WIP Gamestrap UI themes

Asset Store Link

Website: http://www.gamestrap.info
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gamestrapui​

We are looking to create new Gamestrap assets for specific types of genres, we would love to get your input and vote in the poll above.

Each genre will require different types of UI elements so we'll be adding and changing things based on the particular genre’s needs.

We will leave the links below to the assets we've already created for different types of genre.

Gamestrap UI
Gamestrap UI is a generic UI package for prototyping and creating different types of UI
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-gamestrap-ui-flat-pack.291090/
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We are looking for feedback on the products we already have and also on the new genres, feel free to comment!
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I like what you have so far. I'm not really looking for a genre specific UI, so for me a generic one like what you have here is nice. Perhaps more generic styles? I think they're lacking on the asset store.

 

As flat and non stylized as can be pls. I need something like this for my upcoming game!

 

Alright, so we actually just finished setting up all of the graphic elements we published initially. We also went ahead and created a Custom editor script to help with the "Custom Colors" feature that allows you to select the colors you want and then assign it to the UI elements you want. Next we should be creating some example scenes with menus and we should be publishing the asset fairly soon. What do you guys think?

 

Sounds great!

 

Can't wait! Looks really cool especially for prototyping

 

I just submitted it to the asset store, let's see if everything is in order! Here are some sample screen of stuff you can do
Basic menus

The showcase of what the pack contains:

Examples of custom UI you can create on your own:

 

These look decent for a beginner UI designer's work and may function as 'halfway decent' placeholders, but even a generic UI kit could follow some best practices and make a good-looking generic icon set.

I recommend reading this article: https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-1-559d4e805cda

 

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, I'll take a look and see what we can improve on. Generally we are trying to get some basic UI so we can later on create other generic styles and also themed UI packs. Since we are just starting, feedback like this is great. I appreciate it.

 

I'm glad to see you didn't respond negatively or harshly to my feedback. Definitely a sign of good things possibly to come. I'll follow this asset as I think it is a wonderful idea, but I would like to see best practices followed. Consider that your asset may one day be used in a prototype within a game company to pitch a gameplay concept to a project manager - it needs to be of high quality even as a generic UI.

Don't get me wrong, flat icons are great and some people above even requested them. However, as the article mentions, most people don't know UI best practices and don't really know what they want. Having a great generic UI that follows the practices in the article will be a great 'out-of-box' asset to any project, even if the project developers have no clue about good UI design.

 

New additions based on some feedback,
I like the fact that the user can choose what their look and feel will be for their UI whether is completely flat or not, it's their game, but I also like the fact that we can add some additional options so you can play with them, thus I am going to introduce 2 UI effects for Gamestrap Flat Theme.
One is the basic shadow effect that Unity comes with and the other one is one I created to be able to add a gradient.
Here is the result of the elements with/without the effects:

The user will be able to choose how they like it through the Custom editor tool.
How does that sound?

 

If you can add a slight lighting "oval" (no other way to describe it, but you can see examples of what I mean in the article I linked) to the top of the 3D ones and make that another option, that would be great. Right now the non-flat ones look a little dark.

 

You mean the lighting that makes it look specular? Kinda like the Apple Icons? If so, then that would probably go better in a Glass theme instead of flat, we'll probably make that theme too.

 

This is getting better, I like how you can just customize your buttons as well , how about possibility of flat shadow ones similar to those found in websites?

 

Thanks for the suggestion!
I'll see what I can do, sadly for now, at least that I know of, the Unity UI effects are very limited. I'll try to see if with a material or some masking we could do it but I'm not sure. The idea is to not have thousands of different images but just the basic ones and customize from those. Worst case scenario we'll do the images but I'll try to avoid that

 

Just want to drop this here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2tldof/whats_the_most_important_thing_youve_learned/co0g19b

A lot of other gamedevs have asked for flat UI elements, and while it's certainly not wrong to include them in your asset, keep in mind that most gamedevs are terrible at UI design because they are not UI/UX designers. Quoted from the above post (this is also mentioned in the article I linked earlier):

 

flat is a VERY GOOD start. In fact it should still be your baseline. Adding shadow + depth properties should just come in as options (which can easily be added in your inspector I see).

 

New updates, I'm still figuring out the flat shadows to see if there is any way to make them so it's simple for you guys. Aside from that here are the new updates:

New Effect section

Results of applying shadows and gradients.​

 

I think there would be a real market in the asset store for a bunch of 9 slice button options.

 

Yeah part of this is that we are going to be creating different types of themes all with different 9 slice buttons, but with this comment I guess I'll try to see if we can get more types of flat buttons/bases out there, it would be cool. You could use those for panels, buttons, etc...

Thanks for the comment

 

How much are you selling this for initially? You could do an introductory price All awesome assets I know of starts with that

 

How much would you set it to? We have a price set for now but I would like to get your perspective

 

Hmm dunno but perhaps around $10 or $15

 

Well it seems we are both in the same mind set. We are setting it up as $10 initially, later on when it matures a bit more we'll put it up to $15.

 

I do have a good question though, what's the poll for?

