Another GUI for not-so-turnbased-strategy game

[NsMn]

Hi, it's me again.

As I mentioned in the Recruit A Team thread, I'm working on some kind of Monopoly clone (which is getting more and more strategy-game-like). For this, I made a small overall-interface:



I kinda like it, only some of the symbols look strange to me. I believe YOU know some way to improve them, I suppose? Thanks 

[Andail]

I think adding colours would do wonders...Don't really see why you've chosen to keep them just black, as it looks very dull to me

[abstauber]

I usually check a site like this for small icons and look how the cooler people do it

What also could look good, is to get rid of the borders and use a "plain" surface. But on the other hand, your design reminds me at those amiga days

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Some of the icons' meanings weren't immediately apparent to me until I read the descriptions, which could cause some confusion for players.  For example, the lightning bolt and the chart use a similar shape.  A tooltip that gives a brief description of the icon on mouse over would further eliminate player confusion, so maybe you could make one of those black areas display the label names of the buttons.  Also, I think cleaning up the linework on the icons themselves would help alot; specifically, getting rid of the more jagged, uneven lines for diagonal ones.

I've done an edit of the buttons with my attempt at making the icons more readily understandable:

1.  Made the road look more like a road using perspective.

2.  Replaced the line chart with a bar chart.  This makes what it's trying to convey more obvious (to me, at least).

3.  Replaced the lightning bolt with the symbol for energy (atomic).  

4.  Cleaned up the lines on the icons and used aliasing and shading to give them more depth.




I think you could have the black interior of the icons light up when clicked on to get rid of some of the dullness Andail mentions, but I think you're on the right track!

[NsMn]

ProgZ... you are just BRILLIANT! Big thanks.

I actually wanted to make a bar displaying the current icon's meaning... looks like I forgot it  
Also, couloring them differently when clicked IS a good idea. Will try that.

[Scarab]

Well what you could do is make it so the pictures on the buttons change to words when you mouse over it, thats what I'm doing for my game, as I was unsatisfied with the clarity of the pictures on the buttons like Look and Inventory, and I feel it helps to get rid of any grey area with the understandability. ProgZ's edit would work well though, so its just a thought.

Peace
Scar.

[De-Communizer]

I think I'd have to jump on the "more colour" bandwagon, possibly a dark red rather than grey all over. Or, at least give the buttons a slightly different shade to the rest of the menu.