Sandbox Forumsthinking about the em ui87
sl0nderman
just was thinking about the EM interface. really I have no problems with the core of it, a text box and vote checker is all the game really needs to work. but i think it's a large problem for newer players etc. like notice how noavis always veg so i was thinking about how it can be improved.
ive been playing a lot of planet coaster so maybe this is my management sim side kicking in
in my perfect scenario parts of the UI would be modular so if you played BGO you would know that aspects of the game like (chat, inventory, player list, and main game window) can be resized at will depending on what the player wants. i'll expand on this idea in other examples but you'll see what I mean.
ok for the first example of a module i did the town meeting screen
so there's some things to note about this. so you'll notice the graphic and i think having pretty pictures is a good step forward in making the game easier to understand. my idea is that the person who is currently majority voted gets their name and avatar put up on the noose. this idea comes from emjack of course which places vote count next to the name on the vote list.
next comes the players vote. on their screen it will ALWAYS be the top box instead of a random place on the voting list. then of course comes the rest of the votes (yes i realize they don't perfect match up with the number). if you'll notice i chose some longer names here on purpose. if one wished too, they could expand the box and get rid of the ellipses.
ok here's the next one it should be the first thing that like, stands out to a (new) player when they begin the game
![]()
so this is based on my idea for physical cards i was going to make a hard paper deck so that i could easily play mafia with some pals irl but i never ended up doing that because you can just use a normal deck of cards w/ like king is cop and black cards are mafia and crap like that. doesn't matter.
anyway this window could be collapsed entirely for experienced players.
![]()
stick that in the corner of your browser like screw off game i have 1500 points i know how to play. and i forgot to include it on the image there would be a little [?] button that you can click and it would open up the role page in the learn tab so you can read the "helpful tips" and like that old suggestion of user submitted role mechanics like that thread we have now except its on the actual role page where you can find it easily.
so this is based on my idea for physical cards i was going to make a hard paper deck so that i could easily play mafia with some pals irl but i never ended up doing that because you can just use a normal deck of cards w/ like king is cop and black cards are mafia and crap like that. doesn't matter.
anyway this window could be collapsed entirely for experienced players.
stick that in the corner of your browser like screw off game i have 1500 points i know how to play. and i forgot to include it on the image there would be a little [?] button that you can click and it would open up the role page in the learn tab so you can read the "helpful tips" and like that old suggestion of user submitted role mechanics like that thread we have now except its on the actual role page where you can find it easily.
I want to stress this point, because I've brought it up before.
Graphical mode should be made default and be given at least a very basic upgrade. The text box should be made opaque and enlarged. There are all sorts of directions you could take the art: ideally I would want a collection of backgrounds that each game cycles through, with different settings depending on day or night (I know we already have this) or event, like if you're in a night meeting it changes or if it's a library day or lightkeeper day it changes.
I wouldn't do away with text mode entirely, in part because of nostalgia, but with sl0nd's expanding box idea you could just make the text box really big and cover the background art if you wish.
Graphical mode should be made default and be given at least a very basic upgrade. The text box should be made opaque and enlarged. There are all sorts of directions you could take the art: ideally I would want a collection of backgrounds that each game cycles through, with different settings depending on day or night (I know we already have this) or event, like if you're in a night meeting it changes or if it's a library day or lightkeeper day it changes.
I wouldn't do away with text mode entirely, in part because of nostalgia, but with sl0nd's expanding box idea you could just make the text box really big and cover the background art if you wish.
so the header is a hard one to do because you have to fit quite a bit of info into a small space
![]()
i don't think people would care if we made it a bit bigger this could probably be trimmed even further if i was super concerned about it taking up too much room
![]()
so first of all i felt that the day count and page navigation didn't need a whole bar to itself so I just made it buttons. i made a persistent title that defaults to unnamed game but of course games can be named in the normal way and instead of the "strategy" button that i'm PRETTY SURE no one uses i just changed it to show the name of the setup and a link to the setup page. in fact whenever i use the strategy button its to just get the link to the setup page so that solves that. also the lobby and the game number cause they were there before seemed important enough to have them.
the roles you can see are in boxes colored to alignment. what you can't see is that if you were to mouse over a role it would have that roles name and they would be clickable to take you to the learn page. also since this is a closed role setup there are more than fit in the box (but remember before you couldn't see any) so you hit expand and suddenly you can see a box with all the roles in the village/mafia/3rd.
then there's the game settings box instead of icons on the side in a flat line they would appear in that box as applicable to the game at hand.
the next box should actually read "game rules" instead, options and settings sound too alike and I much prefer the word rule in this case because things like "ranked game" or "short times" classify more like rules.
