Project B Part 1

    For project B, I want to create a user interface (UI) for my underwater game concept from project A.  This game will be played in first person perspective so I want a UI the player can see through the "forth wall".  The UI needs to display basic survival game elements.  I want to display the players amount of life force left before their character dies.  I thought about displaying this in the form of a geometric sphere to represent a bubble of blood.  The blood will leak out as the player receives damage.  There will be a bar of some sort across the top or bottom of the screen to represent a total of player experience.  As the player gains experiences in the game the bar will develop in some fashion to indicate the player progression in leveling their character.  The player will have six visible hotkey spots to hold different items.  These items will be selected and placed inside empty open boxes lined up at the bottom of the screen.  There will be a display vertical icons showing environmental condition affecting the player.  Here I will show temperature and water condition.  Other elements will appear here and disappear here.  Things like poison in the air and hazardous materials in the water.  I may have other animated images appear in this UI when different things happen to the character during gameplay.  I want to keep this UI in the playable area as simple as possible so not to confuse the player when things are happening in the game.  

    Other UI displays will have to be created to show crafting explanations and inventory displays.  There will also have to be a UI display for tamed creatures and structure inventory.  Plus, UI to operate the abilities of those structures.  I think for the inventory UI, when looking into an object, I will have a pop-up display that covers the screen for the user.  I may make this slightly transparent for the user in case they are attacked during this time.  I figured, in real life, when you're looking in something like a container, you're distracted too.  I may make it possible for users to toggle certain UI components on and off with hotkeys.   

    Through my research of this subject, I have discovered there are four different user interface types in games.  

The first type is called Non-Diegtic:

    This type of interface is not in the story space.  Characters are not aware of what's showing.  These objects exist on a different layer than the game world platform.  A good example of this type would be scores and numbers tallied at the top of the screen for many games. Here is an images of the popular game Mario by Nintendo showing this type of UI along the top of the screen.  

 

The second type is called Diegtic:

This type of UI is in the story and in the space.  Usually a user can see an object in the gameplay and once that object comes into contact with the user character, there is some effect to the character.  In the game Mario, object drop or float, Mario can catch these objects changing the players abilities or appearance.  Below is an image to represent this type of UI.

The third type is called Spatial:

This type of UI is not part of the story but shows up in the playable space of the character.  An example of this in Mario is when the character jumps on an enemy or bumps an object.  You often see additions or numbers appear above the object which the character can't actually interact with but it's show for the users information.  An image below show this type of UI.

The fourth and last type of UI is called Meta:

This type of UI is in the story or progresses the users advancement with-in a story.  It sometimes reveals progression in the story development.  This UI is not actually in the story but scene by the user.  in Mario you see this often as you finish maps.  It gives information to the next level of events.  Here is an image to give the example of Meta UI.

Based on this research and different types of UI displays that exist I want to incorporate several of these into my game concept.  I definitely want to create a third wall based on the forth dimension.  A place where the user sees the unseen and can orchestrate the advancements throughout the game.