X@COM

3 comments

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  Creepy
  August 5, 2011 at 9:13 AM

  I hope the some various sections will have a submenu for details. Reports especially; those symbols look downright arcane, and the uninitiated gonna need something to check.
  
  And I hope eventually that those alien weapons aren't ID'd until after researching, just for sadism's sake. No fair being able to pick out the bastard with the Blaster Bombs for emergency brain ventilation when you shouldn't know what a Blaster Bomb is yet. =B

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  Kyzrati
  August 5, 2011 at 9:06 PM

  Heh, identification of weapons will certainly require research--everything from the original. The idea of the mockups was really just to see if I could fit all the essential information in a mere 19x60 area... It seems to fit okay, though I did have to resort to a simple type of code for the "reports" section. That was because it can present the greatest amount of information in a small area. There actually aren't many symbols to learn, since it will only list the most important types of actions, and the symbols you see there will actually match what you see in the game/map. For example, rifle type items are represented by '[', and differentiated by color. So you see a 'B' for 'burst' fire and a color-coded '[' for the type of rifle. The game is ASCII, after all, so it's naturally going to require a little bit of learning, but it should be relatively simple to figure out and the player will be eased into it since you gain the tech progressively. The "reports" are mostly supplementary anyway, since you see all the action played out. I think player's will figure out what everything means pretty quickly, but I'll add simple explanations/tutorial info as necessary, and parts of the HUD could theoretically be expandable (haven't actually decided how to implement the internal window system yet, though).
  
  I was originally going to use the standard "message window" approach, but I don't seem to have enough room for a few full horizontal sentences, since the view is 80x60, and the map is up to 60x60... I could cover the map partially/temporarily, but I think that might get annoying. Unless someone else has got a better idea...
  
  Still not working on the interface yet, anyway; for now doing battlescape mechanics. (Currently nearing completion on gravity and terrain destruction, fyi.)

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  Kyzrati
  August 5, 2011 at 9:26 PM

  I was just thinking on this, and seeing as how the HUD will be interactive, a simple mouseover of a report line could show its full meaning, and of course a separate message window could be brought up over the map showing all the full sentences. Either way, I don't think anyone would really need to make use of such a feature after playing for a bit.