Agent Blue UI

Agent Blue has a variety of items, from weapons to ammo counts, that a player needs to keep track of. As we started to get non-engine elements into the game it has been a struggle to balance between the amount of information on the screen and screen clutter. Just for example it's important to know what the exact statistics of a weapon are when deciding if you should throw it away but it's not important to have those stats showing when hiding from an enemy who could sneak up in the screen space covered by the weapon information.

Current inventory screen (not final)

There are alternating phases in Agent Blue, first you get a relaxed mission planning stage and then you are transported to an actual level where you have an objective to complete while pressure mounts. We wanted to give players the ability to choose their items but we don't want them to slow down mid level to puzzle over exact stats, at the same time there are items a player can pick up mid level that they need to be aware of. To solve this issue we added a special function for sliding in specific UI elements.With this functionality we were able to implement both the ability to slide in changed UI elements such as when the player acquires a keycard and the ability to slide in all the nonessential UI if the user holds down a button while not taking over the screen like the inventory screen.

Nonessential UI onscreen (not final)

Nonessential UI offscreen (not final)

The new slide behavior has allowed us to better differentiate between the sections of our game and reinforces the underlying design. To recap we have a larger more detailed view of inventory between levels where a user can really build their character, UI that gets out of the users way and a way to unobtrusively signal that the user has acquired something new that the need to take notice of immediately.