RESEARCH - WEEK THREE

From the last week I made a few google forms to ask question relating to our project. For half of the second one I asked question about the menu visuals to get inspiration for this part of the planning. I want to take the answers from that week and work them into my research for this.

For the first question I was able to get a full list of games to look at. Here is that full list, Call of Duty black ops 1, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Minecraft, Persona 5 Royal, Persona 3 Reload, Helldivers 2, cyberpunk 2077, destiny 2, Celeste, F1 23, Forza Horizon 5, Apex Legends, Dishonoured 2, Destiny 2, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Risk of Rain 2, Left 4 Dead, Valorant and Half-Life. I took note of these on my miro.

Next, I asked what makes the UI in these menus great. From this I got a list of features that I should plan to add. I can also use the list to inform what to add to the mood board. I ended up with this list of a few key features. Furthermore, I will add them to the Miro and sort the mood board into the categories which are, Use of Shapes, Layout, Simple UI, Fluidity, Uncluttered, and Concise.

Next in the form, I asked what colours work well for similar games UI. From this, I got a list of colours. I will use this when creating my mood boards to find UI with similar colours. I will also use this when creating the plans as I can get an established colour scheme. As my form evaluation states, I will only look at bright colours in the use of UI to notify the player. The list of colours was: UI Colours - Contrast - Dark - Muted: Grey Tones, Browns, Black, Greens, and Blues Indicators - Contrast - Bright -Complimentary: Reds, Blues, Oranges, and White.

First, using the list of games I got from the forms, I added them to the Miro board. I did, so I had a list of the games I used for research. To these, I decided to order them into set games based on whether they fit the idea of the game we are making. With this, I aimed to defer between games similar to ours and ones different. This will allow me to take different aspects of each game. From the similar games, I will take more direct inspiration, whereas with the non-similar games I will take more obscure elements.

Similar Games:

For similar games, most of the menus have either a basic main menu or a press to continue. As I noted, I think a press to continue could be replaced by a transition or just altogether. This shows me that I can get away without using a menu like that.  I got a good range of main menus from these games, with a bunch of different games using a lot of styles. A few of the main menus had a slightly cluttered look, but not too cluttered. Two of the main menus had a unique background containing the games' environment.

Non-Similar Games:

For the non-similar games, I got a good selection of unique menus. They were almost always more interesting in layout than similar games, other than a few cases. All the games from this selection had some sort of environmental background, showing that this may be a good option to go with. These options had overwhelmingly more unique layouts and used more shapes in their menu.

Similar Games:

In similar games, the pause menus tend to be simple, showing the scene behind the menu. A lot of the similar games are missing a pause menu as they are online. How I will make this menu will entirely depend on the multiplayer system we have. This means I will wait on designing this menu until after I have an idea of how this menu will work. For some pause menus try adding a lot of information like controls and builds, I will try avoiding adding too much, so our menus are not complicated.  

Non-Similar Games:

A lot more of the non-similar games incorporate a proper pause menu in the game. I believe this is mostly due to them being mainly single-player games. This means the player would be able to pause whenever they wanted to. As I said before, I am going to make this menu concept, yet I will hold it off until I know what the systems are. I noticed a lot of these menus used more shapes and had more unique layouts.   

Similar Games:

Now, for the team/in-game UI, similar games are very important to look at. This is because they are going to have very similar gameplay and team mechanics to what we want. These games all contain some in-game UI that will go towards informing the player or team of their performance. Looking at the images I got, I can see a lot of interesting techniques that I can put into practice later. One example of this is the wheel being used for communication and weapon switching.

Non-Similar Games:

Now, for the non-similar games, most of these differing game systems don't have as many overlapping mechanics. But they do have appealing ways to show and hold the players' information. This can be seen in mechanics like full inventories and RPG-style selection. These will be good to look at for the overall style options. They did show a more varied style and had a more captivating layout. In some examples, their e is a UI piece to show the current weapon. 

Similar Games:

For the game modes, I am looking at images showing how to select games and choose their modes. Most of these options make the use of shapes to have options selectable. I am a big fan of the look of the more bold style seen in a few images, using a more square look to the menu. The use of shapes adds a lot of unique and strong ways to lay out the menu. From this, I have seen that I like a more bold and filled mode select menu like the one in Counter-Strike (First Image).    

Non-Similar Games:

For the non-similar games, most of them make use of simple select screens on the main menus. This is where the player can select what mode they want to play. The images mostly use simple layouts in just lines. One of the more complex layouts can be seen in Forza Horizon's menu, as it uses image squares to show the modes. I like this approach as it is more bold and stands out.

Similar Games:

By far, the most used colour for indicators in games was white as their choice of indicator. This is because it is easy to use as a contrast against all other colours. Another colour that showed a lot in this area was orange and red. I believe this is because it is a danger associating colour. This can be seen in signs and items such as exploding barrels. Another reason for this in my opinion is because it contrasts well with most of the colours available. another finding I got from this was the fact that a yellowed UI tends to look older and is featured more in older games. Another feature of, this UI that I liked the look of was a green contrast colour. this can be seen twice in the images.

Non-Similar Games:

Most of the non-similar games tend to use reds and oranges for a few reasons. Firstly, the games use this as it contrasts well against a lot of colours such as greys, whites, and greens. Secondly, I find they use it, as reds and oranges catch the human eye easily. This is because humans associate the reds and orange with danger, so it stands out immediately. A ton of the UI in these uses white as its main colour. This goes along with nearly every colour as it contrasts well. For the main UI, the largest majority of colours fall into the great brown area. This is because it is visually appealing and is easy to look at. The colour avoids strain and is simple and clean. Overall this has shown me that white or grey is a good choice for the main UI and that red or white would work for contrasting. 

For the effects in the game, I wanted to start getting a basic understanding of the looks I could go for. While this will be heavily inspired by the video I found on this, using references will help me better understand. I want to get a mood board for the two grenade effects and maybe one or two more things.

For the flash, I have realised the best way to do it would be to find a radius and simply brighten the screen with an animation. Instead of using the mood board to collect research on the flash, instead, I will try to find a compilation of the flash grenade in video games.

For the regular grenade, I have found a few real images to use as a reference for the shape. I cannot use them for too much detail as they are real, and we are going for a less realistic game. Some grenades are too detailed, as I want to keep them simple. Some grenades do not match but could be changed to fit a bit more. 

A few of the more cartoony bullet holes do not apply to the style. I could use them for shape reference as there are multiple styles. I managed to find a few real bullet holes that I can reference for details. Furthermore, I found a few references on different materials which shows me how the material show affects the bullet hole.