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Analyze hotkey eve3/10/2023 ![]() The designed symbols are non-language or culture specific, such as an arrow to move a unit, allowing for more intuitive, pickup and play controls. If the unit is not under the player’s control you see only a scan and a portrait.Ĭontrol buttons, which each have coordinating and customizable hotkeys, are identified with pictures of units for unit creation and universal design symbols for actions and directions. From left to right it features a map of the battleground, a smaller screen with the unit you’ve selected and it’s hitpoints and construction que if it’s a building, then an animated portrait of the selected unit, and finally actions that the player can order the selected unit to do. The main “dashboard” is comprised of directly relevant controls and information, as well as some artistic information. Static information of which you have no direct input on such as information about your resources and teams, as well as menus not directly relevant to gameplay are organized in smaller symbols and font along the top of the screen. The tools to do this are organized horizontally along the bottom on the screen and, navigationally, fall somewhere between a dashboard and a website. The ingame interface is used to coordinate and control the large number of buildings and units on the game map. I imagine this might have become a choice of violating the “thesis” of the design for the sake of the image quality of the design. The only thing that I found jarring to this sense of immersion was the presence of digital paintings in the background of certain windows, which added to the aesthetic but shipped at the sense of these windows being physical control consoles aboard a ship. This sense of immersion implies that the menu itself is a part of the “active” game world, which is an ongoing thing with it’s own time and that this “scene” of menu selection is a quiet moment that exists between the high-pitched situations that make up the actual game. We get the vague impression that this menu is being viewed first-person from a control console on a ship looking out at the space scene directly outside of it. Having the menu interface so closely resemble the in-game interface of the terrans creates a sense of continuity between the menu and “active” game world, and therefore a sense of immersion. This emulates the design of the terrans, who the single player campaign is based around and have a distinct aesthetic that conveys a working class and industrial lack of concern for aesthetic. The rendered elements of the menus are largely straight-edged, metallic and industrial with a worn quality to their texture. When you are in a menu that uses less or smaller windows, you can see beyond them to a fully 3D animated space scene of stars, battleships, and a rotating planet (a planet whose day-night cycle takes about 30 seconds by my count). The main windows are representational, meaning they’ve been rendered to appear constructed of physical metal and glass, while the chat and pop up windows, while still distinctive and artistic in appearance, have a more insubstantial quality. Note that EVE Online retains the straight, thin lines and wideset block shapes of this convention but uses sharp corners and breaks along the mid-line thingy (I’m not a graphic designer) of the letters. and replaced the blocky, jagged distant futures that were conveyed in the 80s and 90s. Such design choices for the science fiction genre are relatively new, having been influenced by the “blocky but rounded” modern technology of Apple and co. ![]() The broad, squared off shapes of each letters harken to a vaguely militaristic feel, while it’s corned edges and thin, smooth lines retain their futuristic/scientific quality. ![]() The buttons and menus are labeled in clean, plain font for the smaller, usually more technical parts and slightly blockier, bolder futuristic font labeling the more prominent buttons such as the ones that bring you to the game world.Īs with all design choices, the seemingly neutral nature of this font itself conveys it’s own information: clean, serious, impartial, scientific, sleek, futuristic and empirical. The main menu page of Starcraft 2, accessed after logging into Blizzard’s online service,, regardless of whether you intend to play a single or multiplayer game, is a set of fixed windows and large, buttons made up of a combination of 3D rendered and lighting and classic pixel-painted 2D elements. ![]()
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