and finally of course is the suicide button that would probably add an extra popup that reads like "you real leave the name now you will not be able to rejoin and it will be counted as a suicide in your stats. if this is a ranked game you may be reported."
i don't think people would care if we made it a bit bigger this could probably be trimmed even further if i was super concerned about it taking up too much room
so first of all i felt that the day count and page navigation didn't need a whole bar to itself so I just made it buttons. i made a persistent title that defaults to unnamed game but of course games can be named in the normal way and instead of the "strategy" button that i'm PRETTY SURE no one uses i just changed it to show the name of the setup and a link to the setup page. in fact whenever i use the strategy button its to just get the link to the setup page so that solves that. also the lobby and the game number cause they were there before seemed important enough to have them.
the roles you can see are in boxes colored to alignment. what you can't see is that if you were to mouse over a role it would have that roles name and they would be clickable to take you to the learn page. also since this is a closed role setup there are more than fit in the box (but remember before you couldn't see any) so you hit expand and suddenly you can see a box with all the roles in the village/mafia/3rd.
then there's the game settings box instead of icons on the side in a flat line they would appear in that box as applicable to the game at hand.
the next box should actually read "game rules" instead, options and settings sound too alike and I much prefer the word rule in this case because things like "ranked game" or "short times" classify more like rules.
and finally of course is the suicide button that would probably add an extra popup that reads like "you real leave the name now you will not be able to rejoin and it will be counted as a suicide in your stats. if this is a ranked game you may be reported."
here's a worse quality one polish wise but it gets the point across. an example of a multi setup that doesn't fill up the role boxes completely. i didn't take out the 3rd party box to show it would fit but it could be removed entirely in these cases. it's also noticeably thinner without really sacrificing information
![]()
also notice the lack of expand buttons i think that once a user recognizes that they can expand there WILL be more to see and when the buttons aren't there you know what you see is all thats in the game
also a significant difference that you may not think about if you only play sandbox games is that this clearly separates the factions into 3 groups so theres no comfusion at all. the blave icons are pretty good at facing right in village and left as mafia but its not totally consistent and also the way the game is setup up mafia and villager are in the setup line first always right next to each other followed by the other village roles which never made much sense to m e.
also notice the lack of expand buttons i think that once a user recognizes that they can expand there WILL be more to see and when the buttons aren't there you know what you see is all thats in the game
also a significant difference that you may not think about if you only play sandbox games is that this clearly separates the factions into 3 groups so theres no comfusion at all. the blave icons are pretty good at facing right in village and left as mafia but its not totally consistent and also the way the game is setup up mafia and villager are in the setup line first always right next to each other followed by the other village roles which never made much sense to m e.
ok this would be a much broader project to make the whole website easier to navigate but i think something like t his for a home screen after logging in would organize things
![]()
this one is kinda gonna be disconnected from the rest of my posts but i think a menu like this would let new players understand what the hell they are supposed to do (and it might drive some people to use fcking games lobby)
you might think that this is unfair to custom lobbies as they aren't on the front page which is why I would propose like a top 3 custom lobby landing page (probably be like vivor, dangan, bakerswag, vidya) and if someone is really looking for a roleplay lobby they know what to search for (also there will be a search bar on that page). honestly no one is going to use a custom lobby unless they already know what lobby they want.
edit: i just had a thought im not a good artist so i'm not going to attempt to draw what i'm thinking here but like a neat image with clickable paths like main lobby leads into a house proper, sandbox leads to a sandbox castle, games leaders to a casino, and custom lobbies leads to a backally so it could be like an image of the mafia village. think like a oldass neopets map or something or like the menu to transformice. something to expand upon.
this one is kinda gonna be disconnected from the rest of my posts but i think a menu like this would let new players understand what the hell they are supposed to do (and it might drive some people to use fcking games lobby)
you might think that this is unfair to custom lobbies as they aren't on the front page which is why I would propose like a top 3 custom lobby landing page (probably be like vivor, dangan, bakerswag, vidya) and if someone is really looking for a roleplay lobby they know what to search for (also there will be a search bar on that page). honestly no one is going to use a custom lobby unless they already know what lobby they want.
edit: i just had a thought im not a good artist so i'm not going to attempt to draw what i'm thinking here but like a neat image with clickable paths like main lobby leads into a house proper, sandbox leads to a sandbox castle, games leaders to a casino, and custom lobbies leads to a backally so it could be like an image of the mafia village. think like a oldass neopets map or something or like the menu to transformice. something to expand upon.
ok so back to the game idea i think the reworking of the site and the lobby system would be a much greater task so one step at a time.
alright im gonna talk about mafia meetings this time
![]()
first thing i thought was making multi maf games more clear about what team you're on. i think right now you can only tell if you're red or black mafia is if one of your teammates dies which it doesn't SUPER matter but i think this is more about reducing confusion.
