Crafting Destruction

Dino Ignacio
Twitter: @dinoignacio Email: dignacio@ea.com

The Evolution of the Dead Space User Interface

Lead UI Designer, EA Visceral Games

Crafting Success: A Deeper Look at Castlevilles Crafting System

Room 303 South Hall

Crafting Destruction
General

The Evolution of the Dead Space User Interface

Core Ideas The Aesthetics The The The The RIG Frontend Evolution BENCH

Specific

and A

AT ITS CORE
Before

I talk about the UI of Dead Space, I will discuss its relation to the game as a whole Dead Space was conceived to be an immersive, story driven, science fiction experience. We wanted to create a game that suspended disbelief and maintained horror all throughout the game play This larger mission helped craft the decisions that informed the UI

THE BACKSTORY
Dead

future Most of the first game transpires in derelict mining vessel called the Ishimura Everyone is dead and the vessel is plagued by space zombies You play the role of an engineer sent on a repair mission

Space was set in a dystopic and depleted

THE APPROACH
Knowing

our core and backstory; we decided the UI needed to fully support and integrate with the rest of the game We designed the Ishimura as a character that had to be believable in the world we created We looked at the UI as an extension of the Ishimura The Sci-Fi setting afforded us the license to use a very diegetic approach to UI

DIEGETIC
The

element exists both for the characters in the fiction and for the audience (or in our case the player) Dietetic sound for example is when a character in a movie plays the radio in his car and he hears the tune but it continues on to the next scene as a soundtrack for the audience

DIEGETIC BY DESIGN
Sci-Fi

this. We were able to wrap typical game conventions like loading screens and save points into believable world elements. Examples:

made it possible for us to do

Door hologram exists as a real world element for Isaac and doubles as a UI element for the player Loading Screens are integrated into tram and space taxi rides

DIEGETIC IN IMPLEMENTATION
To

make UI that actually existed in the game world we had to come up with an innovative way of doing it. Traditionally UI was built with 2D tools like Flash We needed our UI to live in the 3D space so we decided to use the game engines particle system

THE RULES
One

of the cornerstones of good design is to have a rule set Isaac is always on the left side of the screen, even when interacting with UI. (We are always in 3rd person) Non-diegetic UI appears behind Isaac All interactive UI must live around 1.5 meters above the ground plane We set up a strict color language

Blue/White means interactive Red means locked / not interactive at the moment Orange/Amber means ambient

THE LOOK
As

much as it was futuristic, it was a depleted and broken future This was not Star Trek; we are set in a derelict mining ship The UI needed to feel unpredictable and broken

THE LOOK
We

took inspiration from flickering fluorescent lights and dentist lamps Static and scan lines also added a distinct feel We used skeuomorphs to trigger nostalgic emotions

SKEUOMORPHS
A

derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original May be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar Examples: the handle on a bottle of maple syrup, the wood paneling on cars, hubcaps with spokes, the paper texture on the iPhones notepad.

THE RIG
This

is the most recognizable piece of UI in our game It evolved out of the necessity to keep the player immersed We needed a way to message your health level, your inventory, your ammo count and your map location without cluttering the game space

THE RIG
The

RIG was an attempt to package all these essential gaming interfaces into a collapsible construct As many games left all this information in a HUD format that broke the 4th wall, we attempted to disguise all these systems into diegesis

THE HEALTH BAR

Apart

from the visor this maybe the most iconic part of the game Many iterations were made in its development

THE HEALTH BAR

We

tried many designs Some more elaborate than others In the end simplicity was the way to go The most understated look ended up being clearest and the most iconic

THE HEALTH BAR

It

evolved very little over the three games all the tweaks to this system has been superficial

The first games health bar looked like a tube of light The second one was turned into a hologram And the one in DS3 has a little more vintage circuitry detail

THE INVENTORY
We

made many attempts at this core system We had more elaborate attempts but in the end usability won

THE INVENTORY
We

have updated the system quite a bit over the course of the franchise The changing environment and game requirements directly affected its evolution

THE WEAPON SELECTOR

The

idea was to find a quick way to switch weapons without needing to go to your inventory The idea has stayed pretty simple and evolved very little In DS3 we had to lessen the number of weapons you can carry to accommodate the more elaborate and robust weapons you can make

THE MAP
This

is one of my favorite systems from the first Dead Space It was a very beautiful reinterpretation of the HUD map Unfortunately it was completely unusable

THE LOCATOR
In

the last month of production of the first game, we realized the Map was unsalvageable and we had to come up with another way of helping the player traverse the game The Locator was born out of desperation we just needed a way to point the player in the right direction

