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Decline Modern game with absolutely worst UI

hexer

Guest
Any UI with transparency. Seriously that turdy trend isn't helpful, immersive nor cool. It looks cheap and distracting. It needs to die in flames.

Also any UI that is all over the place and is visible all the time.
A little bit in top left, then a minimap in top right, then there are parts of it at the bottom but they're disconnected, etc.
Just keep it in one place like in classic Fallouts.

And finally, there's the lazy habit of using sans-serif fonts in fantasy games.
It just looks out of place and lazy.

A good UI is part of the game, not something out of place.
Check out Nier Automata for a literal implementation.
Or it starts with the company logo just like in Fallout 1.
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Patron
Joined
Oct 20, 2015
Messages
1,261
Location
Uwotopia
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This channel has a series that analyzes good and great graphic/UI design in games.

 

hexer

Guest
Can you believe it, modern UIs are made by "UI designers".
Someone is actually specialized and paid to produce that shit and is proud enough to call it "functional design".
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,354
Location
Lusitânia
Very recent UI's I've not been fond of:

... Resident Evil 2 Remake

Why though?
It's clear, unintrusive, doesn't clog up the screen nor wastes space and it's higly funcional.

serveimage

serveimage

I think the drag and drop nonsense of Morrowind's UI is considerably worse.

The drag and drop nonsense is far more pratical and funtional.
 

curds

Magister
Joined
Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
How come? I always thought it worked just fine. It has decent filters and I can deal with it pretty fast using keyboard and mouse. It's only really the size of each item in it that I dislike. I think the drag and drop nonsense of Morrowind's UI is considerably worse.

I supposed you're right, it's mostly the size that bothers me. Although I find in general grids to be more helpful than lists. Also in Morrowind you can see your stats, inventory, spells and map all at once. In Oblivion you can't even see all your stats at the same time. One tab shows your name/race/level, another shows your attributes and another shows your skills. That's retarded.

I agree that the drag and drop inventory in Morrowind is annoying.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
The drag and drop nonsense is far more pratical and funtional.
I don't think so. For one, prefer seeing my item and the name next to it. Clicking on an item once to equip or drop it is in my eyes much more functional than having to click it, drag it out, use some tiny sliders to choose how much of it I want to drop and relocate to where the item previously was to continue your inventory management.
 

Necroscope

Arcane
Joined
Jul 21, 2012
Messages
1,985
Location
Polska
Codex 2014
Can you believe it, modern UIs are made by "UI designers".
Doesn't matter. A multipurpose UI is bound to be shit. It's impossible to design a UI optimized for both m+k and a gamepad.

Any UI with transparency. Seriously that turdy trend isn't helpful, immersive nor cool. It looks cheap and distracting. It needs to die in flames.
Are you kidding me? NWN had the best UI in history. It was a pleasure to use and you could still see what's going on when playing online.
R1PkwI8.jpg

As for the worst UI in modern games, I haven't played many of them, but obviously anything by Bethesda comes to mind.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
I wouldn't call it exactly modern, but Invisible War still haunts me.

78543-deus-ex-invisible-war-windows-screenshot-the-simplified-inventory.jpg

Deus-Ex-Invisible-War-small-670.jpg

First one which came to mind.


Old interview with Warren Spector...

UGO: Did developing for a console and the PC at the same time restrict what you could do in any way? Or, did it help the development process at all?

WS: It's kind of self-evident that supporting a single platform is always going to be easier than supporting multiple platforms, so I wouldn't say doing console and PC HELPED us, particularly. On the flip side, though, I don't think it hurt us. The team did an excellent job of defining the game experience we wanted to provide and then provided it, without regard to platform. Sure, the UI's different between the two versions, and there are some resolution differences, but other than that, the Xbox and PC versions of Invisible War are identical. I'm sure PC fans will ding us for being too "consolely" and Xbox fans will ding us for being too "PC-centric" (no pleasing everyone!). But at the end of the day, if people focus on the gameplay experience rather than the tweaky details, I'm confident players will be happy with the end result, regardless of their platform choice.
 

Alphons

Cipher
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
2,557
I wouldn't call it exactly modern, but Invisible War still haunts me.

78543-deus-ex-invisible-war-windows-screenshot-the-simplified-inventory.jpg

Deus-Ex-Invisible-War-small-670.jpg

First one which came to mind.


Old interview with Warren Spector...

UGO: Did developing for a console and the PC at the same time restrict what you could do in any way? Or, did it help the development process at all?

WS: It's kind of self-evident that supporting a single platform is always going to be easier than supporting multiple platforms, so I wouldn't say doing console and PC HELPED us, particularly. On the flip side, though, I don't think it hurt us. The team did an excellent job of defining the game experience we wanted to provide and then provided it, without regard to platform. Sure, the UI's different between the two versions, and there are some resolution differences, but other than that, the Xbox and PC versions of Invisible War are identical. I'm sure PC fans will ding us for being too "consolely" and Xbox fans will ding us for being too "PC-centric" (no pleasing everyone!). But at the end of the day, if people focus on the gameplay experience rather than the tweaky details, I'm confident players will be happy with the end result, regardless of their platform choice.

