Can I fix Zelda's UI using Unity?

[@GMTK]

Thanks for your feedback! I just updated the build on Itch with an improved spiral design - gmtk.itch.io/zelda-ui And if you're a GMTK Patron, you can get the updated Unity project and code - www.patreon.com/posts/can-i-fix-zeldas-121699533 Have a good day!

[@victzegopterix2]

Couldn't you have done a vote to see which version do people prefer? Like putting 6 comments for each 0 to 6 UIs and tell people to like the comments corresponding to their preferred UIs.

[@TheGrifdail]

The spiral effect could use some scale effect on the icon to sell the 3d. A standard lerp could work but the ideal math would be [(Focal Distance] + [Distance to the currently selected item] * [Effect scale]) / Focal Distance] where Focal Distance and Effect Scale are value you can change to affect the intensit of the effect.

[@technofeeliak]

What you do is have a ring, inside a ring, inside a ring. That way you can see your echoes even if they're greyed out. You may then get the idea to use an echo from the next set. And you plunge into the next ring you'll see another ring just beyond it. And that could lead to more ideas. Making people disorganized to get them to fall on solutions isn't a very good method. But setting up options so they can lead to more and better ideas is good. See? You now have the spiral staircase idea. Similar to what I described. Just feels more like you're falling.

[@technofeeliak]

If ever you want to create a shape like a spiral, you'll have an easier time picturing it in Blender. Then, you can take a 3D model, drag it into Unity, and extract the mesh data if you wish. Use that mesh data in your code to plot the positions of your triangles.

[@sleepycritical6950]

Holy crap that’s waaaay too many videos coming out lately I love it. Is this what it was like before the game dev arc? I can’t remember anymore.

[@alexcostsnothin]

Imagine if Smash Bros's character select screen was just 1 narrow bar It would take 10 years to select Steve... Maybe it's not a bad idea.

[@electrafying]

I’m gone this is too funny

[@Coltingtons]

now I wanna see someone photoshop this 😂

[@gabilegameur]

"look how long it takes to select wario"

[@LucRio448]

better yet, let's make it the spiral staircase, but without the sidebar and without the Lerping, so people don't even know Steve EXISTS even :D

[@slipperynickels]

that’s exactly what my one and only tome trying to play dota2 was like. endlessly scrolling a single row. i never even reached the end before i gave up. that is… we already knew this type of UI was atrocious well before EoW came out.

[@muno]

I think for the spiraling version, it needs the Y position (and probably scale of each item) to grow/shrink as well as the X position. Currently it's seemingly just the X position, and I think that makes it really hard to read as the intended 3D spiral effect. If this is fixed / becomes more similar to the source material, I think it has potential to be the best variation of the UI

[@puceachips1046]

I was thinking the same thing. I really enjoy the spiral idea, but it think it needs to be more explicit visually, just as in BGE

[@peatral]

Yeah, I love the bge version but implemented like this it looks a bit weird. The missing perspective really makes it unreadable as a spiral

[@evanbrooks4403]

Agreed, but also: you need to decrease the size of the objects "further" away. The "3D" part of the effect also comes from the objects increasing/decreasing in size as you go up/down the staircase.

[@GMTK]

Yeah, you're totally right - it looked like a spiral to me but now you mention it, the horizontal compression is a bit odd. Maybe I'll play with the code some more :P

[@muno]

come to think of it, another nice thing from BGE is that the items fade in/out at a certain threshold, so it looks like they're fading into the foreground/background. this would also help, i think, because in your version they suddenly pop in/out kind of distractingly

[@vincenzusgaming]

Imagine if this becomes a fully-fledged series where Mark designs UI for different games. I think it's going to be amazing.

[@RocketSlug]

Yeah, I've been discovering designers on KZbin lately that do these kinds of design challenges. Juxtopposed has been a really good one I just discovered

[@MuscarV2]

You first say a hypothetical, then say"going to be amazing". That's not how it works. Your second sentence should be "I think that would be amazing".

