Enchanted Lands - sort of "dev-log"

[Uhfgood]

I just figured I wanted to chart my progress in some forums for my point'n'click adventure named Enchanted Lands Magical Resort.

Not really sure if this is the right place, because I'm not exactly looking for feedback. That is feedback is welcome but I just wanted to show the progress of the game by updating this thread once a week instead of asking for anything specific. In any case it's a story about a magic kingdom turned tourist resort, and a week before the grand opening, citizens and tourists are disappearing and the Bank has been broken into, so it's up to Harold (there's a running joke with this) who is the Grand Wizard and chief adviser to the King to find out what's behind all of this and be able to open on time if at all.

I have one concept design, and a test for size on the UI, and two UI mockups --


This first one is a vague concept of my main character. Yes I know it sucks, but I will get better as time goes on.


This next one is a test for two possible menu sizes. I was opting for the larger before
but I might change to the smaller once I decide on the layout of the sub menus.




These are mocks of the various "modes" of the menuing system. Essentially you click and release over the "activation ring" and then that first ring with the buttons comes up, that is your main menu. Then if you click on any of the buttons with a submenu it will just pop up and you can click them to activate. But there's sort of a quick-mode where you click drag over the ring and over the submenus to release on the option you want, which makes it quicker once you get a handle on where everything is situated.

These mockups aren't final. In fact the sub menus will probably have buttons spread out even further and readable... but they will still react to mouse angle.

That's about it. Next week I will probably update the images but will leave the explanation to a relevant blog post.

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Here's some old designs. I was considering a stationary menu with 4 pieces in each corner, since I'm now thinking ahead to touch pad devices (A company I work for does dev for Ipad and so forth, so I could have my game ported). But I came across an older picture of old pie menu designs, thinking of doing something along these lines.



Note how the text is a bit different than the actual actions in the "action" menu.

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[AdamP]

I like the radial menu scheme. I usually lean towards them as a first choice for menu design but almost always end up dropping them because I run out of space! I hope you have more success with them! While looking at your concepts I was thinking you could use icons instead of words. Then when you hover on a menu item, but before you click to confirm, you could show the name of that menu in the center section. Just a thought! Thanks for sharing the concepts.

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On July 2nd, I did some story / puzzle work, which I have yet to revise. Basically the main character is a Wizard (who's name is Harold -- and yes I know). You have to solve 3 problems to get out of the room. One is you need the spellbook before you can do anything (for instance saving games, or having inventory ;-) ), second is you need to enact the only spell you have left (a mysterious 'wind' blew all the magic hats out the window but luckily you still have one spell), the third is you need to find a way to get out as Harold has magically sealed himself but doesn't remember how he did it. That's all I will say at this point. This "game" is more or less a one room demo to see if I can hack it.

On July 3rd, 4th and 5th, I had a basic version of the UI up which didn't have much. I had a problem drawing a line past a certain point, but managed to solve it with the wonderful help of some guys on the AGS forums.






Note the last one I fixed :-)

Finally added the extra buttons and now it knows which option you're choosing

Click Image for a video of it in action. It still needs to account for the dead zone, and I still need to implement click-drag-release.

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AdamP - It depends on whether or not I could come up with icons for each of those options.

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Last Monday I managed to upload a video of the UI handling edges.



Next up were some layout drawings of the first room. Or rather the only room in this one-room demo, which will show you how to use the interface:

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On Tuesday I redid my first and second puzzles and then did a sketch for the background that's a temp background.

Click here for the "full effect"

Wednesday I implemented the background in AGS and added labels to the gui buttons.

For some reason Youtube decided to start cropping my videos to conform with their wide resolutions more.

Thursday and Friday I was trying to implement a few things but got stuck. I'm now unstuck but you won't really see it until next week, unless you happen to go to my blog.