I have a more UI/UX question. I want to show a building/NPC status window after clicking on the building/NPC in the game. The window will have tabs in it to view various properties.
I’m wondering whether it would be better to show it as a sliding side panel or a movable pop-up window?
I’d love to hear your opinions.
I guess this depends on the kind of game your are making and what information is provided
Well, i agree that this is more of a UX question, and as such it will depend on personal preference and the kind of “vibe” you’d want your game to have.
That said, you could look at this from a player’s point of view and think what you would find most convenient. Some point to consider off the top of my head:
- How much information do you want to display on this status window?
If you have a lot of text, you’d probably prefer a big side-panel dedicated to that window, or at least give your UI elements mouse-over tooltips. - In your game, would you want to compare the status of different buildings/NPCs often?
Think of an equipment’s stat screen in a tactical RPG game (e.g. Fire Emblem or Wakfu) for example, you’d often want to compare equipment’s stats side-by-side to see which one’s better for what you’re aiming for. In that case, pop-up windows would make more sense so you can put them side-by-side, or at least give your players green/red arrows indicating if the status are higher/lower than your current’s.
Another option would be have a button dedicated to circle to the next/previous building/NPC’s stat screen (think something like Pokemon or Monster Sanctuary) - How much can you “group” the information of that stat screen? If you want, for example, a tab/page with all the skills and respective explanation text (which will probably have a lot of information about a few elements), and another with the stats which is just a bunch of numbers (which will have simple information, like just a number, for a bunch of stats), i’d say you can go either way, but your pop-up window would probably want to be a bit bigger so some tabs don’t look so empty compared to others.
- Would you want to cross-check information across different tabs/pages? If you have skill descriptions which mention status scaling (e.g. “Deal 50% [ATK stat] damage”) in one page and all your status in another, it would make sense to have a pop-up screen so you can again put them side by side instead of having to switch pages back and forth to check different information. You could also do something like Monster Sanctuary and always have the important stats visible in every screen, be it the skills one, the equipment one, etc. to avoid this problem.
- How interactive will your stat screen be? If you want it to be just info, it’s probably better to have appear on a side-panel and still have the game running on the larger portion of the screen so to not take so much attention away from the main game screen (think something like the Megaman Battle Network games, where you’d choose your chips while still looking at the game board, or the panel to upgrade your monkeys in Bloons TD 6). If you’d like to put buttons you’d want to use often or have always in hand, like using skills in a RTS game (e.g. Age of Empires), resizable, pinnable pop-up windows would be a good idea.
Don’t know if this would fit your game, but another interesting option would be small pop-up “tooltip” windows that appear when you right-click or mouse-over the building/NPC showing the most relevant stats. Think something like Fire Emblem (health, unit name and equipment appear on “mouse-over”), StarVaders (brief enemy description appears as a pop-up window on right-click. btw, this one’s demo is available in Steam’s NextFest) or Slay the Spire’s buffs/debuffs and enemies’s intent (pop-up tooltip detailing effect on mouse-over)
It’s also worth it to just try and experiment different options and see what just feels best to the gameplay
1 Like