Game dev blog #8: Customization UI: Part 1

Dat UI: Mmm-mmm-mm, eat it up with a spoon

So the next project thrown my way was the customization UI . This would allow players to select a squad of three from multiple characters and then choose which weapons those characters would use. The weapons would swap out two of the character's abilities for new ones. These weapons (or abilities, however you choose to think of it) would not be overtly more or less powerful then any other ones available to that character, but simply provide a different way to play with that character. But I digress, back to the UI!

So for this project, I had a few more constraints than usual. Firstly and most importantly  I did not get to choose the layout. I was given a rough sketch on how the layout was to be set up and was only given freedom on how to make it look (relatively) pretty.

So, as you can see the layout has changed only a little bit, mostly just to make it neater than the sketch. The screen was made wider so that it can fit the 16:9 aspect ratio that many android tablets use, and can be scaled down for apple products that do not use the 16:9 aspect ratio.  

I went with a paper document look for this menu, as if the user were looking at some papers in the table seen in the main menu.

After testing, it became clear that the UI design was a bit confusing to players. This necessitates a redesign, which is currently in progress, hence this being part one of the customization blog post. When the redesign is complete, I'll make a new post detailing the problems with the current iteration of the interface, and the solutions we have worked out!