[@edemaiscomtheovieira2718]

That'd be awesome, I NEED IT

[@Leothecat24]

GMTK + Juxtopposed collab when??

[@BvLee]

Honestly would love to see it

[@DokuDoki]

Something I really appreciate is that you offered multiple solutions with different ups and downs instead of just, making one suggestion and insisting it's some kind of universal fix-it. There are soooo many people who preach one "obvious" solution to a complex problem without acknowledging how narrowminded their opinion actually is. I see this a lot in game balance feedback.

[@minidavid-devdave]

I feel like some web developers actually need this advice imo. Fixing designs isn't just about one look of professionalism from a corpo pov.

[@JamesBlond000]

Mark's wisdom, humility, and down-to-earth-ness is part of why why I'm such a big GMTK fan.

[@TiredOx7536]

This is the kind of game where a dual screen Wii U/3DS set up would've helped tremendously, with a proper detailed echoes menu on the 2nd screen

[@GMTK]

That's a good point, this would have been an ideal Wii U game

[@internetguy7319]

@@GMTK I don't agree, in general looking down from the top screen to menu on the bottom screen isn't very good imo

[@tomr1041]

Yeah completely agree. I have never been a fan of Breath of the Wilds UI an item/weapon selection systems. They are cumbersome and break up the flow of gameplay too much. Knowing that BOTW was originally supposed to be a Wii U exclusive but they nixed all the gamepad features when they decided to port it for the Switch during development helps explain a lot of its downsides. Like its menu organization makes perfect sense if you imagine it being on the gamepad with the ability to select items with a tap during regular gameplay.

[@cavedweller333]

​@@tomr1041yeah, what I don't get is why they've stuck with this. BotW is easy to explain as a leftover from being a Wii U game and TotK could be explained as being built off the same game, but I just don't understand why they'd stick with it for EoW

[@Starfloofle]

This UI was *designed* for touch screens. It falls apart without one, and it shows.

[@justinsinke2088]

Alright, I can understand their intent of "while looking through your options, see something that inspires a solution you hadn't originally considered", but the execution of "making a clunky interface" to force that "aha" moment seems to have had the opposite effect; making people not want to interface with it, likely having it sorted by most used all the time for ease of use, rather than stumbling on a new idea. Their design solution, essentially, ended up having the opposite impact as their intention.

[@matthewr6148]

The fact that they even included a "most used" sort option at all, shows that they should have known their idea wouldn't work at all. Allowing players to have their most used echoes all within easy reach, never having to scroll past the unused ones, already defeats their stated goal. Yet, it's also the only thing holding this menu together in the first place.

[@henke37]

This is something that should've been picked up during playtesting. They either ignored the playtesting results or didn't bother with doing them in the first place. Or more likely, got so used to the broken system that they didn't think to fix it.

[@panampace]

@@henke37I have a friend in the games industry and his experience is that Japanese developers are much more staunch about sticking to their own ideas/opinions rather than playtester feedback.

[@StKildaFan]

@@panampace I think that's true. Japanese devs seem to have a more auteur attitude towards games, trying to give players the experience the developer intends them to have, rather than allowing players to radically customise their experience to suit their preferences and or abilities. It's why accessibility and difficulty options are frequently lacking in Japanese games, why nintendo is so adamantly opposed to modding, emulation etc, why Nintendo games tend to have lots of unskippable cutscenes and tutorials. And to their credit, Nintendo has very talented game designers aiming for genuinely fun intended experiences, just usually at the expense of accessibility and replayability.

[@AfutureV]

I do not think the interface is clunky at all. You can find any echo you want easily, I never used any sorting other that the default one.

[@finaldusk1821]

Honestly, the "fun design challenge" vibe is way more fun than the "takedown of lazy devs" vibe. Props for taking an optimistic and non-antagonistic stance on this video, it's more enjoyable for it!

[@AfutureV]

The vibe is exactly the same. The title says "Fix" meaning that something is broken.

