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October 2024

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10/1/2024

I hate user interfaces. I hate them. It's such an arbitrary fusion of function and form.

I hate making them and I hate using them. A good UI does not draw attention to itself, and yet I see these infurtiating interfaces for shops, restaurants and other businesses that insist on treating the whole experience like a theme park ride. Flavor text everywhere, poppy colors, everything animated. It's all facades designed to keep you confined. It is obtrusive and insistent.

I like UIs that fall to the background. UIs that don't suffer themselves with ridiculous animations or focal points.

Skyrim comes close. The menus are actually really nice and it's so easy to find what you need at a glance. The HUD is garbage though, I suspect it's using that wretched Scaleform that blights so many modern games these days. Everything is packaged and queued. Nothing scales properly. There's no flexibility, but also no rigidity. It's just a long strip of rubbery gum. Multiple Quest Start sequences and Skill Up sequences will play out neatly before you, telling you absolutely nothing useful. Icons dot nearly every available pixel, and yet are impossible to click or actually interact with. There's a certain "responsiveness" that Scaleform just utterly neglects, and I loathe it.

Sorry. Not sure where this venom is coming from. Try and guess what part of Xgram I'm working on.

I hate making UIs because it is a wholly visual design experience. You have to strike a balance between function and form. If one compromises the other too much it can ruin the entire flavor of the game. If each and every curve is not properly measured, the entire thing will feel clunky to use and your interest will begin to detatch.

My mind's eye is very weak. I can picture an apple, but it is missing things. I see the red, I see the shape, but I cannot make out the intricate shimmer on its smooth surface. I cannot distinguish between the palest of reds and the deepest ruby shades running almost grainlike patterns across the fruit. I cannot picture the twiggy, dry stem emerging from the crown, nor can I picture the characteristic rounded bumps along the bottom, nor the petaled leaves splayed out on the exact opposite end from where the stem is. I can't picture cutting it open and seeing the succulent, greenish white, crisp and juicy insides dotted with curious little wood-colored seeds and a slightly stained ring around the center.

I can write all of that in the type of detail that makes your mouth water when I utter the words "Granny Smith" or "Fuji", but I can't see it. I do not have the mechanical skill to translate these to paper or screen. I can envision an apple in my hand and yet I am powerless to explain it to you.

I am also partially face blind. I can usually remember a face if I see it, but if asked to describe a face of even the most intimate familiarity I struggle greatly to recall it, let alone describe its features. Barack Obama has big ears. Donald Trump has that hair thing. My first girlfriend had big blue eyes, the shade of blue like a summer evening just after twilight, with pupils as black as the mountain ranges of my hometown after sunset and a lustrous glimmer like a brilliant full moon.

I'm terrible at seeing stuff. Sound is fine, I like the audio aspect of interfaces. And I love function, so I enjoy creating interfaces where stuff is exactly where you need it. Visual interfaces force me into a place that is very uncomfortable, forcing me to rip open very functional and stable code just to stuff a bunch of animations and easing and scaling inside like some kind of plastic surgery abomination.

I think the reason why I hate it so much is that it's the most integral part of a game. If you hate interacting with a game, you hate the game.

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