 

Well the idea is to do different types of skin packs aside from this one. So we decided to separate the themes based on genres, so the poll is to see what would be our next skin pack of.
The one we are currently doing we decided to make as a "default" skin pack to get the structure done to keep doing others, plus people asked for a "default" type, but after people vote on the poll and we finish polishing up this one, we'll put up a new pack with completely new textures based on a genre, we might even just add different UI elements that might help the developer depending on the genre. For example if its for fighting we'll put up some health bars, if its RPG's we'll put up some inventory UI, etc...

 

So based on that comment we decided to add a set of different 9 slice images to use as whatever you see fit, like panels, buttons, bars, etc... They are all in PSD format and verctorized. What do you think?

 

+1

 

re: With the recent fad in "flattening" everything in the name of skeuomorphism, designers are tossing out everything they know about contrast. Everything effectively becomes ALL noise. Flat UI's SUCK. What the hell is a button? What can I and can't I click on??

+10 to this

I like the clean look of this asset but agree it will be more useful (and flexible) with subtle contrast FX. I bought it so will have a play with it.

I also think flat won't last the distance.

Google's material design is a better guide.

eg: https://github.com/InvexGames/MaterialUI#materialui and
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ma...ws-googles-material-design-guidelines.284500/

 

I fail to see what's the argument here?
1. Adjust Shadow option

Voila! Not flat anymore.

 

Flat is just a fad among bad UI designers. You don't see the problem, well you are not a good UI designer.

Often times it's not just adjusting shadow, it's also adding lighting or a slight reflection to the top area. This creates a good contrast. I just don't have the time to give UI feedback every time there is an update to this thread, but I like the idea behind this asset and want to give the best advice I can give.

 

Thanks guys, I appreciate the time you take to give us your input, it is all very helpful
That said, we should be publishing our first version with shadows and grandients in the next couple of days so stay in touch if you are interested!
We'll also see where this takes us and what changes will be coming up so everyone is happy and we create a great product

 

Bravo, way to miss the point lad. Just because you're super affectionate about shadows doesn't mean you have to shut down the flat. Author's making it modular enough to get the best of both world you know. Contrary to your belief, UI is not just about following a set of standard, it's also about "making things work" and a hell lot of usability testing. There's no silver bullet. Just chill we're getting both.

 

Hey @Rodiaz89 I didn't know it was up in the asset store
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28599

 

Yeah the first version is published, I haven't said anything to you guys because the new version with the effects and different shapes should be coming out today or monday, the idea was for you guys to get the best version and not confuse eveyone with the older version. Sorry!!

 

No worries. I picked it up anyway yesterday and look forward to the tweaks.

 

Alright, we have our new version of Gamestrap UI Flat out in the asset store now! If you have any other suggestions/questions/feedback regarding the flat you are welcome to write it in our new thread in the Assets and Asset Store forum at
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-gamestrap-ui-flat-pack.291090/

 

Se we have published some new updates with 10 more icons and have the version ready for Unity 5!

We also created a short video showing how to make a mobile menu in 5 minutes using Unity UI 4.6 as base and some help with gamestrap. Hope you enjoy it

 

So we are making new shapes to have a bigger variety and we are thinking on adding a new feature that requires a bit of work and we would like to get some input on it before we go crazy with it. Also once this is finished, we are going to start making the themed Gamestrap UIs based on the poll above.

The idea is that gamestrap become a UI framework for you to easily implement cool looking UI and also to help you with stuff related to UI, so one of the things we thought might be interesting is to have is a Localization module that would connect directly to the UI which would help you have different languages for your app since languages and UI are connected with each other.

So I'm thinking it would work in the following way: You would place a gameobject in the scene and that gameobject would have the Gamestrap UI Localizer attached to it, you could then scan automatically all of the UI elements you have and look for the ones that contain text which would register them to the component, then you would just start adding new languages to the component and assign values to the Text objects you have on the screen and it would automatically change it. You could also add some custom values based on text keys just in case you need some text not in the UI and such. I'm thinking if I actually make this, to publish it separately and also add it to this asset.

What are your thoughts? Does it sound like it could help you?
Would you think this would make Gamestrap better or do the solutions that already exits on localization that aren't connected directly to the UI work just fine?

Thanks for reading and I hope to hear some awesome feedback from you guys

 

With a proper data-driven design, most games can handle localization by swapping out data files since UI data isn't hard-coded. Your approach may work for developers who are not using data-driven design.

 

Yeah I guess ideally having a data-driven design does take away from needing the module, the only bad thing about it which it isn't really that bad is that you still couldn't see the translation in the editor right away, with the module I'm thinking about you would be able to see the changes right away without having to press play or so.
Still, it does bring out that situation, maybe be have some sort of API to connect the localization module with the data-driven structure? not sure, I'll give it more thought since I'm tring to see if it's worth implementing it or not and how I gotta see how complex this could become. Thanks for the comment!

 

FYI Gamestrap is in the Madness sale with a 49% discount for the next 10 days. Here is the link just in case: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/28599

 

Big upgrades coming up, check out the thread on the Asset store forum for more information!
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-gamestrap-ui-unity-ui-system-unity-4-6-and-5.291090/