RTS - GUI @ 320x200

[dkh]

I'm working on a real-time strategy game with the working title "Troopers". I'd like some critique on my latest version of the GUI.

The numbers on the top of the screen represent resources (not happy with this yet, bad readability? - icons will be replaced once I figure out what kind of resource the game's gonna have in the end, btw), the buttons on the bottom-left are used for special orders/actions depending on what unit is selected (crosshair: attack, arrow pointing down: stop, shield: defend, construction tower: construct production structure, flask: construct research structure) - of course, a marine won't be able to construct anything, this is just a mock-up to show off the icons, bottom-right is reserved for the radar-map and the middle shows statistics for the currently selected unit (in this case a marine, which is a small ground unit [important to know for the player because of how damage is calculated] and two attack-upgrades for it and no armor ones have been upgraded, symbolized by the icons.

I'm trying to enhance this GUI as much as possible, both visually and functionally. The battlefield itself is not a priority right now although it IS an ingame-show so you can, if you want to, drop a few lines on it as well, it's just not nearly as final as the GUI yet.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[huZba]

I'd say that's an okay start. The units disappear to the bg and the resources are indeed hard to read. The gui should definatelly be on the right side of the screen rather than in the bottom. The reason for this is that you "the commander" need vision similar to your units. Your field of view of the ground area should be closer to a square. In warcraft 2 the gui is on the left cause the game works in a 1x1 top down view, even though the sprites are drawn in a different perspective. In starcraft the view is isometric 2x1(ish?) so the gui is on the bottom so that your view of the field is wider, but shows a square ground area.

[KAT]

Hehe, similar to dune 2 I like it, looks very nice but I think resources are not visible enough (especially blue one). I agree with huZba - gui should be on right or left side.

What programming language you are using to code it? Do you use any gfx library like allegro or sdl? When we can play on beta version? I wanna be a beta tester, can I?

[dkh]

Thanks for the replies!

I didn't even think about the square battlefield, but that makes sense. I addressed this and the readability of the resources in the second version:

The second shot shows what the GUI looks like when a factory is selected. Obviously, the slots are filled with the production-chain of units and the progress-bar shows when the unit in slot 1 is going to be ready.

What programming language you are using to code it? Do you use any gfx library like allegro or sdl? When we can play on beta version? I wanna be a beta tester, can I?

I use AGS (Adventure Game Studio), which is a freeware game creation program. However, as the name tells, its really made for adventure games so taking it and creating a RTS-game with it is an additional challenge that has - so far - not been done successfully by anybody. I could do it with standard C++ and OpenGL/SDL, I'm really a programmer and not an artist. I have no idea when a beta-version is going to be ready, right now I'm thinking of rewriting large parts of the engine to support A* pathfinding.

Anyways, I'm still not convinced that the resources are as readable as they should be, what do you guys say? Any further pointers for improvement?