Graphical Respresentation of Battle Statistics
Once again, one of the AE developers have risked life and limb by asking a
direct question to the denizens of the official message board. Other
examples of this exceptional treat are Skar's world features question, and
the Lamurian vote. This time Scan asked how we wanted our information
displayed, numbers or words. I prefer neither. I think the UI itself,
the HUD if you will, would best serve this.
But, the concept is a little hard to describe. So, as they say, "a picture
is worth a thousand words." I'd like to add, an animation is worth months
of babbling.
However, I'm not that much of an artist. So there will be a lot of
description.
This image shows the UI. (It's not supposed to show what the game looks
like, just the combat mechanics.) It's labeled to help you out.
Now, here are the animations. First, a FLASH animation built up by my
friend Malachi. It's just a little prettier is all. :)
Flash Animation
And here is a page containing an animated GIF that I did, with captions that
show the action. Remember, all the 'numbers' that I use are internal to
the game system, and are never revealed. The pattern in the lightning orb
is randomly generated depending on the input values, it's not just a canned
image.
Here is the animated gif:
Graphical Respresentation of Battle Statistics
And here is a step by step:
Frame by Frame explanation
The main point of this concept is that all statistics are shown graphically.
The graphical perfectly scalable, and does an excellent job of telling you
how much damage you are doing and how you compare to the monster. Simple
additions such as pain skins and and other things can make the system even
more useful.
- Marc Hawke