alright im gonna talk about mafia meetings this time
first thing i thought was making multi maf games more clear about what team you're on. i think right now you can only tell if you're red or black mafia is if one of your teammates dies which it doesn't SUPER matter but i think this is more about reducing confusion.
ok so for the meeting proper
![]()
so i decided to inject some flavor into the mafia meetings so lets go over this from top to bottom. first of all i added this little table with the role icons around it, i think it's a little silly that each person has to say what role they are and there's no reason for your mafia friends to not know what role you are. i made the table a circle because you can place icons equidistant around a circle no matter how many mafia are in a game but the table can probably stand to be smaller. next is a list of non-meeting mafia and since you don't always know their role or who is which if there's 2+, they're just names.
ok so next is "the plan" which is the mafia vote. this changes based on what people choose in their first vote box. you'll see that in my example, i voted no one because i'm the godfather while my lovely goons go out and murder a dude.
next is the afterwards sceen which i know is another nerf to invisible man but who cares that role needs a lot of changing. this is the chance to add a little flavor to the roles which could take some work to think of a line for every mafia role but this shows what the power roles are doing at night. again theres no reason other mafia members SHOULDN'T know this information. except of course in the case of a mastermind where a lot of information will be withheld:
![]()
if you couldn't guess by the votes, here is what it means. there are 3 mafia + the mastermind. since the meeting just started, most of them have defaulted to no one (which i know isn't a feature currently but with drop down selects it can be). mafia-4 is the first one to vote for Ashe so it says that to make this a successful kill other people need to join him in voting.
so i decided to inject some flavor into the mafia meetings so lets go over this from top to bottom. first of all i added this little table with the role icons around it, i think it's a little silly that each person has to say what role they are and there's no reason for your mafia friends to not know what role you are. i made the table a circle because you can place icons equidistant around a circle no matter how many mafia are in a game but the table can probably stand to be smaller. next is a list of non-meeting mafia and since you don't always know their role or who is which if there's 2+, they're just names.
ok so next is "the plan" which is the mafia vote. this changes based on what people choose in their first vote box. you'll see that in my example, i voted no one because i'm the godfather while my lovely goons go out and murder a dude.
next is the afterwards sceen which i know is another nerf to invisible man but who cares that role needs a lot of changing. this is the chance to add a little flavor to the roles which could take some work to think of a line for every mafia role but this shows what the power roles are doing at night. again theres no reason other mafia members SHOULDN'T know this information. except of course in the case of a mastermind where a lot of information will be withheld:
if you couldn't guess by the votes, here is what it means. there are 3 mafia + the mastermind. since the meeting just started, most of them have defaulted to no one (which i know isn't a feature currently but with drop down selects it can be). mafia-4 is the first one to vote for Ashe so it says that to make this a successful kill other people need to join him in voting.
i was going to get this one eventually ill do it now though. what i'm going to call the notebook or list of reports. so there's a couple of ideas for this one i'm going to start with the least realistic implementation.
if you've ever played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego you'll understand this one.
![]()
so if you look in the bottom right the little yellow rectangle is your detective notebook. in the game you go around asking people for clues and you can drag their text bubble to your notebook for later reference. you can see it happening in this screenshot even though it's blurry. so i think a really fun idea would be you could click and drag system message and player quotes to your notepad so that you can parse through them at your leisure.
the much more realistic option is one of these things
![]()
a little icon that opens a popup. i think a popup would be the best way to do this without taking up too much screen space. it would just be a list of system messages and (if the player wanted to) comments on the game you just type in temporarily.
i think the best option is somewhere in the middle of these two ideas but i haven't figured it out yet
if you've ever played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego you'll understand this one.
so if you look in the bottom right the little yellow rectangle is your detective notebook. in the game you go around asking people for clues and you can drag their text bubble to your notebook for later reference. you can see it happening in this screenshot even though it's blurry. so i think a really fun idea would be you could click and drag system message and player quotes to your notepad so that you can parse through them at your leisure.
the much more realistic option is one of these things
a little icon that opens a popup. i think a popup would be the best way to do this without taking up too much screen space. it would just be a list of system messages and (if the player wanted to) comments on the game you just type in temporarily.
i think the best option is somewhere in the middle of these two ideas but i haven't figured it out yet
what i really like about the click and drag idea is that its instant. like most people won't bother taking their own notes because it would be like a waste of time to put in that "effort" but if you could just click and drag a quote to save for later its super easy and convenient
no idea how to implement it actually though it may be much harder than i suspect
no idea how to implement it actually though it may be much harder than i suspect
the part of the interface that sucks the most is
sign here to
sl0nderman shut the **** up ****** lucid isn't coming back this will never happen
24 signed
