[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] UI for netbooks challenge

[matthew.owen at barclays.com]

On 25 February 2009, Zach Collins (Siege) wrote:

> So here's a challenge for you, the reader: take an existing game's UI,
briefly explain 
> the interface for those of us who don't work on or play that game, and then
explain what 
> you would change to allow a netbook user to play more easily, presuming
that they don't 
> have another computer to use for gaming and are reluctant to add hardware
to their machine.

>... keep your interface to no more than 600px high (and resolution changes
aren't available), 
> and keep in mind the limitations of a touchpad and "missing" cursor keys.

I'm going to jump in here with World of Warcraft. It's so well known, that
I'm sure everyone will already be familiar with the UI, but I'll cover it
anyway. The reason I'm doing WoW, is that it's the only MMO I really play - I
always prefered text based muds (to the extent I authored my own server -
it's on my website if anyone cares), but as we all know, trying to keep text
based muds going is a hiding to nothing; that ship has sailed, and is docked
in a far off land already.

Anyway, for those that don't know, WoW has a very ornate interface.
Everything is surrounded by themed 'edging'. Dialog boxes have an
'old-fashioned' feel to them, and look like they've been built out wood, with
irregular edges and borders, and text is in a fancy font, I don't know the
name but it's really hard to read at times, in cream on dark brown - not an
ideal colour scheme. Along the bottom of the screen is is a row of 'boxes',
10 or so on the left, these are your icon holders for your various abilities,
then in the middle another set of 8 or so icons, which give you one click
access to your charactors various traits and also system options, and then
finally on the right 5 boxes which are your 'bags' for your carried items, or
your 'inventory' as we oldies like to call it. Above this row of boxes is a
long blue (or purple) bar, that charts your XP as it increases during each
level. If your screen resolution is high enough, then all this is flanked by
two silver lions, or griffins or dragons (I'm not sure, tbh). These are
totally pointless, but look pretty enough I guess. Above this is the chat
window which shows ALL in-world comms. Top left of the screen is your
'portrait' which shows what you look like and your personal health/Spirit
type bars, if you are in a group or have a pet, then below your portrait is
small portraits of your group members or pet. On the top right of the screen
is a small map that auto updates as you move around and overlays things of
interest. That's the basics of the screen layout. Once you settle into the
game you tend to activate the additional toolbars around the screen (there
are 4 of them of about 12 icons slots each). AS you can probably see from the
above, once you turn everything on, even on a 1280x1024 'standard' desktop
resultion, your screen soon becomes cramped. Blizzard helpfully add a 'UI
Scale' option to shrink/enalarge everything, but I've found shrinking just
makes everything illegible. I'm not going to go into the 3rd party UI add-ons
that exist, because I think those are beyond your 'average' player.

Right - my take on the ultimate UI... Well it's already been done in the
Elder Scrolls games - Morrowind and Oblivion. Bethesda have come really close
with these games. For those that don't know, both games have a clean-screen
design - There is no real estate on the screen at any time, unless you need
it. This enables the player to become totally immersed in the game, all they
can see is the world around them (although if memory serves me correctly,
both games are first person, which can be problematic on a sometimes-laggy
MMO). Once you want to interact with an item, the mouse cursor changes, and
you click on that item, then (and only then) should an action menu appear
alongside the cursor - this menu should be context sensitive and only show
options that are do-able. Items with only one action should perform that
action automatically, with a floating text information line i.e. 'door
opens...' 

SO what I'm saying is - on screen, I do not see the need for items to be
displayed at all times. Everything should be contextual, and only appear on
demand, as close to the cursor as possible to minimize 'touchpad skating'. 

Keyboard wise, all keys should be configurable. Unless you are actively
inside the chat window, main alpha keys should perform one-key functions,
none of this Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Stand-on-one-leg modifiers. If you want to avoid
excessive touchpad use, something like the tab key should select every object
in view in turn, with maybe Enter to simulate left-click. Usual
Up/Down/Left/Right (or WSAD) can be used for player navigation.

Finally macros should be de-mystified - most casual players don't use them
are they are too scary to setup. I don't know about other MMOs but WoWs macro
system relies on the players knowledge of knowing all the slash commands (ie.
/cast ) - the player should be able to record a macro in the same way as you
can in Microsoft Office - not perfect - but way better than what is currently
implemented.

This was a bit of a brain dump, so apologies if it doesn't read that well.

-Matt Owen (Jaruzel)



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