happens.
My old 800x600 which was only half the length was already around 15-16mb because i had a video playing in the background even though there was no in game movement needed it was just showing each new menu i had designed. So this was all changed to only have a screenshot as the background and video when needed.
my .swf is "finished" in terms of content i was intending to incorporate but theres still a lot of tweaking to do, some text doesnt look right and some of the graphics may be resized here and there but this will just be a case of updating files in the library.
i will finish these tweaks over the next week or so and get back to the paperwork side as ive neglected that for quite a while and i need to get further into that before we get to user testing, i also need to remake something at the start of my movie into something interactive but again this will be at a later date and i shall update the blog when anything happens.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Resolution Woes
So i make a good amount of graphics in Photoshop, and have sycned together about 3min worth of video into a swf.
i sit back and realise that the ui is rather cluttered but if i make them any smaller the text will be hard to read so i decide 800x600 is probably a bad choice as no one would really play an MMO in this day and age.
I scrap the whole thing and start it again in 1024x768 which is much more accurate to todays minimum standard screen size, i will probably have to re-encode the videos and audio to a lower quality as i dont want to have a 20-30mb swf file. It also means i get to remake all my graphics in photoshop again...meh!
i sit back and realise that the ui is rather cluttered but if i make them any smaller the text will be hard to read so i decide 800x600 is probably a bad choice as no one would really play an MMO in this day and age.
I scrap the whole thing and start it again in 1024x768 which is much more accurate to todays minimum standard screen size, i will probably have to re-encode the videos and audio to a lower quality as i dont want to have a 20-30mb swf file. It also means i get to remake all my graphics in photoshop again...meh!
Monday, 27 October 2008
Joys of Photoshop
So ive got a few minutes of edited footage which i plan to overlay a custom made UI in flash.
After doing some mock ups with simple shapes to get a rough outline of the placement of things i set to work making some graphics in photoshop as i could achieve a lot more than with the tools in flash (this does however leave me with the problem that they are not vectors and any resizing will make them look totally rubbish, but im going to have to stick with this as im not able to achieve my ideas in flash)
im starting to realise making simple boxes in photoshop is a lot more time consuming than i first realised.
After doing some mock ups with simple shapes to get a rough outline of the placement of things i set to work making some graphics in photoshop as i could achieve a lot more than with the tools in flash (this does however leave me with the problem that they are not vectors and any resizing will make them look totally rubbish, but im going to have to stick with this as im not able to achieve my ideas in flash)
im starting to realise making simple boxes in photoshop is a lot more time consuming than i first realised.
Friday, 24 October 2008
Progress begins!
Ive got a few more ideas drawn out on paper and ive started to put together the design document however at the moment its still quite a wall of text and in no real order with just a few comparison screenshots
ive got a rough idea in my head how my movie will be (ive opted for a movie with it stopping at certain frames to explain whats going on, because doing something interactive with an online game would be too hard due to not being able to pause or have any control of other people in the game. I will probably add something interactive later on if it will increase my marks but for now i just want the bulk of the .swf starting on.) So with this in mind ive been able to fraps some material and edit them in Premiere Pro (reducing the load time and removing parts where the ui wasnt able to be hidden)
ill report back when i start making some graphics!
ive got a rough idea in my head how my movie will be (ive opted for a movie with it stopping at certain frames to explain whats going on, because doing something interactive with an online game would be too hard due to not being able to pause or have any control of other people in the game. I will probably add something interactive later on if it will increase my marks but for now i just want the bulk of the .swf starting on.) So with this in mind ive been able to fraps some material and edit them in Premiere Pro (reducing the load time and removing parts where the ui wasnt able to be hidden)
ill report back when i start making some graphics!
Monday, 20 October 2008
Ideas for the Brief
so we got our brief outline, and we have to redesign a ui for a current game out there in the market or make a ui for our own game.
I've decided to work on FFXI as ive played a lot of mmo's and i feel due to this experience i have an idea of what mmo players would like (ofcourse i cant please everyone but i dont think its a bad thing to make it more user friendly) .
I felt FFXI would be a good game to work on as the UI in this game is all based around being quite hidden and macro dependant, once the player gets used to this im sure it works well, but im trying to make it appeal more to newer players who need more visual feedback.
all ive got done at the moment is a few general ideas and some sketches drawn out on a paper so nothing much else to report about at the moment
I've decided to work on FFXI as ive played a lot of mmo's and i feel due to this experience i have an idea of what mmo players would like (ofcourse i cant please everyone but i dont think its a bad thing to make it more user friendly) .
I felt FFXI would be a good game to work on as the UI in this game is all based around being quite hidden and macro dependant, once the player gets used to this im sure it works well, but im trying to make it appeal more to newer players who need more visual feedback.
all ive got done at the moment is a few general ideas and some sketches drawn out on a paper so nothing much else to report about at the moment
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Designing for the User
Our next project is called Designing for the User, due to being on a Games design course our brief will have us looking at various Game interfaces (GUI's) and deciding what makes a good or bad one.
We each have to do a presentation on this, an example of a good UI and a bad UI as well as an everyday household object that we find awkward or badly designed. For the good UI i've decided on UT2004, easy to read everything where you expect it, simple and it just works in my opinion.
The bad (or well confusing/hard to get used to) UI i have picked is FFXI (an online MMORPG)
As for the household item..well..it had to be a mac mouse! which i could rant about here for hours but best not.
We each have to do a presentation on this, an example of a good UI and a bad UI as well as an everyday household object that we find awkward or badly designed. For the good UI i've decided on UT2004, easy to read everything where you expect it, simple and it just works in my opinion.
The bad (or well confusing/hard to get used to) UI i have picked is FFXI (an online MMORPG)
As for the household item..well..it had to be a mac mouse! which i could rant about here for hours but best not.
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