GUI - lost in action

[Gitchi Manidoo]

Unlike Siven80, who talked about usability of new Rome 2 interface (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-of-Shogun-2.?), I want to focus my post on artistic approach of Rome 2 UI (GUI - graphical user interface).

First time GUI was publicly shown was on Teutoburg Walkthrough video. At that time, back in April, game was still in development and relativly far from release, so I looked at GUI as placeholder. It surprised me when we got all those gameplay videos just a few weeks before release and game still had same GUI that was shown on Teutoburg Walkthrough video.

So the question is, why do I think it's a placeholder.

First of all, we can just look back on previous Total War games, mainly Shogun 2. Details on Shogun 2 interface are very thought out, every window, box, tooltip had a lot of polish and thought put into it, be it backgrounds, borders/frames, fonts, colours, icons etc.

Second thing, and this really pushed me to make this post, is picture of games's alpha screencap.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see in this picture, GUI is very Total War'ish, in the style we have seen in previous titles.

And then there is third thing, process of development. This is my view on it and I'm not saying this is the way it happens.

It all starts with round table and people brainstorming about features in game. In the process there are made some visual sketches to go along bullet list in text document. It ends up with something like this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That's very basic stuff, I didn't go into details, just an overview to make my point on second development step.

After a lengthy process of fleshing out features, this layout grid (along with feature document) is sent to programmers and artists.

Artists

After receiving feature list, artists accompanied with UI experts go nuts and start their work on UI usability and GUI. No images here, we are missing this part. Closest what we have is alpha screencap of Rome 2 or end product of Shogun 2.

Programmers

After receiving feature list, programmers start their work on functionality of game. They don't wait for UI team to finish their work, placeholders are used to test their work.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see, it's very basic, it's sole purpose is to show data and test it. Once artists are done, placeholders are replaced with proper art.

And if we look at the Rome 2 GUI we have at the moment.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Conclusion.

It's hard for me to believe, that what we have is final version GUI or what they were originally going for. What happened? Considering that in Medieval 2 different cultures had different GUI, I would assume same would apply for Rome 2. Maybe they ran out of time?Will "real" GUI be released at some point. Will it be released with expansion or patched in way before it? Or is it done and we have to look in the possibility of complete interface overhaul mod?

* Just had to get it off my chest...

[cevap]

Thank you for this, I completely agree. I think it probably is a placeholder as some tooltips dont show up, some things should be connected to relevant things and are not, like the "you forgot something" end-turn message etc. Every faction has the same icon which could also be a good sign that its a placeholder. Also: The tech tree has 8 submenus for god sake when it could fill one screen, the city menu has 2 tabs when it could have been 1 and even then there is less info then previous TW, the army info screen has 3 submenus...ugh Just look at how small the recruitment screen is when it could stretch to fill the screen and there would be no need to click up and down to see what unit we can recruit. I dont know why I need to look at the campaign map when Im trying to manage things on the campaign. On the other hand the unit tab in battles expands and it fills half the screen where you actually do need to watch the battle. The UI makes the whole experience much more tedious than it has to be honestly.

[jtfjtfjtf]

Like a lot of other aspects of the game, probably rushed into production.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

I agree completely, the "modernized/transparent" gui does not feel as polished as the gui we had in all of the previous titles. It feels like i'm playing a game that consists of unfinished placeholders.

[craziii]

it is what they were going for. they want you to always have a view of the campaign map as you manage your empire. so they went full on minimalistic. the result is annoyance! to players, to me they lost 10% of the score for that.

[Gitchi Manidoo]

it is what they were going for. they want you to always have a view of the campaign map as you manage your empire. so they went full on minimalistic. the result is annoyance! to players, to me they lost 10% of the score for that.

Don't think so. Alpha images clearly show that they were going for more visually deep(?) look of the UI. About having view of campaign map, recruitment tab takes up half the screen, not much of a campaign map to see My hope is that it's not binned, just pushed back for later release.

As jtfjtfjtf said, game was rushed to release.

[Riekopo]

I like the new UI's transparency, but that's about it. Are there any other pictures of the old UI?

[Gitchi Manidoo]

I like the new UI's transparency, but that's about it. Are there any other pictures of the old UI?

[kambiz]

@Gitchi Manidoo
Nice post mate +rep