Devlog 5 - Crafting the Space(ship)

Hey, Tristian here to talk about the UI / level for our first prototype.

The plan for JST is to have the entire game based around interacting with in-world consoles and screens. This design decision means that our UI and level design are one in the same. For the prototype, what I wanted to focus on was how these consoles and screens would be positioned and sized relative to one another.

After the team decided what information was necessary for this stage of development, I modeled some diagrams for us to discuss. I tried to create a range of models with a different guiding principle or core idea for each one. There was a tricky balance I had to strike with these. Normally, when I’m putting together UI models, I’m trying to prioritize ease of use, like-categorization, and making things align with user mental models. However, since we want the player to feel a bit disoriented and frantic, I wanted to make sure that things weren’t too easy to navigate. It was important to me that there was some intentional friction in each of the models I created.

After the feedback from the team, I made this layout for our prototype:

The main friction concept that I designed this around was panel switching.

The map lets the player choose their destination (or it will in a future build) but to use the other functions of the ship, the player has to click a button to switch out the map for the other buttons. I also included some permanent ad spaces that will always display and add some unnecessary noise to the information on screen.

After landing on this layout, I drafted a sketch of the screen space.

Here I decided on how the screen switch out would function on the ship console with the rotating/collapsing map. I was also able to figure out how we'd present each of the screens in a way that would reduce the models needed for the prototype. By turning the side panels into "projections." Each of the screens has the aspect ratios noted too so our artist (Vee) can reference them for sprite sizing.

With these concepts done, I got to work on creating some of the models we needed in Blockbench. I'll leave you with a look peek at those before they inevitably get changed once we put them in engine. The next time you see them, they should be working in the first version of our game!! Exciting stuff! :)