[@retnuhytnuob4068]

​@@AfutureVIt's not the same. A "we can be better, let's try to raise the standard" approach isn't the same as "whoa you blew it, here's how it should have been done" approach. - One is an invitation, while the other is divisive. Even if both are _effectively_ doing the same thing, the tone difference changes how easy it is to accept. (And therefore learn from)

[@AfutureV]

@@retnuhytnuob4068 Someone calling your work a “crime” is saying you blew it, and in no way is that tone “inviting” and not just pure hostility.

[@TheGrifdail]

For the whole video i was like "Videogame UI peaked with Beyond Good and Evil text input, that would solve everything" so the inclusion of it at 18:00 was a great suprise.

[@suspecm6316]

Prey recognised this but every other video game seemed to have regressed for some reason

[@FormattedWill]

You'd like the quick item menu in warframe then. it does the infinite spiral but the number of items in the list is up to you so it works just as a normal radial menu if you are at or under the limit visible and starts to rotate after that

[@tachytack]

@@suspecm6316 yeah as soon as the idea first came up I was rooting for it to be prey SO hard. Had no idea BGE did it first, but man it's so well designed.

[@HeroHasCome1806]

I just LOVE Spiral menu from BGE, but for the purposes of the Echoes of Wisdom I think Cross Media Bar is the perfect solution: - It makes horizontal scrolling much shorter. - It allows very quick and intuitive customizing of the horizontal scroll by remembering the pick in each category. - It leaves the space for Nintendo reasoning because you still see nearly all items every time you open the menu. - It leaves the space for some muscle memory thingy, where the longer you play, the better you remember just how many clicks you need to do to get to the item you want. Great exercise from Mark, it was very fun to watch!

[@LeoPechansky]

Thank you for creating UI content. There's a huge lack of resources for teaching good game UI, and I'm glad a big channel like yours is stepping up to it. Cheers from someone from the industry

[@Zarzar22]

You should make the content! If youre in the industry Im sure you have a lot to share

[@KyteM]

Check out Design Doc for plenty of UI/UX content.

[@LucRio448]

We definitely need more. UI in Unity is torture, at least as a beginner, dunno if it gets better at any point. I don't even know an intuitive(!) way to scale the UI so that it fits with a classic 1920x1080 screen without repositioning the elements, building the entire project, starting it, assessing which elements needs repositioning in which direction, going back to unity to reposition the elements and repeat the process over and over again. Because for some stupid reason, setting the "Game" Window in Unity to 1920x1080 and 16:9 and changing the size of the window to perfectly fit the view does somehow NOT lead to Unity showing you the placement of the elements even remotely similar to where they actually are placed when you build the entrie project and run it.

[@yeahokdude3265]

At some point in this game, i just kept using the same echoes over and over again so I could avoid scrolling through the vast amount of echoes I accrued

[@arbo6850]

Same, I just used the simple bed and one of the strong knights. I felt like it kinda defeated the point of solving problems creatively. Just solved everything the same way

[@kemcolian2001]

cobra effect lmao

[@rmsgrey]

Yeah, the UI backfires on that point.

[@MasterofKnees]

I think it's also a bit of an issue that there are some Echoes that do too much. I solved basically all of the platforming puzzles by brute forcing my way through them with the Platboom echo, which acts as both a platform and a way of elevation, and later in the game you can stack them on top of each other to reach infinite heights. Its only weakness is that it takes up a lot of space, but that only ever really came up in a few select 2D sections, so the Platboom stayed at the front of my menu for practically the entire game with little reason to look for alternatives.

[@Lomfofkgj]

Which means you used the same ones in different ways, it's still making you better creative imo

[@GameXplain]

Thanks for the shoutout! Been a long-time fan, and it was fun to see myself make a surprise appearance (outside of the Patreon credits!) Even more fun to see how we arrived at similar ideas for how to fix one of the game's biggest issues.

[@kyrs.7687]

Mark's inclusion of the grid sphere at 21:58 when asking for other ideas is a deeply unhinged bit of video editing.

