I am just wondering what everyone's opinions is on gaming interfaces. I am mostly trying to focus on Browser Games, but in general what are things that interest you as a player for an RPG?
So to keep everyone on the same guidelines, it is GUI for RPG's. If you would like to submit pictures with your thoughts please do. because I am trying to do a minor study to see what the local RPG gamers like in a interface.
These are a few things that i would like everyone to respectively add to their submissions of thought. Research purposes only
Personal Screen Resolution
Browser of Preference (Top 3)
Again thank you to everyone who helps contribute into this post. Your efforts will be well honored and possibly acknowledged.
I personally like colour or theme based interfaces that actually work with the game.
I don't like when they just place something for graphical appeal, give it some functionality. or a purpose.
Now for chat interfacing I like the 3 band chat. [Global|clan|Personal]
I also prefer Mini-Map to allow me to not get lost, I prefer item stacking to laid out items.
I prefer to "Eat"\"Drink" and not "Consume".
Animation or mouse over appeals.
now dice... It depends if the dice are being used or not.
Resolution is 1366x768 (odd, but my laptop doesn't support any greater resolutions).
The biggest issue with this is that it's wide but not very high. So, scrolling is almost certainly needed on most web pages with this resolution.
I'm also a FF user, other browsers are installed, but only used if FF for some reason is not supported (like those odd pages that REQUIRE IE).
For browser games UI:
- avoid standard URL links for navigation, use CSS/graphic to make buttons that fit your overall page design
- don't overload one page with too much buttons, functionality etc unless it's not possible to split into different pages (like a large form of some kind, but then again this should be possible to split into several pages as well!).
- spend time on, and test the UI on players, and collect feedback to make improvements (for the dev, everything makes sense, but that might not be true to someone new to the game, and it can frustrate a player so much that he leaves, happened to me before).
- be sure to add descriptions to every functionality! not knowing what something is/does is annoying, especially if it's something that "costs" some sort of resource or has limited attempts, so you can't just experiment with it (same here, it makes sense for the dev, not so much for the players)
but thanks guys. I will compile some prototypes, for everyone to gaze at and let me know of Feedback