Monthly Archives: March 2016

Shogun 2s User Interface, Bottom Right

Bottom Right UI Element
Bottom Right UI Element

The bottom right UI element is located in a circular image that suits a dial design. It balances well the circular dial located on the opposite side of the campaign map page. The UI element can be split into two major parts.

First is the management dial which contains the vast majority of this UI elements functionality. Secondly is the resource pane which includes an overview of the most important resources used in the game, money and food.

Management Dial

Management Dial
Management Dial
  • Blue – Technology.
  • Green – Turn.
  • Purple – Clan Management.
  • Red – Finance.
  • Yellow – Diplomacy.

The UI element is compact, containing a number of icons that are representative of their function. There is though a small risk of accidentally hitting the turn button given its size and position.

  • Diplomacy (Yellow) uses a bowing person which appears to be an envoy.
  • Clan Management (Purple) uses a Clan flag which is the best representative of a Clan, and since the image is used in many other places in game the player is familiar with the image.
  • Finance (Red), uses an abacus looking instrument which is a tool used for accounting, as well as images of the currency to associate the button with in-game money.
  • Technology (Blue) uses a picture of a sword and another item representative presumably related to technology.
  • The turn button (Green) reflects the season as well as the year written clearly in black.

Management Pages

A standard used throughout the management pages is the location of the help and exit buttons. The help icon is located on the top right, and the action buttons are centered at the bottom of the page. Perhaps the help button would have been better located on the top left to coincide with the position of the help button on the main campaign map page.

Clan (Purple)

On pressing the purple icon a clan management page opens that has a number of tabs.

Summary

The summary tab is the default tab that opens. The page includes several clan related thematic elements namely the clans symbol (Blue), the name of the daimyo and an in game image (Green).

shogun_2_interface_clan_management_summary

Continue reading Shogun 2s User Interface, Bottom Right

Elfen Lied Episode 1 Scene 4, Study

The format of this piece will be a description of Elfen Lied Episode 1 Scene 4 with a to scale time line with emotion sections plotted with the following [itg-mediatip href=”http://somegamez.com/project/elfen-lied-study/attachment/episode_1_time_line” mediatip-type=”localimage” mediatip-content=”{&aquot;url&aquot;:&aquot;http://somegamez.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/episode_1_time_line.png&aquot;,&aquot;id&aquot;:2917,&aquot;link&aquot;:&aquot;http://somegamez.com/project/elfen-lied-study/attachment/episode_1_time_line&aquot;}” mediatip-link=”undefined”]Key[/itg-mediatip], where [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic;” tooltip-content=”<p>High Emotions refer to Emotions that connote ‘happy’ like feeling e.g Joy, Surprise and Love.</p>”]High Emotions[/itg-tooltip] are plotted below the time line (black line) and [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic;” tooltip-content=”<p>Low Emotions refer to Emotions that connote ‘sad’ like feeling e.g Anger, Fear and Sadness.</p>”]Low Emotions[/itg-tooltip] are plotted above.

Following this there will be a number of pie charts in the following format. Pie charts on the left are [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.8182px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;” tooltip-content=”<p>A sum of the number of occurences of a category of emotion.</p>”]Totals[/itg-tooltip] of the scene, and pie charts on the right are [itg-tooltip style=”color: #ca3c08; text-decoration: overline underline; font-style: italic; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.8182px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;” tooltip-content=”<p>A sum of the time spent during the episode on each category of emotion.</p>”]Screen Time[/itg-tooltip]. Lastly the raw data for this scene will be presented in the form of a table.

Follow this link to the main entry for this article series.

Spoiler Alert! You’ve been warned!

With that out of the way lets begin! (A video of the scene is at the end of the post if you wish to watch it first!)

Fourth Scene

We start with torrential rain, and darkness enshrouding (29) Koutas house, a complete contrast to its appearance in the episodes second scene. It is a foreboding transition from the previous scene where Kurama announced that Lucy should be killed, and not captured.

The scene shifts to a well lit room with Yuka speaking with some cheer (30), and Nyu looking inquisitively at the contents of Koutas bag. Nyu reaches out, and pulls at a box which falls opens to reveal a pink looking seashell.

On seeing the seashell Yuka inquires about it to which Kouta explains that it is indeed a memento of his sister Kanae, and we transition into a ‘Happy‘ memory at the beach (31). Sadly our brief Happiness turns to Sadness as we find out from Kouta that his sister has passed away.

Happy Memory
Happy Memory

Continue reading Elfen Lied Episode 1 Scene 4, Study

Shogun 2s User Interface, Top Right

The Top Right UI Element in Shogun 2s Sengoku Jidai Campaign Map consists of three primary elements.

Top Right UI Element
Top Right UI Element

Map & Global Effects

The first element is a Map of Japan. Known clans territories are marked with a representative color (e.g Purple), and clicking the elements of the map takes you to that element on the 3-D map.