[@ariwl1]

FFX's sphere grid is something I love in a rather unhinged way. If you take the original one and just look at it looks wild and complex, but it's really just the aesthetic. If you take the tracks and straighten them out for most of the characters it's just one long straight line with a few cul-de-sacs here and there.

[@bluethan806]

8:40 as fun as this mechanic was, it was *not* fun realizing that four more slots were being taken up by literally, functionally identical structures outside of the dungeon you got them from

[@verygoodfreelancer]

new zelda game you can tell they didn’t care if it was fun or not in playtesting, just that the idea worked and was implementable lmao

[@wizawhat]

I'm so glad you included Nintendo's reasoning for the current design. I wasn't aware of the quote but Terada's intention lined up beat for beat with my own thoughts. I approached Echoes of Wisdom eager to try out as many interesting solutions as I could but I couldn't possibly remember all the different options there were without seeing them, so I frequently stumbled into situations where I thought, "Hmm.. I wonder if THIS could work," and that genuinely led to some brilliant moments. I think what Nintendo is currently struggling with is designing primarily for intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, which is so challenging because it kind of goes against decades of game design. Players are conditioned to gravitate to the dominant strategy a lot of the time, including myself, but training myself to be a little more curious has made these types of experiences so much more rewarding for me and I think Nintendo is gradually trying to train their players to do the same with design choices like these. But that's also why I think the Cross Media Bar is easily the best option here. Favorites menus would just allow players to get to the water block and bed as quickly as possible and rarely ever consider anything else, but the unquestionable problem with the current system is the amount of echoes with duplicate function bogging down the scrolling. The Cross Media Bar lets you both see everything and navigate more effectively to what you need. Super elegant solution.

[@josephhawkins7974]

I continuously thought about how good that XMB solution would have been while I was playing the game. Heck, the XMB still being 55 options long could have benefited from sub categories. Fighters, Flyers, building blocks, elemental, and the like. One or two buttons could sort through the main categories like tabs, then you have sub categories handled by the XMB

[@Xbob42]

I think the spiral design would easily be the best one to accomplish both goals. Because you can zip through it extremely quickly (but also precisely) you can catch a glimpse of tons of echoes at once, whereas with XMB I feel like that's basically just the same thing we currently have but with reduced clumsiness. Also I just kind of think XMB is ugly as hell and not very elegant, so maybe I'm biased. A UI that's fun to move through also encourages you to spend more time in it, which means more opportunities to see potential solutions via underutilized echoes. With the current UI, and indeed XMB with it, I feel like it's so (poorly) utilitarian and ugly and clumsy to fumble through that it actively keeps me away from it. Whereas you can just "wheeee" through the spiral. Of course, I don't think his spiral is nearly as nice as the one in BG&E, but hey it's just a demonstration, not a finished product.

[@panampace]

The whole “creative sandbox” vs “hand-designed challenges” issue goes far beyond the UI, tho. I think Nintendo’s new approach with Zelda titles is impressive but it’s just inherently flawed. In my experience it only creates fewer “aha” moments and much, much more monotony.

[@wizawhat]

@@panampace I think you could argue the sandbox is equally as flawed as hand designed challenges, just in different ways obviously. We're also only 3 entries into this philosophy shift and they're still figuring things out. How they can better balance the novelty of the early hours of the adventure with the monotony that comes from all the samey content is worth continuing to try refining.

[@Palemis]

Timestamp?

[@gs1514]

fun fact, PREY (2017) switches from a radial menu to a spiral radial menu if you favorite any items over the radial menu limit. So if you only want to be able to swap between a small number of preferred tools, radial menu with large icons, if you want to be able to select any item in your inventory without opening your inventory, massive spiraling radial menu.

[@BonjesBongo]

The beyond good and evil keyboard menu is alive and well as the gear selector menu in warframe. Fun stuff.

[@Incaseofgrace]

Prey 2017 used it too, which is what inspired the WF team's version!

