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Colony Ship update #45: the Armory

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
2,878
Location
San Isidro, Argentina
I do like the suggestion of having the portrait outside the box on the right side version.
 

xuerebx

Erudite
Joined
Aug 20, 2008
Messages
1,001
its just feels natural on the left.

Haha, literally someone on the other forums said "The right side looks more natural" at the same time you wrote that.

I'm not sure which side I prefer. Sometimes it's better not having a choice. :P
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I have let three pigeons fly off from my balcony. They flew to the right. One took a crap on the railing.

The augury is that if the dialog isn't on the right, I'm afraid the game will bomb.
 

Nortar

Arcane
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Sep 5, 2017
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1,407
Pathfinder: Wrath
I have let three pigeons fly off from my balcony. They flew to the right. One took a crap on the railing.

The augury is that if the dialog isn't on the right, I'm afraid the game will bomb.
Did not you read that omen? It will be shit on the right. Do left!
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I have let three pigeons fly off from my balcony. They flew to the right. One took a crap on the railing.

The augury is that if the dialog isn't on the right, I'm afraid the game will bomb.
Did not you read that omen? It will be shit on the right. Do left!
The pigeon was giving me a vaguely menacing look as he took the crap. As if saying "you've been warned".
 

MF

The Boar Studio
Patron
Developer
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Dec 8, 2002
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892
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Amsterdam
Looks cool, really digging the atmosphere!

I prefer the right side for some reason, but it would need a different layout. Not all the way to the right, either. I had mixed feelings about Disco, but that text box was actually surprisingly comfortable. Here it is in Disco style.
Discostylecolony.jpg
 

BlaineMono

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 3, 2007
Messages
117
If the argument is "we read from left to right" then why is NPC's portrait on the left side of the text thing?

leftist shills the lot of ya
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
I don't like the idea of presenting speech skills during dialogues. Like it's a constant reminder which skill should player use instead of choosing maybe for different reasons. It would make sense if this was a game with visible checks but not here.

Armory looks awesome :greatjob:
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
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Messages
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San Isidro, Argentina
I don't like the idea of presenting speech skills during dialogues. Like it's a constant reminder which skill should player use instead of choosing maybe for different reasons. It would make sense if this was a game with visible checks but not here.

We actually have visible checks on the dev build. We are still a bit undecided if we should allow showing them as an option.


Armory looks awesome :greatjob:

Thanks!
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
Well, at the end of the day, that's another one of those questions that won't make or break the game. I prefer on the left, but it's not like being on the right is a terrible problem.

For texts, yes, in general the idea is to put the images on the left, that's because the image is what initially catches the reader's attention. If you go on almost any news site for example, this is unanimous: the images stay either on top, or on the left, because that's the way we were conditioned to read. If your goal is to catch the reader's attention, the image comes first. But this applies to texts. We need to remember that games are a totally different medium. In a game, you are already interacting with the image itself all the time. In fact, it is through the image that you literally start interacting with the text: you consciously click on a character in order to see the text. The image, you already have, the text is what you want next.

So the change of focus sounds obvious and natural to me. As you switch to a text mode, you automatically return to your basic reading pattern: from top to bottom, from left to right. Here I strongly disagree with Elysium Disco designers: emulating Twitter is not necessarily the best idea. Twitter becoming what it has become (shit, I mean, it's a big shit, but that's not the point) is literally not related to its visual language but to the kind of interaction between users.

Even then, whatever your social network is, you don't stare at the bottom left corner of the screen most of the time, quite the contrary! You'll probably scroll the text until it arrives in a more comfortable position, which is not on the bottom but, not surprisingly, in the middle. You spend most of your time looking at the center of the screen. Obviously you look at the notification bars at a glance when necessary (and therefore, following the same principle, many UIs have useful information on the screen's corners), but the focus is always where the new information appears. I do agree, however, with the idea that all the previous text should remain on the screen and go up, as it allows you to reread what you said if necessary.
 
Last edited:

Efe

Erudite
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Messages
2,597
You should not give in to fallacy of choice.
impose your vision and will upon the masses.
Let no clouded eyes misinterpret the colony ship.
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
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Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
Location
Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Looks cool, really digging the atmosphere!

I prefer the right side for some reason, but it would need a different layout. Not all the way to the right, either. I had mixed feelings about Disco, but that text box was actually surprisingly comfortable. Here it is in Disco style.
View attachment 13561

Hot damn thats a clean mockup. Looks better than the UI in your game.
No shade, I liked Titan Outpost a lot but this is really nice.
 

Jrpgfan

Erudite
Joined
Feb 7, 2016
Messages
2,008
You should consider lowering the opacity of the box aswell(or adding an option).
 

Kasparov

OH/NO
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2016
Messages
930
Location
ZA/UM
Looks cool, really digging the atmosphere!

I prefer the right side for some reason, but it would need a different layout. Not all the way to the right, either. I had mixed feelings about Disco, but that text box was actually surprisingly comfortable. Here it is in Disco style.
View attachment 13561

I like this one. As you know we opted for the right side dialogue menu with Disco, but it’s not really just about left or right. What is this, the USA?!

There are a ton of things to consider and one of those is screen real estate - how much space will the menu take up on the screen and also what’s going to be in the “picture” while the player’s in conversation/interacting with something. Dialogues in games are not just text in the same way that comics is not just pictures OR just text - it’s a combination.

Some questions to consider: is there anything important going on there in the picture? Any visual cues that the text is pointing to? Is the menu itself animated? Either when appearing and disappearing etc or does it have animated elements?

I like this MF’s mockup because he broke up the silhouette of the menu - it directs the eye better. There can also be some color accents or anything really that helps direct the eye.

MRY brought up some good points as well.

Ease of use and low learning curve are important too - in Disco a good bunch of players have reported that they had a hard time figuring out how healing works and where those items go. This is something that should come up during testing and iterating, when time and budget allow.

Anyway I’m sure our brothers in gamedev at Iron Tower can figure out what best serves their needs for Colony Ship.

EDIT: adding customisation options like opacity and triggering left/right for the menu opens up a whoole new can of worms when debugging it. Those of you that want to get your hands on the game faster better pipe down with comments like that :hahano:
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
The aesthetics of the game are very pleasing to the eye, so it's a good thing that people want to see the picture first, and then the text. :)

Vince posted the two alternatives on the official forums:

is5Z1Ef.png


versus

SsKM71A.png
Well, huh. I'm not sure now. Something about the orientation of the portrait and perhaps the skills being flush to the right makes me prefer the left column slightly.

Meanwhile, I have an unrelated suggestion: I would have the two henchmen have their weapons drawn and be in fighting stance. I think it would add a light dynamism to the figures in the scene.

After reading the various thoughts and think pieces, I was leaning toward it being on the right -- but the layout within the dialog ribbon/column does look/feel better on the left.

I think it is how the speech skills are offset to one side (along with the portrait) sort of make it work better as on the left.

For what it's worth, I'd be happy with either, but if we're somehow voting then of the two above -- I would pick left -- but am not opposed to it being on the right SR style.
 

Rivmusique

Arcane
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Mar 14, 2011
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3,489
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Kangarooland
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Sort of prefer right, but not that bothered.

I do think having the full conversation text shown on scroll-up would be an improvement though. And as people are bringing up shadowrun and disco on the irontower forums, one thing I prefer in disco over shadowrun is that the conversation text always ended near where your options are placed. Having that big gap between the last thing they said (if it was a short paragraph) and my choices felt bad to me
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
I'm beginning to hate both twitter and disco, and I don't even use twitter.
 

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