In addition selecting the Map Tabs results in icons appearing on the map e.g Navy, and Army symbols which when pressed take you to the unit. Certain symbols are given different styles depending on whether they are ‘active’ or not. An example of an inactive symbol is the trading post (Yellow), an example for active is the symbol used for the city of Kyoto which has been captured in this Campaign (Green).

shogun_2_interface_top_right_map

  • Blue – Expand Button.
  • Green – Active Icon Style.
  • Purple – Multiple Clan Colors.
  • Red – Minimize Button.
  • Yellow – Inactive Icon Style.

The Map can be expanded and minimized with the button in the top right corner (Red) of the Map (placement follow a standard for window closing making it more intuitive), and expand (Blue) is located in the bottom left corner which makes sense given it expands in that direction.

Map Resizing: Expanded(Top)/Default(Middle)/Minimized(Bottom)
Map Resizing: Expanded(Top)/Default(Middle)/Minimized(Bottom)

The space difference when resizing can be somewhat judged by the above diagram. When expanded the Map takes up approximately a quarter of the screen, when minimized it disappears completely leaving only the Map Tabs and Global-Effects.

Global Effects
Global Effects

The second element is a list of Global Effects located at the top left corner of Map. This area displays an icon for each Global effect e.g. Master Builders which reduces construction costs. Perhaps leveraging perceptions of color, positive effects are displayed with a green background.

Continue reading Shogun 2s User Interface, Top Right

AI and Games – YouTube Channel

Since my time at The University of Edinburgh, one of my interests has been A.I in games. One great resource I came across that is both informative, and accessible is a YouTube Channel called AI and Games.

The channel is hosted by Tommy Thompson, an Artificial Intelligence researcher, computer science lecturer, and game developer. The channels videos/lectures, and accompanying articles on their site make useful materials for anyone interested in the field of AI and Games.

AI and Games
AI and Games

I’ve personally found these resources to have been most helpful. In particular an informative video that had a look at the A.I. used in the game F.E.A.R helped me write my notes on the A.I. employed by F.E.A.Rs NPCs.

If AI and Games is also one of your areas of interest, be sure to give this a channel a look! To kick things off, here’s a video by Tommy Thompson which serves as a good place to start.

Shogun 2s User Interface, Top Left

Top Left UI Element
Top Left UI Element

The Top Left User Interface (UI) element of Shogun 2s Sengoku Jidai Campaign Map consists of three equally sized icons. Pressing these icons open up the Game Menu, Total War Encyclopedia, and Game Menu UI elements.

  • Blue – Adviser Toggle.
  • Green – Encyclopedia.
  • Red – Game Menu.

The Top Left UI Element is never hidden, and when large elements appear in the interface from the area underneath this UI element, this element often overlays the larger element which was likely done given that this UI element has a higher priority function.

Adviser Toggle (Blue)

The Icon for the Adviser Toggle button (Blue) was likely chosen because one adviser looks similar. The functionality of the Adviser pane can be changed to either appear when using a feature in the Campaign for the first time or, considering more experienced players, can be set to not appear at all.

Pressing the icon from the UI element at the top left of the screen opens the following pane.

Adviser Pane
Adviser Pane
  • Blue – Advice Toggle.
  • Green – Advice Subject.
  • Orange – Advice Details.
  • Red – Character Image.

The character image (Red) serves a thematic purpose, the arrows (Blue) are for cycling through Advice, and are grouped with the character image to avoid getting in the way of the Advice description space.

The Advice Title (Green), and Text (Orange) are positioned in a standard way for reading. The Advice description takes the most space of all the elements, and can expand if necessary in case of text overflows. The cancel button (Purple) is placed in a commonly expected place for exiting which is the top right.

Encyclopedia Icon (Green)

The Encyclopedia Icon seems to be a Japanese style lamp with a question mark on it. I interpret this to be a symbol for a lamp that illuminates the unknown represented by the red question mark. It also leverages the commonly known iconography for help by using a question mark.

Encyclopedia Title
Encyclopedia Title

To reinforce that this is actually the Total War Encyclopedia, the icon is prominently displayed on the start page of the game, and is constantly visible in the game Encyclopedia with a clearly visible label.

Start Page Encyclopedia Icon
Start Page Encyclopedia Icon

Options Icon (Red)

Start Page Options Icon
Start Page Options Icon

I’m not exactly sure what the Game Menu Icon (Red) is. I’d hazard a guess, and say it looked like a face that was wearing glasses, and had a Japanese castle like hat?

In the Start Page of the game for displaying the Options Icon they used an image of a sword rack with multiple blades. That icon made more sense to me as I interpreted it to mean an option of swords to choose.

Perhaps they could have used the same image for consistency? Perhaps it was an issue of space?