Unit Selection & Information Box

Overview

Unit selection in this game will give players feedback and gameplay experience through intuitive visual interactions. At this stage, our design goal is to create an information box through interactions such as clicks. Whenever the user clicks on a unit with the left mouse button, information about this unit will be displayed in the box. At least core information such as name and health value will be displayed.

• Once the user clicks on the empty space, the box will be destroyed.
• Once the user selects another unit, this box will update all information with the newly selected unit.

For our Sprint 1's user testing, see here.

Information box

In RTS games, players usually need to click on the target to operate. At this time, a toolbar displaying information will greatly facilitate the player's operation. This information box is temporarily generated and dynamically updated based on player selections.

In the early development phase of Sprint 1, we generate it like this:

"To be edited"

At the same time, we designed its UI like this to fit the theme art style:

The following elements are included in the UI design:

• Thumbnails for each unit. We'll draw unit avatars to give users a clearer idea of the unit they're working with.
• The name and category of the units.
• Independent properties for each unit. This is highly customizable, depending on their development process and design. The Unit Information Box will be matched according to the design of different units.

Then we got a design iteration for a better visuals and layout optimizations.

To be edited

Units involved

We assume that the legitimate targets are friendly soldiers, friendly workers, and friendly buildings.

When a building is selected, the information box will contain:

• the building's avatar
• building's main type
• building's health
• building's upgrade resources needed

When a friendly soldier is selected, the information box will contain:

• the soldier avatar
• soldier's health
• attack power
• defense power
• costs

The presentation of all information is customizable and non-deterministic, any changes and redoes may occur through the game design process.

Ideal Design

A player unit can be selected by left-clicking on it. This should add a highlight/indicator that the unit has been selected, as well as some information about the unit in the HUD (at least the type of the unit and the unit's "health")

When the player holds down the left mouse button and drags their cursor across the screen, a selection box appears. One corner of the selection box is specified by the coordinate at which the drag operation began, while another corner is specified by the current position of the cursor. The remaining two corners are then chosen such that a rectangle is formed.

Any player units which are contained within a selection box when the player releases the left-mouse button are all selected.

Selected units (if any) are unselected when the player presses (and releases) the appropriate key (ESC key by default).

Groups of units for quick selection can be created by pressing ctrl- while unit(s) are selected. These groups can be re-selected by pressing the number key that they were assigned to