Re: [GD-Design] (GUI) Playfield aspect ratio

[Daniel R. <re...@ce...>]

Hi Brian,

i didn't read all the posts (hell, you guys allways post so many that i
never wade through all of them).

old 2d games, like good'ol dune2 or c&c(1) had their menues on the right
side, was exactly what you talked about: equal distances in the playfield
(displaying it squared).

more modern games, having a lower (than from top birds eye view)
perspective, be it 2d iso or real 3d, do most have about 45 to 60°, which
makes a squared 2d playground fit into a screen res of about 2:1, which
let's games like blizzards craft series use aprox. 1/4 of the screenwidth
(which is one third of the screenheight in pixels) as interface space ...

kind regards,
    daniel 'sirleto' renkel

re...@ce...
re...@ma...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Hook" <ho...@py...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 4:22 AM
Subject: [GD-Design] (GUI) Playfield aspect ratio


Okay, this is one of the more esoteric observations I'll make, but I
have to ask since it's been bugging me.

For games with HUD elements, the typical choice you see is to either
place the elements along the bottom, or possibly along the bottom and
one side.

To me, placing elements in an L or reverse L makes a lot more sense,
since you get a playfield area that is much closer to square than a
typical 4:3 or 16:9.  This is desirable because it gives you an equal
amount of play room in both directions.

However I've noticed that some games, such as Warcraft 3, put all the
GUI elements along the top and bottom, and this in turn actually
accentuates the rectangularity of the playfield.  You get an extreme
letterbox effect, which I would intuitively find undesirable.

The main reasons I can see for preferring this layout are:

1.  Text prefers to be wide, so for chat dialogs, etc. it's better to
have it along the bottom.

2.  Letterbox is perceived as more "cinematic".

But I still don't think I like it.  Are there other obvious reasons
I'm missing?

Brian




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