Game GUI feedback?

Chris England

New Member
Hi guys,

New member here. In my spare time, I'm the leader of a small video game studio and we're working on our first title at the moment. I frequent a lot of art boards (that's where I pick up artists for the game), but I was drawn to this board because good graphic artists appear to be like gold dust. I figure this was because I was looking in the wrong place - I mean, I know it's a difficult thing to do but there must be more than about a half dozen of you in the whole world!

I'm looking for some feedback on the layout/visual style of some of the GUI screens I've produced. These are advanced concepts - basically, work done by me using my passable PS skills so we can test out the layouts in the game and set the basic visual style. We'll be hiring one or two graphic artists to do the final versions of these screens eventually (hence why I need to find a good source of them!), but the more I can refine them the cheaper this will be and the happier I'll be with the visual style. If anyone has feedback, it'd be hugely appreciated.

The game is set in 1979/1980 and is quite military in its theme, so we've tried to come up with quite a retro and dark industrial visual style. It's sort of meant to resemble a computer system, so we've made everything quite clean and clear. The problem is that we're worried it's ended up looking boring. We want to subtly make it more visually interesting without losing the 'style', I think.

You might be able to see my problem in the pics below. I think the earlier concepts look quite good, mostly because of the quality of the art our artists have come up with. The colour keeps everything looking interesting. The last screen, however, is relatively text heavy by necessity - and it looks pretty horrible. Is there something I can add to the basic mix to avoid this problem?

Answers to that question, or any general feedback is hugely appreciated. As I say, this is quite a specific design skillset and I've struggled to find any detailed feedback on any of my other haunts...

Chris.

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This is the main GUI screen:
geoV2.gif


This is the soldier equip screen:
Soldier Equip.jpg


This is the vehicle equip screen:
Vehicles2.jpg


This is the equipment transfer screen:
Stores%202.jpg
 
I think I would go down the retro 80's computer look maybe but still have elements that kind of cheat that, i.e. images! probably go with green on black with scan lines or something along those lines.

or...alternatively stick with a similar colour scheme but have it laid out slightly better with the important info being directed towards the user in the order it needs to be.....primary weapon then secondary weapon etc , generally speaking thing are looked at right to left.

Let me know if you'd like any help

Phil
 
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