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The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

gameuidatabase.com

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Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#31

Post by petargyurov »

Neputys wrote: post #30
petargyurov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scientific software ... where interfaces are notoriously bad. I think the problem here is two fold: bad UIs and bad APIs. In the science world, there doesn't seem to be any abstraction between backend and frotnend -- the whole thing is one intertwined mess. Scientists don't always write great software; they write scripts that get the job done quickly in a very specific way. Pair that with the lack of time that they…

How is Electron doing btw? I'm itching to use it in one project but it doesn't feel like it's getting any traction in the community for a long time now. Since it's a long term project I kind of get mixed feelings about using it.

This is my first project with it so I'm probably not in a position to provide much insight. So far development with it has been almost identical to coding a website, but maybe because I am yet to start on any OS dependant features.

What makes you say that it isn't getting traction? AFAIK, some huge companies are using it to create their apps.

I think it gets a lot of underserved hate, just because it's JS and because it isn't "truly native". People also love to chime in about its performance but 9/10 times that's down to a bad implementation, in my humble opinion.

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#32

Post by klenwell »

petargyurov wrote: post #24
xipho wrote: post #12

We build scientific software ( http://taxonworks.org/ ) where interfaces are notoriously bad. I feel the scientific community would benefit so much from a (sponsored?) program that paired game developers (or UI/UX specialists, or game psychologists) with teams building scientific software. For example we help describe species- while not quite the same thing, gamers do that everywhere, skinning, equiping, stat-min-max…

> scientific software ... where interfaces are notoriously bad. I think the problem here is two fold: bad UIs and bad APIs. In the science world, there doesn't seem to be any abstraction between backend and frotnend -- the whole thing is one intertwined mess. Scientists don't always write great software; they write scripts that get the job done quickly in a very specific way. Pair that with the lack of time that they…

> I'm building the UI using ElectronJS and Svelte, whilst the backend is a separate Python project.

Thanks for sharing this. I have a relatively simple Python script that I'm trying to package for a non-technical Windows user so, as someone whose experience skews toward web development, your comment caught my attention.

I just googled "electron svelte python" and found this write up:

https://medium.com/@abulka/electron-python-4e8c807bfa5e

Which references this Github repo:

https://github.com/fyears/electron-python-example

It all sounds pretty brittle. How are you managing communication between your ElectronJS frontend and Python backend? Any references you recommend?

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#33

Post by areoform »

xipho wrote: post #12

We build scientific software ( http://taxonworks.org/ ) where interfaces are notoriously bad. I feel the scientific community would benefit so much from a (sponsored?) program that paired game developers (or UI/UX specialists, or game psychologists) with teams building scientific software. For example we help describe species- while not quite the same thing, gamers do that everywhere, skinning, equiping, stat-min-max…

I am somewhat familiar with both, UI/UX and keep relatively apace with a few fields of research. Currently, I'm working to become good at front-end development.

This is an area I'd like to work on, if you have a project that could use someone like me please hit me up here (a comment with your email) or via twitter (@_areoform).

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#34

Post by petargyurov »

klenwell wrote: post #32
petargyurov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scientific software ... where interfaces are notoriously bad. I think the problem here is two fold: bad UIs and bad APIs. In the science world, there doesn't seem to be any abstraction between backend and frotnend -- the whole thing is one intertwined mess. Scientists don't always write great software; they write scripts that get the job done quickly in a very specific way. Pair that with the lack of time that they…

> I'm building the UI using ElectronJS and Svelte, whilst the backend is a separate Python project. Thanks for sharing this. I have a relatively simple Python script that I'm trying to package for a non-technical Windows user so, as someone whose experience skews toward web development, your comment caught my attention. I just googled "electron svelte python" and found this write up: https://medium.com/@abulka/electr…

I think I came across that as well. I didn't like it.

As far as I understand, there are two ways to handle communication between the Python and ElectronJS:

1) Use inter-process communication. Basically, your Python app outputs to stdin and your Electron app consumes the output. Also works the other way. This is what I went with.

2) Use a Flask (or equivalent) local web server and have your app send requests to it.

I find method 2) a bit hacky and unintuitive for a desktop app. If you are planning on hosting your backend in the cloud this would be a decent solution, but I am not.

I had already done some work to turn my Python app into a standalone CLI tool using `click` [0] which made the interaction with ElectronJS very simple. I used `python-shell` [1] for the inter-process communication. I do think that I might not need this once I package my Python app into an .exe -- then Electron should be able to interact with it in some way without caring that it's built in Python.

You can take a look at my repo here, though it's still in its infancy: https://github.com/petargyurov/megadetector-gui

[0] https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/python-shell

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#37

Post by gfxgirl »

xipho wrote: post #12

We build scientific software ( http://taxonworks.org/ ) where interfaces are notoriously bad. I feel the scientific community would benefit so much from a (sponsored?) program that paired game developers (or UI/UX specialists, or game psychologists) with teams building scientific software. For example we help describe species- while not quite the same thing, gamers do that everywhere, skinning, equiping, stat-min-max…

Games just as often as not have terrible UIs. Take Destiny 2 for example. It's a nightmare of right click (no indication that you'd want to right click). And in particular games are flash for flash sake. I love it for games but I wouldn't want my app I'm trying to be productive with to animate every tiny motion or throw out sparks when I click a button.

Further, much of the database is joypad controlled UIs

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#38

Post by codeulike »

victor106 wrote: post #36

We are in the process of redesigning an enterprise application that is very information dense. Anyone know if any good resources that could help with any patterns on ui/ux for information dense screens/apps?

The traditional ux pattern for 'enterprise' applications is "dont bother thinking about ux"

Hope that helps

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#39

Post by pjmlp »

petargyurov wrote: post #31
Neputys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Electron doing btw? I'm itching to use it in one project but it doesn't feel like it's getting any traction in the community for a long time now. Since it's a long term project I kind of get mixed feelings about using it.

This is my first project with it so I'm probably not in a position to provide much insight. So far development with it has been almost identical to coding a website, but maybe because I am yet to start on any OS dependant features. What makes you say that it isn't getting traction? AFAIK, some huge companies are using it to create their apps. I think it gets a lot of underserved hate, just because it's JS and because…

On top of that, I already have a browser installed and each Electron app is a step for turning the Web into ChromeOS.

Re: The Game UI Database, a comprehensive reference of game interface design

#40

Post by Neputys »

xipho wrote: post #21
Neputys wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you exclude UI/UX from "getting things done" it's going to be notoriously bad. Academia, government, enterprise all the same. There's no accountability to actual users and doing UX properly would turn the whole project on it's head so guess why no one cares...

| There's no accountability to actual users and doing UX properly would turn the whole project on it's head so guess why no one cares... I don't think we're saying they don't care. It's a balance, right? I've been around long enought to see the UI/UX world emerge and become more defined, but some of that world is common sense that comes with experience. In my experience some UI/UX is hot-air, and in fact gets in the…

In that sense, personally, everyone cares. But when people have to operate in big org environments priorities change. Think about it, no one wakes up in the morning and thinks I'm going to make something terrifyingly hard to use today. No one invests or gives grants for something that "is going to be terrifyingly hard to use", right? And yet dominating majority of big org software is terrifyingly hard to use. The answer to why? I think is the point you are missing. Your suggestion is commendable, interesting but no number of references or examples are going to help make your next project better as well as that why.

As far as UI/UX world goes it has a problem of becoming fashionable, popular and somewhat profitable. This always attracts certain kinds of people and hot air. I'm sure you have plenty of your own examples in academia.

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