Communicator GUI Critique

[MoodyBlues]

I'm working on a GUI that works similarly to the communicator in Captain Blood.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dtg1wkqhznj/gui1.PNG

http://www.mediafire.com/file/hundzmtmmgw/gui2.PNG

Each button symbolizes a word:

Page 1:
hello, yes, plural, me, earth, water, wood, elemental, male, big, good, sick;
goodbye, no, question, you, metal, wind, fire, mortal, female, small, bad, magic;

Page 2:
past (signifies past tense), help, make, give, know, speak, go, north, east;
future (signifies future tense), heal, find, give, need, hear, south, west;

My question:  Do these symbols seem intuitive, more or less?  If not, what other symbols could be better?

[Ubel]

Interesting idea for an interface.

I'm having a little trouble with the symbols for yes and no. How about simply using the basic checkbox v and x? And I think the symbol for sick is too easy to interpret as dead. Not sure what you could do about that... I suggest you give the guy in "make" a hammer to hold, to symbolise actually building/creating something.

Otherwise I do think it's pretty intuitive. I assume the player will be given directions on how to use them.

[Darth Mandarb]

I don't suppose it'd be possible to actually post the images in this thread?

[ALPHATT]

I've uploaded the pics to my photobucket album for easier veiwing if thats not a problem
gui1:


gui2:


Some of them are really weird but mostly I knew wich is wich.

I have one question though: is this a dialog topic selector gui or a general interface?
If it is the latter I'd reconsider having so much functions it's kind of confusing.

Allthough if the whole gameplay builds upon this kind of interface and it works well, I won't have any complaints when playing the game =P.

[MoodyBlues]

I was going to put the images in the thread later, but thanks for doing it for me.

The user constructs sentences with the symbols, and certain characters use the symbols to respond.  For instance, a conversation might go like this:

Player: "elemental ?"
Other guy: "elemental earth metal water air fire wood"
Player: "you help me ?"
Other guy: "yes me help you"

And the character says each word as it appears.

It kind of works like a really simplified text parser.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I intentionally avoided looking at the explanations until I saw the images, and no, I don't think that many of these convey their meaning well.  For instance, the 'hello' and 'goodbye' icons made utterly no sense to me at all until I read what they were, and then I derived that because one was a sun it meant arriving and the moon meant leaving.  The same was true of the different sized boxes and yes/no.  Especially confusing (even after explanation) are the arrows for me/you, elemental/mortal, sick/magic, past/future, make, know, find and need.  None of those icons seem to intuitively convey their meanings.

For future/past, I would go with an hourglass that is either full at the top (past) or all at the bottom (future).  As for how to approach the others to make them less confusing, I'd have to think about it.

I do like the idea, though!

[Helme]

Right now, I have problems to understand, what you want to do with this GUI.

Do you need those many button only for conversations or for puzzles with objects and items, too?

I think many users will be confused with that many buttons.

[MoodyBlues]

Thanks for the critique and the ideas, ProgZmax.  My playtester (aka a friend of mine who played the game for a few minutes) seemed to have a hard time understanding some of the symbols until I explained them to her.  However, to make things a little easier, the word's meaning appears in the lower left corner when the cursor is over the corresponding button.

Right now, I have problems to understand, what you want to do with this GUI.

Do you need those many button only for conversations or for puzzles with objects and items, too?

I think many users will be confused with that many buttons.

These buttons are for conversations only; the GUI is used to communicate with certain characters. 

Each symbol is a word.  If the player wanted to say "help me," he/she would click the "help" and "me" buttons and press "OK."  The other character in the conversation would respond by displaying, for example, the "yes," "me," "help," and "you" symbols to say "yes me help you."

To get an idea of how this works, check out Captain Blood: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Blood_(video_game)

[Dualnames]

An optional GUI Control Function Over label, would really help me out, realizing what button does what, before attempting to see it by pushing the button.

[Helme]

I would prefer to reduce the buttons and create the same effects by combinations.

Instead of 'plural' press the button twice

'take' 'knowledge', means: Tell me
'give' 'knowledge', means: I will tell you

that would reduce all the opposing word pairs to just one word.