That is why we decided to stick to our initial, practical solution of rectangular tiles. For example, circles and hexagons are impractical due to all the empty space they leave along their edges and the awkwardly shaped negative space around them. As I mentioned above, some sci-fi UI clichés are pretty terrible to implement into an interface people are actually supposed to use.
#ECONOMIC SPACE SIMULATOR GAMES HOW TO#
Secondly, we thought about how to introduce more sci-fi flavor into APEX’s visuals. Space travel is itself a big pillar of the game’s industry. Your trade partners might reside on other planets or other systems. Where does the sci-fi come in?įirstly – and most obviously –, your company operates in a sci-fi setting. The player can fill up all tiles with their desired information:Ī drop-down at the top lets the player cycle through the Screens they have set up. To grant every player maximum flexibility in what they do and what information they track, players can set up their tiles completely by themselves. –, there is a near-endless number of different contents a tile can display. Because tiles can be specific to instances of things – like planets, bases, flight routes etc. Or the exchange rate history of two currencies.
Or everything about the “Farm” building type. A tile displays a specific set of information like, say, the contents of a planetary storage.
If you watched the video at the top of this article, you already got an idea of what I mean by that.Īt the core of APEX’s flexibility lies the idea of tiles. That’s where APEX is different from just about every video game interface out there: its many possibilities for customization. To achieve this kind of flexibility during gameplay, it needed to be reflected in APEX’s design. The latter is a term we don’t mention very often, even though it’s fairly central to our vision: Players should be able to set their own goals and find their own ways to reach them. Prosperous Universe is a hybrid of different genres: sci-fi MMO, business simulation, strategy game, sandbox.
Users can buy and sell goods, check their companies’ balance statements, keep tabs on their workforce, track the values of different currencies, and much, much more. There are plenty of those to draw inspiration from in the real world, SAP being one example that’s famous here in Germany:Īt this point, APEX has a big number of features akin to any other business management software, only with a twist towards sci-fi content. At its core, APEX is an enterprise management software. Let’s talk about where our journey started: with functionality. That is why, after APEX’s core functions were established and a high degree of usability was ensured, we started working our way back towards cool looks in an effort to strike the perfect compromise between practical design and sci-fi flavor. Since we tried to create a realistic, grounded experience through a believable and practical UI that our players would actually need to understand and use, we drew our initial inspiration from real pieces of software. On the other end of the spectrum, we have real user interfaces which were designed as pragmatically as possible. As a result, they look incredibly cool – but if you take a closer look, they are often extremely impractical and borderline impossible to use by a real person. Some artists are specialized in making only these UIs, taking endless hours to perfect them visually for a few seconds of screen time glory.
#ECONOMIC SPACE SIMULATOR GAMES MOVIE#
What’s the last big-budget movie with a futuristic touch you’ve watched?Ĭhances are it featured a fair share of sci-fi user interfaces. The way I see it, the major conflict in APEX’s design process has been this: Interfaces that look really cool aren’t practical to work with, and vice versa.
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