So I had the beginning of my UI drawn here for my game. We can see it has a bit of a cartoony feel at the moment due to being made in Flash. Now this is good for a lot of games but this time I wanted to give it a more professional feel because the player will be interacting with the UI a lot in this game. The interesting thing about UI is your designs goals are opposite to other art goals. Normally you want art to stand out and catch your eye. However good UI is designed to blend in and feel like it belongs on the screen without you even noticing it.

To start off with I used a Bevel filter in the middle to make it look like it indented. Along with a black outline around the main box it starts to stand out. I also added in little faded alpha boxes for where the spells will be. Now this gives a good start but lets try brush it up a bit.

Alright I have upgraded it a bit here now by simply darkening the backdrop, this gives it a more UI feel straight away, I also added lighted gradiants up the top. Making the top brighter than the bottom naturally makes something look more 3D which is what we want here. 

Something was still feeling off about it. So I decided to change the colour to a more lighter blue from the grey and ahhh bingo, it now looks like it belongs on the screen! it also feels more natural to the eye. I then changed the font and colour of the Mage and Skill Points text boxes which instantly gave it a more appealing look. Another small change is I moved the drop shadows on our boxes in by only 3 pixels. It's a small difference, but the trick to using filters is to use them in tiny amounts in very subtle ways to just turn a normal box into a spiffy UI type box. 

And Voila! it now looks much less cartoony and more professional. I may even make small changes to it later.

I've been designing a new game. This time interestingly I took a slightly different approach. I have not coded anything yet, I decided to completely lay out the games UI and art before I even started building it. This is actually quite unusual for me, generally I dive right in, building as I go. I decided it's time for a bit more planning and spent a few days really just letting the stress of design decisions go and just had fun with it like I used to as a kid.

If you have not already noticed, the game is going to be an idle game about eggs. That's right, the more eggs, the more dopamine. Oh boy! Not only that but the games name is a joke on my depression I figured I would give you some interesting knowledge about how the brain works as you play the game, specifically the role of dopamine in gaming. 

The more eggs you get, the more the world will be built around you. Most likely this will be a paid only game released to steam. 

Stay tuned, I'll be releasing more updates on the game as I progress making it. 

The big Eggys Games Flash Collection has now been relased on steam! It features 22 of my games in one with behind the scenes on how each was made! quick it's 40% off at the moment! get in why the discount lasts!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1002520/Eggys_Games_Flash_Collection

Eggys Games Flash Collection is now coming soon to Steam! it features 22 of my best games all packaged into one exe that you can run off your computer which will be handy in the future when Flash gets removed from the web. It also features 22 behind the scenes documents showing how each game was made and some information about it. 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1002520/Eggys_Games_Flash_Collection