Scout Mode

As I mentioned in an earlier post we created a new game mode called Scout where the player views through a camera and has a directional microphone. The first thing to notice the HUD is designed to match what the player would see while looking through the viewfinder on high end digital camera. The squares and circle have no bearing in our game, but are there to simply match what would be seen through a real camera's viewfinder.

Scout HUD

Making Comic Book UIs

One of my jobs on this project is as UI design which has been challenging because of the comic book look of the game. All of the Menus and HUDs have to look like something a reader might find in a comic book. As such I have to find some reference material on panel layout, lettering and art styles. If anyone is interested in any of these topics here are a few places to look at.

• A must read for comics would be Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
• A great reference for lettering traditions is Comic Book Grammar and Tradition.
• A very helpful adobe illustrator tutorial for comic book lettering by Jim Campbell, https://files.me.com/jim.campbell/qqt5ck.

Sniper Map

One of the new features that came out of the redesign of the missions is that there are now more sniper nests than snipers. This means that the player will be able to reposition the snipers around the mission area. So we had to come up with a system to allow the player to control the position of the snipers and luckily one of the games we looked at during the research phase of the game had such a system. It had stuck with me as it seemed to be a simple solution that added a new menu page and keep the controls simple.

The Strangers

Game Modes / HUDs

This past week we established two play modes for our game, Shooter and Scout. The Shooter mode is the original mechanic of the game where the player uses a rifle and a scope to locate their target and kill them for lethal conclusions. Below is the first version of the HUD for this game mode. In the center is what the sniper sees looking through the scope of their rifle. Around the scope the player can see their current setting for the scope's magnification, elevation adjustment, windage adjustment and a compass to show where they are facing. Then in each corner of the screen there is a designated area for each of the snipers (Alpha, Foxtrot and Whiskey) and the police detective (Delta) to talk.

Shooter Mode

The new game mode is Scout where the player uses a directional mic attached to a high power camera. The player will use the mic as another method of locating their target and the camera to gather evidence for non-lethal conclusions. In this mode dialogue picked up by the mic is displayed in radio bubbles around in the blacked area of the HUD. Due to how the dialogue is displayed, we removed everything but the compass form the Shooter mode HUD.

Scout Mode

Weird circle issuses

During the process of designing the HUD for the game we discovered an interesting optical illusion. Our first version of the scope reticule was made of a cross with three circles. The circles were placed to help the player to be able to judge distance of objects that did not line up with the mil dot cross. When we placed this into the game and looked at the world we discovered that our circles did not look like circles. This is a similar illusion to Hering Illusion where lines appear to bend when lines cross them. The following image illustrates what we saw and if you look in the areas between the crosses you can see where the lines seem to bend.

First Version

After discovering this we had to sit down and redesign how we could give the player the same capability without having any optical illusions. In the process we also discovered that circles were displaying the wrong information with circles. This lead to the new design with corner lines showing the mil dots in 4 unit increments. This broke up with circles and let the player properly measure mil dots in the reigns away from the cross. The following image illustrates how we fixed the optical illusion with using square corner pieces.

Current Version

Main Menu Design: part 1

A game's main menu is the first aspect of a game that a player will see and as such it is important that the design of the menus is well thought out. Most importantly this means that the navigation can easily be mastered by the target audience. However just because this is the most important does not mean that all one has to do is navigation and just throw the rest together at the last minute. As these menus will be the first aspects of the game the player sees it is important that they reflect the game’s look and feel. This way the player never loses their immersion in the game whenever they are not playing the game. Heavy Rain’s main menu is a great example of how the menu system can reflect the game’s look and feel. The scene matches the games dark and gritty tone as well as the photorealistic look. Just from this one scene the player can get a feeling of what type of game they are about to play and what they have been playing. With all of this in mind I set up to design the menu system for Remote Shepherd.

Heavy Rain's Main Menu

I decided to start the design with the background for the menus. I first looked at Heavy Rain because our game has the same dark gritty tones and is set in a rundown city. I liked the idea of using a live scene set in the game but I decided this did not match the comic book narrative style of the game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum's Main Menu

Next I took a look at Batman: Arkham Asylum because it both matched the tone of our game and is based on a comic book. I liked the use of batman in iconic poses set on a rooftop but this conflicted with our plan for the player.

After that I looked at Halo Reach because it used an animated comic book art style for its backgrounds. This fit perfectly with where we were heading for our cut scenes and I really liked the effect. Another thing I noticed and liked about these backgrounds is that they changed from menu to menu. This is something that we could use to reflect the change of perspective that happens in our game.