Problem with Invisible War UI- it's still fucking awful on consoles.

I also just remembered how awful dialogue was because of UI- characters complete their sentences but all letters still haven't appeared on screen so each sentence ends with an awkward pause.
The most hilarious example of it is Talk Bullet show.
Its host always cuts into his guest's sentence to ask an unexpected question that's supposed to break his guest's confidence and make a fool out of him- in the game guest stops mid-sentence for 5 seconds and then host chips in.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Skyrim. I can tolerate suboptimal UIs, but Skyrim isn't bad or even suboptimal, it is downright broken. Broken as in, i will hover my mouse over an option (be it inventory item or dialog option), it will highlight it, click the mouse button and *will activate something else*. For some unfathomable reason it has *two* "current item" variables, one that is updated via the keyboard and another via the mouse hovering, and most of the time it synchronizes between them so it looks like it works, however often they get desynchronized. Using the keyboard works more often than using the mouse, but in many cases you can only activate with the mouse! So to select something and be sure it will work i have to use the keyboard to select it, then wiggle the mouse around so that it hovers over something else and then over the item i want to select and then click it. And still, 1% of the time, *i will get it wrong*.

And here is the thing: this isn't a bug, it isn't something like mishandling keyboard input, someone actually wrote code to support two indices for the "currently active item" and didn't stop to think for one second that there might be something inherently wrong with that idea. It is intentionally broken and it is broken in both the original Skyrim and in the "Special Edition" that had several other engine upgrades (and downgrades too, see missing MSAA support). This isn't Bethesda being lazy or anything like that (which IMO is more often than not people misunderstanding what goes into making whatever they are criticizing), this takes *more effort* to do than doing it properly.

I play games for a very long time and i do not remember ever getting angry at the UI itself. For me that gets the "absolutely worst UI" description as it isn't completely unusable (i'm sure there are games like that) nor it is broken as an idea (it is very plain, sure, but as an idea it is functional - assuming it functioned). It is worst because despite being a ridiculously simple idea, someone managed to break it and even put effort into breaking it.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,523
Fallout 1 and 2 has good ui, apart from list based inventory. It's a good detector for whether someone is an actual gamer who can use keyboard and has better memory than an average bird though.
 

Grimwulf

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
Messages
4,045
Location
Kodex Kommunistic Kastle
Aurora 4x. Love the game, hate the goddamn UI.

mEy7Ejp.jpg

Not even gonna complain about counter-intuitive parts, to hell with user-friendly concepts and lack of tooltips.

WHY CAN'T WE HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR SCHEMES?

The whole game consists of tossing menus and mashing buttons, why do you have to make it white, adding small fonts here and there to make it even spicier? Am I the only one who finds it straining for the eyes?

Am I getting old? :negative:
 

Puukko

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2015
Messages
3,862
Location
The Khanate
You decide:

Best to worst:

1 >>> 3 >>>>> 2

1 is perfectly functional with everything easily available, 3 for all its use of space is lacking in text descriptions outside mouse hover and 2... even worse use of space along with lots of scrolling.

Mind you I am going based on memory here, it's been a long while since I played 1 and 2 in particular.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
WHY CAN'T WE HAVE DIFFERENT COLOR SCHEMES?

The whole game consists of tossing menus and mashing buttons, why do you have to make it white, adding small fonts here and there to make it even spicier?

Looks like it was made in VB6 which uses the classic unthemed windows controls. There are two things you can try: use the Windows Classic theme (if using Windows 7 or older, like in the screenshot) and select a dark color scheme before playing the game (just save your current settings as a new theme so you can restore them later) or use WindowBlinds to apply a dark theme (this will work in Windows 10 too). If you do not want to use WindowBlinds, you can also try to use a high contrast theme. Alternatively create a new text file named whatever.reg and paste the following contents:

Code:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="0 128 128"
"AppWorkSpace"="128 128 128"
"Window"="255 255 255"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"
"Menu"="192 192 192"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"ActiveTitle"="0 0 128"
"InactiveTitle"="128 128 128"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"ActiveBorder"="192 192 192"
"InactiveBorder"="192 192 192"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="192 192 192"
"ButtonFace"="192 192 192"
"ButtonShadow"="128 128 128"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GrayText"="128 128 128"
"Hilight"="0 0 128"
"HilightText"="255 255 255"
"InactiveTitleText"="192 192 192"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="255 255 225"
"ButtonLight"="223 223 223"
"ButtonDkShadow"="0 0 0"

This is the default Win95 color scheme which should be a bit darker than the Vista/7/8/10 colors for unthemed controls used by VB6 (among others). If you want even darker, try to replace all 192 values with 128, all 128 with 64 and all 255 values with 192. Double click on the .reg file, log out and login again to apply the colors.

To restore the original Windows colors, simply apply some other theme and then re-apply the theme you used.
 

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