Looking for GUI feedback

[Sparky]

I'm not sure I'm posting in the right place, but as far as I can tell from "read before posting" threads this is the best place. I'm working on a GUI for an unannounced AGS project, and I'm putting a lot of work into making it professional and well thought out. The main goals are simplicity and user friendliness. I have a few ideas I'd appreciate feedback on.

The GUI:

• There's an inventory panel that runs across the top of the screen.
  
• Below that there's a line of context sensitive text.
  
• On launching the game, the player is presented with a splash screen containing "New game", "Restore", and "Quit" buttons.
  
• On entering a room, the name of the room is briefly displayed across the bottom of the screen along with a small icon.

There are three modes of interaction:

• Right click is look.
  
• Left click is multifunction- walk to/open/close/interact/talk/pick up. The text line changes to reflect what verb is currently appropriate. For example it might say "pick up matchbook", "close door" or "talk to Mr. Smith".
  
• Clicking on an inventory item changes the cursor to that item. Left clicking uses the item on the target.
  

Unresolved issues:
(1) How should the GUI handle non-interactive objects? To clarify, there are a lot of background hotspots like "painting" or "potted plant" in the game. Should both left and right click look at the object? Or should left clicking give a custom message to the effect of "I can't interact with that."?
(2) Should the text line display both left and right click information? It would be color coded it, and look something like this:
[color=333366]Left click: open chest[/color] | [color=663333]Right click: look at chest[/color]
I'm considering adding a picture of a mouse with color coded buttons that sits where the "|" is in the example above.
(3) How should I integrate the save/quit/restore options? I like how clean the GUI is right now, and would prefer not to add any buttons from that point of view. I'm leaning toward using keyboard shortcuts because of this. However, part of me disagrees and says that a few clearly labeled buttons would be more user friendly. A third option is moving those buttons to a pause screen (popup modal, comes up on <esc> or <space>). Are there other options I haven't considered?

Any and all feedback is welcome. I'd also be interested to hear what interfaces people have chosen for their own projects and why.

[Vince Twelve]

I think the interface is clean and non-intrusive but also gives more than enough feedback to the player to be useful.

As for the unresolved issue, I would say that a background object or hotspot that has no use in the game other than decoration should not have any notification on the status bar. 

The contextual text on the status bar is there to help the player know when he's found something that can be interacted with.  So when text appears on the status bar he knows that he's found something of importance.  If the status bar has text constantly (like "Walk to", "Look at"), it has kind of lost its usefulness in that I have to actually read the whole thing to know what my click is going to do.  If the text bar is empty and something only pops up when I'm mousing over something that has a meaningful interaction (like "open" "close" "interact" "talk" "pick up") then the appearance of text is a clearer visual indication or interactivity.

I'd just leave out something like "Take painting" -> "I'm not an art thief."  It's pretty much useless.  Though some old-school adventure players might still yearn for such things...  I am not of the opinion that "waste time clicking on things that do nothing" is an interesting puzzle.  Just let a right click examine the object, and leave the status bar blank indicating that a left click will just be a walk-to command.

This way it's clear that a click when there is no text will be a walk command and every right click is a look-at command.  There's no need to indicate these two commands with text on the status bar.  Keep it clean.

At least, that's what I'd do.  (and kind of close to what I am doing in my next game...)

[GarageGothic]

Sounds like a very basic setup you've got there. Nice, I like simple interfaces.

1) What's the point in telling the player he can't interact with something? Just make the left button run the "look" interaction. Since you've got the text line to tell what the click will do, this should surprise nobody.

2) Don't bother specifying the right button action if it's always the same (but then it MUST always be the same, that is, give a brief description of the item that is not necessary to complete the game - you can't have it act as "Search" in some other context). In fact, I would prefer not mentioning the mouse buttons in the text line as it ruins some of the immersion. "Open chest" is fine.

3) Go with the pause menu (hell, only AGS games have the save/load/quit functions right in the icon bar and it's such a waste of screen space considering how little you use them - not to mention that bloody "about" button people use). I suggest having F5/F7 open the save/load windows too and allow for F6/F9 quicksave/quickload like other game genres do.

[Sparky]

Vince Twelve:
Good point about visual feedback. I think you're right that it would be clearer to use a blank status bar for "walk to" and only show verb + noun text when we're over an object/hotspot/character. I'll definitely make that change. Thanks for reaffirming my goal of keeping things minimal. Regarding "Take painting" -> "I'm not an art thief." type interactions: I agree, that's not a useful interaction. It can also be frustrating to the novice player. Repeated "I can't do that." messages can create a sort of antagonistic relationship with the player character, which I want to avoid in this case.

GarageGothic:
(1) In cases where an object like a tapestry or painting only has a "look at" interaction, the status bar will say "look at painting" or perhaps just "painting". I've played with the idea that left click should also be "look at" in these cases. I'm a little worried that it would be confusing. The other option is having left click be "walk to" or do nothing. Hmm, here's an idea. What about displaying the object name in a dimly colored font in 'look only' cases, and using a brighter font and "verb + noun" text for more important interactive objects?
(2) Yeah, the right click is always the same. It's always optional, it never does things like "look at coat on coat rack > give player key from coat pocket". And that's a good point about immersion. I'm trying to balance simplicity and user feedback here, and maybe displaying "right click: look at noun" all the time is too much feedback. As Vince Twelve said, it might even be less informative.
(3) Use a pause menu? Yeah, those icon bar buttons always bothered me too. I think I'll do that, it seems like the best compromise. I'll also definitely have hotkeys for save, load, quicksave, quickload, and quit functions. Thanks for suggesting using the standard layout, I think I'll take you up on that.

Thoughts so far
(1) I'm currently leaning toward "noun" in a dim font for scenery, and "verb + noun" in a brighter font for important objects.
(2) It looks like so far people are against the idea of displaying status bar text for both left and right buttons. As a player I am myself, but I wonder if a novice to the adventure game genre would agree. I don't want to make the game inaccessible or confusing to beginners, so I'm trying to anticipate any problems people might have. I'll be curious to hear what other people think.
(3) The pause dialog with keyboard hotkeys seems like the best option, though I'd still be interested to hear people's thoughts on other options.