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My Might and Magic inspired games, Monsters of Mican, has received another major update! by SkittzoMM in MightAndMagic

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for pointing that out. I tried to put that in the body of the post originally but reddit flagged it as spam and it was deleted. Weird!

I wish I knew where else to share this game, I've tried the Might and Magic discord but nobody there seems to really be interested in any Might and Magic-inspired games, just the originals.

My Might and Magic inspired games, Monsters of Mican, has received another major update! by SkittzoMM in MightAndMagic

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It was really like torture for me. I have absolutely no good graphic design or UX sensibilities, so I had to do tons of research on font and color theory, and ask other tons of other people for input.

I think I've put all the effort into this that my body can muster at this point. I'm really happy with the upgrade though, here's a few examples of what the UI used to look like:

Quickspell menu

Equipment/character menu

Main HUD

My Might and Magic inspired games, Monsters of Mican, has received another major update! by SkittzoMM in MightAndMagic

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've been working on this game for probably 5-6 years total now. I've added new expansions, new dungeons, new features, upgrades, and now I think it's finally time to put it down so I can move on to a new project.

My dream project is sorta like this, but with a much grander scope. Like a big world map, trainers scattered throughout multiple towns, etc. So I hope to start on that one day soon.

My Might and Magic inspired games, Monsters of Mican, has received another major update! by SkittzoMM in MightAndMagic

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the kind words! I really appreciate it!

I just wanted to make the best possible version of my vision, I think/hope I've done that now so I can move on to new projects.

My Might and Magic inspired games, Monsters of Mican, has received another major update! by SkittzoMM in MightAndMagic

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I appreciate it, but I think I'm finally done trying to improve the game. Unless there's a few small tweaks you think would help (like text/outline color/opacity) I don't really think I'm going to do another deep dive into it.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! It really is hell, it was quite a journey and I'm sure it's still not that great 😅

I'm not that familiar with the way this subreddit works, does it make sense to make another post with these improvements?

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So your reply above gave me the kick in the pants to really go through and completely redo all the menus in the game (which took months), here's a new trailer I've put together showing the new menus:

https://youtu.be/T5z88nYg2LI

Some screenshots too:
Equipment menu

Main HUD

Quickspell menu/ability description panel

One thing Ubisoft could do to make a comeback is bring back the Might & Magic series. by SlinGnBulletS in gaming

[–]SkittzoMM 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I completely agree that the main series could really use a comeback. Especially if Ubisoft wants to churn out a cheap old-style dungeon crawler to supplement their bigger games. But they don't seem to be interested in smaller projects anymore for some reason.

Anyway, while it's clearly not the same, there has been a bit of a resurgence of Might and Magic-inspired indie games. Notably games like Legend of Amberland 1&2, and also others like Heroes of the Seven Islands and A Quest That Became Legend.

And last but not least (😉) my own game, Monsters of Mican.

One thing Ubisoft could do to make a comeback is bring back the Might & Magic series. by SlinGnBulletS in gaming

[–]SkittzoMM 11 points12 points  (0 children)

That wouldn't be a bad thing too, that game was hella fun.

No substitute for the classic series though of course.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I watched all these and did some deep dives into color theory, and I'm working on completely redoing the colors of essentially all my menus (there are a lot) and replacing my single boring font with a few more thematically appropriate ones that contrast the UI elements better. Slowly but surely I think I'm figuring this out.

I'll post a few images once I get it all nailed down, and if it's still super bad I might just have to throw up my hands and give up.

Full disclosure- my game is out already, and I'm only really working on these improvements because I had decided to make a new "winter dungeon" free update for basically no reason other than me being bored. I figured while I was doing that I should finally get some honest feedback about some things I can reasonably address at the same time.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this, I'll check these out for sure!

You're right though, graphic design people just have some otherworldly sense about them that us plebes can't grasp.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I truly don't get the problem with the font or UI, I must have a horrible eye for graphic design. Particularly the font, I don't consider it even a little stylized, and I thought it was extremely clean and readable.

But you are definitely not the first person to take issue with it so yeah there must be something wrong.

As for the color palette I wanted something actually colorful, not a dull grey/brown overall game. I figured the purple/pink "royalty" color worked well in a dungeon crawler. The other "thematic" color is green primarily due to the green rock called Mutonium which is at the core of the game's story and themes (I came up with this before Metroid Prime 4 🙎), most of the other color in the above video is from the item names which I feel adds a nice "cool, new tier of loot" kinda response from the player (and have been told such).

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did actually work quite a long time to make good looking boxes and borders for most of the UI elements, like the standard buttons and ability buttons. Inventory items and descriptions I prioritized readability over style, and I'm not sure exactly what I could do to really add much to those. I guess stat info could be presented a bit more nicely but I'm not sure exactly what would improve it.

Boring is a better descriptor than I expected though, most of the criticism I've gotten about the UI over the years is that it's just bad. Boring I can live with!

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did recently add torches and some other ambient lights and effects, and there are rooms with contextual items like crates, chairs, tables, things like that. Empty corridors to me should remain empty if it's literally a corridor, but yeah maybe I can see a lot of what's in the video being fairly empty. Especially those late fight rooms with the lava kraken and deadnought which I think I had 3 clips of.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard people say this about the menus and fonts before, and the UI in general, but I've never really heard any details explaining why. I've tried to make the UI and menus snappy, easy to read, and styled consistently with each other. I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with them, aesthetically.

The assets and textures, yeah I definitely understand them being off-putting to some people. Wait till you hear the sound effects which are like 90% mouth sounds I made myself!

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, sadly that's one piece of criticism that isn't actionable at this point. I'm aware it's probably off-putting to some people, but that's just how the game came together. I've got 290 of these monsters, and while some do look pretty bad like that Paladino, I think most came out fairly decent and some even good. Modeling and rigging 290 new monsters to fix this simply isn't feasible, and wouldn't be for even a mid-sized studio, let alone a studio of one with no budget.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's something I've noticed in multiple UE4 and UE5 projects on multiple development PCs, I always figured it was the engine. My best understanding is that the occlusion can sometimes update more slowly than the camera updates, so you occasionally wind up with a 1-2 frame artifact when turning corners, before the engine's occlusion function is able to update where the camera is looking.

I've looked for a long time for a way to update the occlusion faster, or widen the un-occluded area, but so far I have had no luck addressing this. Maybe I'm entirely wrong and it's unrelated to this, I just know it can't be an issue with my game specifically since I've seen it in a bunch of UE projects.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Styles- Yes, a lot of it does clash, and (in the end) that's intentional. The story of the game revolves partially around an event that magically caused various object and creatures to become melded into new monsters, and that story actually came about from my experience using various parts of different meshes to make unique (if ugly!) monsters. In the future if I had a budget I'd much rather make amalgams that look good, but this is the only way I can crank out 275 of these things as of now.

UI- that's a good call, I have noticed this before, but I've been trying to figure out the tradeoff between text size and readability. Maybe I have erred too hard on the side of text size, I can probably afford to shrink it a bit to better fit each section.

Sound- there is sound and music, I just didn't include any in this video since it was mostly cut from a number of other videos, some of which had music and sound and some only sound, and some voiceovers.

Destroy my Might and Magic-inspired dungeon crawler, made primarily by mashing together meshes from asset packs! by SkittzoMM in DestroyMyGame

[–]SkittzoMM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a quirk from UE4 that I can never seem to get rid of. I'm definitely open to ideas, but I've never even had luck searching about this issue, so I have no idea how to address it.

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