[@PJBgamer]

This video really illustrates how deceptively difficult UI design is in games. My personal favorite solutions are the Cross Media Bar and the Spiral Staircase Menu. Also, that joke at the end was really funny. XD

[@MythicKeaton]

Honestly, I disagree with the director or dev that said that they made the UI the way it is to encourage creativity, to me it had the opposite effect, I ended up gravitating to my favorite echoes anyway. And the UI zooming so fast past the echoes didn't really give me time visually to soak in the other echoes to consider using them. Ultimately, I think the reasoning for the UI backfired. At least for me.

[@dopaminecloud]

You can't force creativity, but you can force scarcity. That's about the only pattern I've seen to make people use varied solutions, something that is otherwise wholly counter to human problem solving.

[@ieuanhunt552]

Making the menu a chore to sort through would discourage creativity. I would find myself using the "most used" section and only using a half dozen echos for the hole playthrough. Do I want to spend the next eternity wrestling with this fiddly UI to get through this platforming section. Or do I just brute force it with beds again. Screw it beds it is.

[@RascanThe6th]

It's a classic BS excuse that gets used. They said that about their decision to have melee ammunition in breath of the wild 🙄 . . .when I'm confident that any one of us could come up with 3 or 4 better ways to "encourage creativity"... TL;DR : just think of that term as Nintendo's version of "making system enhancements".

[@panampace]

@@RascanThe6th YES. People say the durability was supposed to make you change up your strategy, but all it did for me (and many others) is make me avoid combat and discourage exploration. In BotW, weapons are plastic forks and treasure chests are trash cans. Nothing I did felt rewarding in the slightest. You know what encourages trying new things? *Enemy variety*.

[@dopaminecloud]

@@panampace Enemy variety, or in a broader sense, obstacle variety. For which you need paths and things that are fully blocked off by said obstacles.

[@ceegers]

21:50 should have gone with the lame joke: "there's a zelda in the description"

[@krakeurpluss]

I think for the echoes of wisdom the cross media would be the best I also quite like the spiral staircase menu, but it feels off the way it currently is displayed on the video, with à little more polish could probably be the best option

[@demian5631]

Honestly, I think grid with tabs is both the simplest and best solution. Sure it's not flashy at all, but it gets the job done and also provides the best overview of all options per situation. Form follows function and all that.

[@mkks4559]

2:43 I absolutely love this disclaimer/note, and kinda ironic hearing it from one of the few people who have the actual experience to suggest fixes. Way too many people online with absolutely zero experience in anything close to game dev think they can do what the developers couldn't (according to them). Edit: 15:47 This problem reminds me of Rain World's dev tools where the player chooses the category of the thing they want to spawn from a radial menu, then choose the thing itself from a different radial menu around it.

[@Sina-dv1eg]

The Beyond Good and evil wheel is so fantastic. For those who haven't played it, it is genuinely a really fast way to select what you want, it's the fastet I've ever been able to type with a controller. And you can still see exactly what you're scrolling past, so Nintendo is still happy

[@pandim8035]

Fun that you're using your learned programming skills in more videos!

[@fochti]

The Beyond Good & Evil radial staircase is also used in console versions of Prey (2017), as a way to scroll through your equippable items and powers, and it works remarkably well (and quite fast) in my opinion!

[@Soul-Burn]

It's also on the PC version, and works surprisingly OK with the mouse! A cool feature of it, is that if you have only a few items, it's a standard radial menu, and only turns into a spiral staircase when you have too many.

[@montequilla6821]

When I saw you try the radial menu, I immediately thought of the spiral menu for weapons and abilities in Prey (2017). Out of all the options you created, I think the spiral one would work best for this scenario, but it's interesting to see the different options being implemented and how well they work. This a great style of video Mark, as you mentioned you're not looking to make more full games like Mind over Magnet, I hope you make more videos like this that focus on design concepts and show how they could actually be done in engine.

[@Mp5Drummer]

I was not ready for this volume of uploads once you finished Mind Over Magnet. You're spoiling us!

[@GMTK]

The cork has been removed!

