I'm working on a game about alternative energy strategies for the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition. I made it past the first cut of games, and now I'm trying to clean up the game before the second cut. The biggest issue is that there are a ton of ugly floating point numbers on the screen. I'd like to smooth things out so that players aren't assaulted by intimidating numbers, but I don't want to hide any critical information. Here's what the game looks like right now: http://imgur.com/MBE5U.png The numbers on the left side reports are acceptable, but the statistics on the right side and above/below the power plants are a problem. I *need* to display the Waste statistic, Upkeep statistic, and Prospects value (good, bad, regular) for each technology, and I need to indicate the Waste and Upkeep of each power plant. I've considered using horizontal bars, but a) I'm already using those in other contexts and it could get confusing, and b) the values range from 0 to 15, and I need to show changes as small as 0.5. This would be imperceptible in the movement of a progress bar. Is there any elegant way to clean up these floats?

Reminds me of the board-game Power Grid.

Anyway, instead of status bars you could use tokens of some sort. If upkeep is determined in money then you could use a green bill with an integer inside for the dollar amount and then use 1-4 silver coins beside it each representing 20 cents. That would probably give you enough granularity for the values you need to display.

The other approach is to simplify the waste/upkeep costs so that they are integer values ranging from 1-4. If that isn't adequate then add another denomination e.g. red tokens count for 3 and white tokens count for 1.

To make room for these tokens the Waste and Upkeep labels would be replaced by icons e.g. a garbage can and a shovel.

Turning the prospects into a colored icon(already appears to be color coded) would be an easy way to free up some space. Would the player have enough knowledge of the stats that you could reduced the labels to just "W" and "U?" If that works then you could easily fit 15 vertical bars that could also be cut in half(vertically) to represent those .5's. Color coding the bars(maybe tint each group of five slightly different to speed up counting.

I like the idea of using vertical bars. I might just use 15 vertical bars with the last bar in the line lengthened proportionally (i.e. not just in half) and the bars color-coded according to their severity. That is, the first bar is green, the seventh is yellow, and the fifteenth is red.

Rather than go with a W and a U, I might go for a dollar sign icon and an icon for Waste (any suggestions for something indicating "pollution" in general?).

I had considered simplifying the underlying statistics, but I don't see a way to do that without substantially changing the rest of the game, which I'm no longer willing to do.

Waste could use a skull and crossbones, like the character N from the Wingdings font.

I've been experimenting with a vertical bar UI scheme (see http://imgur.com/MHCO2.png). It's OK, but still may not show the very small changes in the stats that are critical to the game. I considered including the numbers as well, but then I'm not sure if the bars add anything.

Further, the Waste and Upkeep of each individual plant needs to be displayed as well (see the numbers above and below each in the original screenshot), which the bars wouldn't serve well.

I consulted my roommates; they seem to think that the current number-based UI scheme is fine. It looked awful to me at first, but I can't seem to find a better way. Thoughts?

Despite suggesting changes, I did like the original design. You only have the one number after the decimal which shouldn't be that intimidating, and the color coding of the numbers means that you don't even need to consider the number to tell what's going on.

If the most important thing is the change in the values, you could graph that separately. You could have a tachometer-style display (example) where if the needle is in the middle, your rate is steady, if the needle is to the right, you're increasing and if it's to the left, you're decreasing. If you scale the tachometer correctly, a full-right needle is an "alarming" increase.

Quote:

Original post by Codeka If the most important thing is the change in the values, you could graph that separately. You could have a tachometer-style display (example) where if the needle is in the middle, your rate is steady, if the needle is to the right, you're increasing and if it's to the left, you're decreasing. If you scale the tachometer correctly, a full-right needle is an "alarming" increase.

Cool idea, but the change is not continuous. Rather, I'm dealing with small, discrete changes every half-minute or so.

EDIT: Actually, this idea could work for the main waste counter, but total amount matters for most of the stats in this system, unfortunately.

To me, graphics serve as a quick summary, useful for immediate recognition when glancing over the screen, and especially useful when time is an issue (such as in real-time games).

Try this:

For your Right Panel, you could try showing Waste and Upkeep as horizontal meters, to which both comes out of a Prospects status icon (which will be placed in between the two meters). Greater values means further away from the middle Prospects icon.

Waste, Prospects, Upkeep
<<<<<<<<<[ ]>>>>>>>>>

Right below the meters you could display their numerical data, in small font. Additionally you could play around with showing 0.X of a meter unit (either originating from the bottom, or from the center of the unit).

For your main game screen in the middle, you could use the same configuration, but now make the meters vertical on the sides of the structure icons, and move the numerical displays to a pop-up to which appears when you hover your cursor over an icon for some seconds/milliseconds.

[Edited by - Tangireon on April 16, 2009 1:30:06 AM]