Quick case study of how I work on UI
Taking my last shipped game as example. Here's how it looks in Photoshop (CS6)
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Taking my last shipped game as example. Here's how it looks in Photoshop (CS6)
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Comments
For Caravan SandWitch it's tricky: there isn't ONE situation (as for almost all games).
Character or vehicule? indoor or outdoor? first biome or midgame? etc. I settle on these 2 screenshots 🖼️🖼️
Because you're far from your release date, it won't be polished, but that's ok. You'll replace it with newer versions later. What you need is good 3Cs, so you can count on your camera composition.
Here's the first version of the screen I used
Put placeholders in your scene, paint over if you're confortable in 2D, etc. Stay rough, straight to the point. Here's what I did based on the previous, quite empty screen (yes, we wanted to have a magnet initially ✂️)
It won't look good. But you'll be able to fake HUD situations, and ask yourself real UX questions like:
-what if a speech bubble pop while I'm moving an object?
-is the autosave text readable when I'm in this mode?
-how to display button glyphs, how to be consistent?
My favorite word. As with all things in life, you can't expect your first try to be perfect. Show it to the team, test it ingame, tweak it, show it to strangers, go back to the psd, think again.
Now you have a huge PSD with hundreds of layers, spanning all situations. Cool
The important bit is thinking about what could go wrong in your chosen situation. Animations show a lot more than a static mockup. My goto tool is photoshop, I know it well and can create gifs directly in it. Use what you want.