Vote on the look of NEStalgia's new Set Items

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ID:107725
 
Jan 28 2011, 2:43 pm (Edited on Jan 28 2011, 2:52 pm)
Keywords: nestalgia

Poll: Which color combination looks best for NEStalgia's new Set Items HUD?

White: http://tinyurl.com/nes-poll-white 11% (9)
Red: http://tinyurl.com/nes-poll-red 26% (21)
Grey: http://tinyurl.com/nes-poll-grey 6% (5)
Black: http://tinyurl.com/nes-poll-black 23% (19)
Green: http://tinyurl.com/nes-poll-green 32% (26)

The polls are now closed.

Let's just this out of the way: I absolutely hate people who design via committee. I have spent years working in an industry where clients take great ideas and then come back with a list of horrible changes that they generated by taking a poll amongst their fellow board members and/or employees. Good ideas don't come from focus groups - they come from individuals.

That said, feedback from a group of people can be helpful in guiding an individual working through the creative process. Today I have a poll for you that is meant to be both a fun activity for the community, and a way to help me make a decision on one relatively small detail.

NEStalgia Set Gear is being implemented in the v1.35 patch. The question at hand is this: which color combination looks best for a Set Item's Description HUD?


White
Red

Grey
Black

Green

Keep in mind that I'm working within some self-imposed limitations here. The HUD can't be just any color - the choices that are presented here are it. My goal is to make the new HUD as appealing as possible while maintaining the game's NES inspired look.

The results of this poll will help to guide my decision, but will not determine it. I'd also love any feedback that you'd like to provide in the comments. Anyone want to take bets on which color will win?








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Jan 28 2011, 2:46 pm
I think white looks the best, seen as it's just the inverse of colors normally shown.
Jan 28 2011, 2:47 pm
My personal opinion is either red or white (i'm not allowed to vote)

Good job by the way Silk, i'm impressed with the constant updates and work you put into this game :).
Jan 28 2011, 2:54 pm
Bah, I changed the poll to allow everyone to vote. If you couldn't vote before then try again.


Teka123 wrote:
Good job by the way Silk, i'm impressed with the constant updates and work you put into this game :).

Thank you! It's good to hear that people notice :)
Jan 28 2011, 3:11 pm
Although I don't play Nestalgia I tend to follow your blog posts and I have to ask, why isn't the default blue/white an option?

I'd prefer that over any of the above options.
Jan 28 2011, 3:18 pm
Xuiryus wrote:
Although I don't play Nestalgia I tend to follow your blog posts and I have to ask, why isn't the default blue/white an option?

Good question. The answer is that I want to differentiate this particular portion of the HUD in order to avoid confusion.

If you look at the screenshots that I posted yesterday, you'll see that when you click on a set item, you must then click the "SET INFO" button in the item's description box to bring up that set's description.

After playing around with this setup, I felt the need to distinguish the set description HUD from regular item descriptions. I also believe that colorizing the set HUD will make finding a set item more exciting for players.
Jan 28 2011, 3:19 pm
Better idea: Make it so you can change your window color.
Jan 28 2011, 3:31 pm
Even though black was the example picture I linked, personally I like red the best.

I find green rather iffy, but the gray and white ones just look like eyesores. I understand that you prefer white because it's the correct palette swap of the rest of the UI, but it just kinda stands out in a weird way.
Jan 28 2011, 3:32 pm
I think green looks the best. The red reminds me of red screens of death.
Jan 28 2011, 3:39 pm
I'm really digging the inverse color of the white set.
Jan 28 2011, 4:12 pm
Ah, well in that case I'll throw my vote in for the red and white. It just has that extra pop and stands out without being ugly.
Jan 28 2011, 4:15 pm
Come on you Red's, i was the 2'nd red voter, and it's doing well! lol.
Jan 28 2011, 4:39 pm
Green all the way.
Jan 28 2011, 4:47 pm
It's good to hear that people notice :)

Speaking of which, I had links bookmarked, but IainPeregrine's twofer with a tie-in for developer funding and Tom's announcement seemed to take precedence on the Facebook page. I figured I'd aim for after the weekend's update. To be clear, any rants I've made about posting the same games repeatedly is meant towards the lack of variety rather than those games themselves. =)
Jan 28 2011, 5:05 pm
ACWraith wrote:
To be clear, any rants I've made about posting the same games repeatedly is meant towards the lack of variety rather than those games themselves. =)

No worries, I understand :)

You're doing a great job with updating the Facebook page and keeping things diverse - especially considering what you have to work with for news around here.
Jan 28 2011, 5:47 pm
I prefer red, although I find all of them off-putting. Have you considered changing the text color rather than the background color? I think it looks a lot nicer.

http://db.tt/n8SFj3N
http://db.tt/zDUxacp
http://db.tt/VHiBD30
http://db.tt/7l2phlI
Jan 28 2011, 6:16 pm
C_Dawg_S wrote:
I prefer red, although I find all of them off-putting. Have you considered changing the text color rather than the background color? I think it looks a lot nicer.

I agree that it looks nice, and if I weren't setting limits for myself then I'd probably go that route.

The problem is that including colored text in the Set HUD begs the questions: Why isn't there colored text in other parts of the game? Why aren't the item names a different color in my inventory?

Eventually I'd get to a point where multi-colored text was everywhere. I don't believe that it would look all that great if widely used, and it would certainly break my NES color limit rules.
Jan 28 2011, 7:32 pm
Well, to be a complete devil's advocate here: Why aren't there colored backgrounds in other parts of the game?
Wouldn't it be the same principle?
Jan 28 2011, 7:54 pm
Oasiscircle wrote:
Well, to be a complete devil's advocate here: Why aren't there colored backgrounds in other parts of the game?
Wouldn't it be the same principle?

Yes and no. This is where we begin to wade into that hard to articulate territory of design aesthetics, but I'll do my best.

If we were to add different colored text across the board, you might have 3-4 different colors in your inventory depending on the type of items you were carrying. This would begin to look more SNES-like, and in my opinion fairly jumbled as well.

However, if you simply recolor the background of a large area (like a menu) with a color that's already being used in the palette, then that is much more in keeping with the established NES look.


On the other hand, the reason that some people have used the word "jarring" to describe these images is because the new HUD colors do in fact break with NEStalgia's current aesthetic in some ways. It's simply my opinion that the pros are greater than the cons in this case, which is why I'm willing to do it.

Hopefully that makes sense.
Jan 28 2011, 8:18 pm
While the votes appear to be swinging towards red as I type this, I'd be concerned about the red-white colorblind. I'm guessing that it would have low contrast sort of like the white on gray.
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