When I put forward all of my ideas to the group, this idea seems to get the best reaction. To be honest, I only threw it in as an afterthought, I've always loved interfaces but didn't think it would make a good enough project. It seems however that it's an area where nobody else in the group seems to be specialising, and i've got some pretty good ideas for it. I'll outline my main idea here.
Recently I was playing a Wii game called Xenoblade Chronicles, it's a great game with an open world and loads of quests to do. Unfortunately, I found the questing interface to be underwhelming, you were only given vague directions on where to go for each quest, with no map markers and no icons above quest related people/monsters. I realised that many games I've played would have been considerably better with a better thought out quest interface, so that's what this idea is all about.
For the project I want to make a video demonstration of my new RPG interface, it will be well thought out and work in theory, with lots of explanation into why each element is where it is. However it will not be a functional interface. Because I only want to focus on creating an interface, I need to fill in the actual gameplay with something representative. As a solution to this, I'm going to run around with somebody following behind me with a camera, I'll have people standing around the place, I'll walk up to them and get quests from them, then run and do the quests. On top of this, I'll put a map and occasionally the video will pause and you'll see my interface pop up. I'll use google maps to get a map of the area to place the quests on. I'll use a 2D matchmove to make big exclamation marks float about the quest giver's heads.
The main attraction in my interface will be the quest screen. Lots of games will show you where your quests are on a map, but they won't help you out when it comes to plotting a route between them.
With my system, you will see a map on the left side of the screen, and a list of quests on the right. You can tick the quests you wish to do, or you can "Select All" or "Select All In Area". This will then plot the points on the map. On the next screen, you will have the map on the right with an automatically generated route between the quest markers, like a GPS system taking you through various points. Arrows will be shown on the lines between quest markers to let you know which way you're going.
On the right hand side, you will see all of the quests you chose, lined up the order you'll visit them. You can grab any quest and move it to another place in the list, this will then update the map, so that you'll visit the quests in the desired order. Once you have the route plotted, you can Confirm and return to the game screen. The next quest on your list will then he highlighted on the mini-map, floating on the edge in the direction you need to go.
After completing a quest objective, the mini-map will momentarily zoom out, showing all of the quest markers between you and the NPC you must return to in order to hand in the quest. You can then press a content-aware shortcut button to jump straight to the quest list, and place the new marker where you would like in the list. The new marker is automatically picked up, and as you move up and down the list, you will see the plotted route change. You can then confirm, return to the game, and continue your questing.
This system makes the flow of questing much less stressful, retaining the tactical element of plotting your quest route, but without the mental burden of having to remember your route, or having to return to the menu after every quest, just to see where the next nearest one is.
In the lecture, Adobe Illustrator was mentioned as the kind of vector-based software an interface designer might be using, so I'm going to be taking a look at that and throwing together some example interfaces for next week.
I'll also explore the other ideas in more detail soon.
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