Recently, I have been working on an medieval-style RTS game for my Major Qualifying Project for my senior year at WPI. The game is being built in the Unity3D engine and I am one of the artists on the team. One of the things I am tasked with creating is the game's user interface. I want to keep the design simplistic but also have all the the necessary buttons and information at the player's fingertips. The core gampelay mechanic of our game centers around "miracles" which are earned by the players side (the Aetherians) and can be used to decimate forces on the enemy side (the Gremlocks). So far, we have decided to focus on creating 4 different miracles to put in-game and then if we have time we have ideas for some others we would like to put in.
Each miracle is tied directly to a "Relic" which are control points in the form of ancient artifacts which are placed somewhere in the field of battle. Once a Relic is captured, the player earns the specific miracle attached to that relic for as long as they hold control of that point. When a player captures a relic, the corresponding miracle shows up on their UI utility bar. Each miracle has a specific cool-down period in between casting. You can see that each miracle has its own "mana bar" which correlates to the cool-down time. Once a miracle is ready to be used, the blue bar around it will show full. Once a miracle is selected from the utility bar in the UI, the miracle icon glows bright blue signaling that that miracle has been selected and is ready to be placed into the scene by the player.
The player also takes control of their own avatar which they can use to lead their troops into battle. The avatar acts as a vehicle for the player to cast miracles in certain areas of the map. The player moves the avatar strategically in order to capture relics and overtake enemy strongholds. The avatar icon displayed at the top left of the UI displays the avatars current health in green (red if low).
[UPDATE]
Our game has changed genres a bit from first being an RTS to becoming more of a single player battle arena game similar to League of Legends (without the multiplayer). However, it also has elements of a god game. I decided to iterate on a new version of the UI to reflect the changes made to our game and also to better fit the style of the game.
Here is a picture of of how the new UI is going look:
in-game screenshot:
close up of the minimap and icons:
The rally flag selection UI panel I created which was cut from the final game.
The main menu
The directions menu
The Aetherian HQ castle
The Gremlock HQ castle. I created the terrain as well as did all of the lighting and FX.
The Aetherian barracks (where troops spawned) and the Aetherian defense Towers
Aetherian Barracks in the editor.
An Aetherian Tower in the editor.
The Meteor Relic
The Flood Relic
The Volcano Relic
The Heal Relic
Some of the textures I created for the game:
