It's understandable if it's an established way to do it. I have tried to get QSP working but can't figure out how, so I can't say if it's similar or not.
I can expand exactly what is cluttered and needlessly complicated from my point of view:
-It is possible to fail the tutorial and softlock the game, because the tutorial expects a specific button to be pressed, but the same tutorial shows multiple buttons, and multiple buttons are present in that same place, including the ones shown by the tutorial.
-Both actions and "Confirm that you're done with this screen" are in the same place.
-Actions are not obvious. For instance the button to talk does not mention what's going to be talked about.
-The interact menu is separate from the "people who are here" menu, despite the "people who are here" menu only being relevant to.. well, interactions - at least as far as I can tell without having gone past about 10 minutes of trying to figure out the UI
-Movement icons are pictures of places rather than actual movement icons, and the pictures are not very clear due to their size. Name buttons would be clearer. "Go downstairs" "Kitchen" etc rather than images of the inside of a house with fairly unidentifiable things in them at a glance.
-Text shows up both in the middle and on the menu in the right, when interactions are done. It's not clear which text is to be read first or which text is more relevant. It seems to be a combination of both, but again, unclear.
As some people put it, a UI that needs to be explained is not a good UI. Of course a good UI can be explained, but if it /needs/ to be, it's self-defeating.
Not sure about retro. I've played old RPGs.
I should say its my take on the qsp style.. I'd like to think i have improved on it where qsp often had a lot of scroll bars in the panels and often things did not fit to the screen...
Regarding the points you made.
Tutorial and other places.. I do need to work on softlocks / escaping out of quest dialogue by other buttons being seen..
I think the tutorial is never totally softlocked to be fair tho.. I think if you went forward to the correct time the next day, you will find it sat there again waiting..
At this stage the talk option only has 1 topic.. so talk is talk.. but as the game builds and every npc has talks and other interactions, I would like to be able to give more talk options..
the interactions menu is relevant to people or items.. so thats why its seperate..
The movement pictures do have mouseovers.. so a small pause will show the location name.. I do agree the limited size of the image is hard to sometimes work out where you are going.. I might consider adding a layer of text onto the button with the place name... but not sure how that will play out, will look at that for the next engine build version (release after next).
Most of the text should appear on the right side... any text appearing on the left would be in the interaction section where you can choose an outcome... I cant think of a time where text appears in the middle.. but I could be wrong..
Being the builder of the game its hard to say how intuitive the layout is, because its very familiar to me.. I have taken on board some recommendations from others and adapted a few things.. (the colour scheme, which no one even mentions, the map now has mouse over locations that show who is at that location)..
I think the ui will continue to adapt as I and others spot improvements.. but I would be very surprised if it ever took a complete re haul..
thanks again for your comments