THE LOCATOR
It

turned out to be one of the most loved features of the game We have expanded on this system over the course of the franchise With Isaac getting more mobile we had to redesign the system to work better in Zero-G

THE FRONTEND
The

game was designed to be one solid seamless experience We have deviated a little bit in the sequels with trombone cameras and whip shots but basically Dead Space plays with no cuts from the beginning to end The Frontend was designed to be the start of your experience We used it as an portal to lead you into the game

THE DEAD SPACE 1 FRONTEND

We

had a very elaborate plan for the first games frontend It involved seeing holographic menus in organic matter with images and videos of people turning into necromorphs with bones and muscles twisting and mangling

THE DEAD SPACE 1 FRONTEND

It

proved to be to expensive as we didnt have the animation and the modeling budget to create high resolution muscles and bones that late in production So we decided to improvise I asked my producer to give me $500 I bought a butchered lamb for us to video and dissect

THE DEAD SPACE 2 FRONTEND

The

game centered around information about the Marker that was locked in Isaacs brain We built the UI in support of this and helped tell the story We added a metagame where the further you progress in the game these fragments of rock coalesced into a Marker inside Isaacs brain

THE DEAD SPACE 3 FRONTEND

This

has been visually the most ambitious one weve done We left the confines of the abstract and place our UI in an environment

THE DEAD SPACE 3 FRONTEND

The

frontend occurs in a lab where slabs of an creature are frozen in blocks of ice And much like the second game we reveal more or the creature as you progress through the game

10 SECOND KITTY BREAK

Look

at this cat

10 SECOND KITTY BREAK

Just

look at it

10 SECOND KITTY BREAK

Look.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LOOK

Story

has always been the core of the game We wanted the UI to truly be integrated to the story This being the case, we always made sure it had a personality and an arc We gave it life by making sure it reflected the environment it resided in We also gave it progression and a sense of growth

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LOOK

The

UI of first Dead Space was (as mentioned earlier) a mirror of the state of the Ishimura It was broken and erratic

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LOOK

In

Dead Space 2 the UI mirrored the vastness of the Titan Sprawl The UI was a little more advanced and sleeker to reflect the more advanced environment

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LOOK

Dead

Space 3 is set on a planet with artifacts from 200 years into the past We designed the UI to be retro futuristic Where we had floating light based holograms in the first 2 games Dead Space 3 featured glass based holograms that lived within confined frames

THE BENCH
We

always wanted to show Isaac as an intelligent and resourceful individual that had to overcome his challenges with his wit All his original weapons were modified construction tools The original BENCH allowed the player to add circuits along upgrade trees to tweak and modify his weapons As much we loved this feature we always knew we wanted to do more with it In Dead Space 3 we decided to double down and redesign the feature

DESIGNING BENCH 2.0

The

challenge was to make a robust weapon crafting system that was deep enough for the core player but was simple enough for the average gamer We had seen some very intuitive crafting systems on PC games but we knew the metaphor would not translate very well to the console We needed to create a system that played well with a controller

BENCH 2.0 CONCEPTS

The

original concept used a more analog metaphor All the weapon parts were little boxes that slid across a conveyor behind glass The hope was to make the crafting process feel more real and less UI We got really far with this version. It was pretty but admittedly not very user friendly

BENCH 2.0 PROBLEMS

The

multiple screens made sense in older Dead Space UI as it helped ground our UI in the world This did not work on the new BENCH with the sheer amount of information we had to put on screen

BENCH 2.0 PROBLEMS

In

the past Isaac never left our screen at any time He was always in view. We never did a full UI screen The new BENCH as we had a lot more detail to show The Dev team kept using the debug way of building a gun rather than use the BENCH (this was a clear sign we were doing it wrong)

BENCH 2.1 2.3 2.5 3

The

final iteration is a lot more streamlined and easy to use It implements a very intuitive use of the analog stick It allows you to build a gun in 3 clicks The system is still very Dead Space despite the deviations from the norm

BENCH LESSONS LEARNED

We

had to accept that having an easy to use intuitive interface is ultimately more important than keeping our aesthetic conventions

FINAL THOUGHTS
Dead

space has been an amazing project to be part of The world allowed for some amazing innovations I personally feel that our contributions will resonate into the next gen of games I feel very fortunate to have been part of it The sheer talent on this franchise is staggering Thank you for coming along for the ride

THANK YOUS
Chuck Beaver Jason Leong John Geraci Leo Lee Richard Carrillo Tracy Espeleta Andy Wright Christy Yen Jeremie Benhamou Matt Gallias Michael Yen Bill Fowler Ford Hu Megan Berry

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS

Dino Ignacio Twitter: @dinoignacio Email: dignacio@ea.com