Asteroid Prospector Research and Testing
- jasonphilips2003
- May 8
- 3 min read
All links for videos or websites can be found at the bottom of this blog.
For this game I did a lot of research into UI design since it will be what the player interacts with the most. At the start of my research, I looked at different types of UI and how to best utilize it. I learned different types of UI like Non-Diegetic, Diegetic, Spatial and Meta. Also, I Found a website called the Game UI Database this website is a database of different games and their UI systems. Looking at different games like mine I found that Non-Diegetic and Diegetic are the main forms of UI that will be in my game, using non-diegetic for things like the players fuel, resources bars and the stations menu and using Diegetic for things like resource bars above asteroids or the navigation arrows for the scanner ability. I also watched a video series by Riot Games that goes into game design and has an episode on how they went about creating UI. It had good insight into how to make my UI consistent and share one theme and to also keep in mind how different menus tie together. I kept this in mind for my station menu where I kept each Panel to a similar design and used different panels to indicate different things, For example:
I used a lighter background for the area of interaction and a darker background for where information is displayed of that upgrade or project to make each panel show it’s a different set of information.
I also found a website called Interface in game which is like the Game UI Database that has a catalogue of different games and their UI designs, I used these sites to get an understanding of how I should go about making my UI work in my game and its genre.
From playtesting I received plenty of feedback from talking to participants and it made me make major changes to my game, from these sessions I learned my game didn’t initially have a very good tutorial and that the menus weren't providing the player with enough information for example in the upgrades panel it wasn’t displaying the cost or any detail on what the upgrade does.
So, I went in and did a complete overhaul on the upgrade menus keeping in mind my design theme I also did some changes to the refinery menu to make it fit in with the rest of the menu and made it so the player has more control over each individual resource and I created a more in depth and interactive tutorial so that the player has more understanding of the game and its mechanics.
Here is a before and after of the refinery menu:
Here is a before and after of the upgrade menus:
Here is the tutorial menu:
During playtesting I found that the player was also finding a lack of incentive to do anything due to the game not having a end goal so I made a projects menu with the goal of creating a Jump gate and also added and also from looking at feedback forms I found that participants were struggling to find asteroids so I added a scanning ability to locate different types of nearby asteroids.
Near the end of the playtesting phase I found from observing that players were getting bored waiting on resources to refine or only being able to extract resource so I added wrecked ships the player can find and salvage from and contracts for the player to complete to add another layer of gameplay and exploration to the game as well as gas clouds so that the player has more to keep an eye on when traveling around.
From the playtesting I was able to create multiple features that shaped the game and created a better experience for the player, these sessions provided feedback that let me know that my game and its development was heading in the right direction.
Overall I am very happy with how my game turned out and honestly it turned out better than expected with the mechanics being more in-depth that I originally planned, the only main thing I would change is that over development my lack of understanding AI and my time management not giving that much room for it I didn't end up having any enemy AI in the game which is something I originally wanted so I would've given more time to trying to create Enemies that could have attacked the player. Links to sources:
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