[@-neurasthenie-]

@@GMTK Why? I heard it was a lovely city 🥺

[@thegamedevcave]

the spiral staircase menu should probably translate the icons more toward the center of the screen instead of just to the left and right but as a proof of concept i actually really like that one! I can see it being really satisfyingly to scroll through that list. although i think the 2 direction Playstation style solution in the end is probably the most user-friendly

[@milo4885]

Ah the character development from Mark is so satisfying. He went from making videos about game design and why games are good, to making a game himself, to using his knowledge of game development to enhance his ability to critique game design. Amazing

[@SimuLord]

He took the most common red herring criticism, "why don't YOU make one?" and said "Here you go." I think the kids call that something like "sigma energy"? Sorry, Gen Alpha isn't my first language.

[@panampace]

Yes!! Right around the same time I was realizing these “game analysis essayists” were largely full of shit, Mark realized the same thing and went above and beyond.

[@iantaakalla8180]

Even better, apparently his stuff was already the standard for video game theory. He just proved his advice was both useful and that he can stand to follow his own advice. He is two cuts above most video game critics.

[@DominicAyre7]

I think the best bet is to combine the radial menu with the categories. It keeps the simplicity of the radial UI, but also keeps the aspect of discovery by not needing to hide some echos. You could even show the next category on a faded outer ring which makes the stumbling on echos idea even more likely

[@truetimewatcher]

One slight idea I had to tweak the XMB concept is that like in the PS3 menu, the vertical bars outside of the one you're selecting should be invisible or semi-transparent. It feels a bit cramped as is, with all the bars visible at once. Other than that, superb job Mark, and I hope your experience in gamedev means more of these practical demonstrations in future episodes of GMTK (in addition to more games, obviously)!

[@sitnamkrad]

I my opinion the worst crime here is that Nintendo, in an attempt to control how a player plays (a bad idea idea to begin with in my opinion), made an objectively bad UI. And I'm not even convinced anymore that this is the reason they used this UI, since they used the exact same for BOTW and TOTK. Their lack of options like remapping buttons or turning off horrible graphical effects like screen edge blur makes me feel like Nintendo is more and more pushing out games that lack polish. Sure, the core gameplay works fine. But every quality of life option I could think of is completely absent. Another thing that stands out here in my opinion is that everyone is complaining about the UI for choosing echoes. Yes rightfully so, because it is atrocious. But why, when summoning echoes is the core mechanic, is there only *one* button assigned to summoning echoes. A lot of pain could have been avoided if we had gotten a few more buttons to assign different echoes to, so that you wouldn't need to open a menu for every single time you wanted a different echo. Opening any kind of menu in my opinion should be the absolute last resort for using a main game mechanic.

[@GameDevYal]

Yeah, and it's not like it's a completely new idea either - base Ocarina of Time let you have 3 items available at all times, and the 3DS remaster added even more slots including having the most important items permanently available. And even with less item slots available and a faster menu, Link's Awakening / the Oracle games was annoying due to you often needing to change your equipped items on a per-room basis, leading to tons of pausing and menuing every time you walk through a door. And the items would be moved around each time you swapped them (since it literally switched places of the active item and the new item PERMANENTLY each time) so you could never get a good muscle memory for where anything is in the item list either.

[@ausgod538]

Their lack of options and everything you said isn't anything new it's how they always have been. They aren't lacking polish, this is how they always worked. Also this game was developed by grezzo, use Google for once

[@retnuhytnuob4068]

Ceave Perspective did a good video on this. -- personally, they had some improvements here over the others, with the different sorting categories, so it didn't feel _as_ bad here, but there are definitely approaches that could work better. Even if patents are a concern, the approach used in earlier Zeldas with selectable items for different buttons might feel better.

[@WavingWorld]

18:18 Prey(2017) used a spiraling radial menu for your equipment and powers as well.

[@Redingold]

Prey's even starts out as a standard radial menu, and then only transitions to the spiral version once you pass a certain number of entries in it, it's very nice.

[@NoCorrelation.26]

Very cool to see someone actually implement these ideas! I love all the various solutions, but I found one idea which combines the best of all worlds. Here's the pitch: Have the Spiral menu as it is, but combine similar items into small categories like with the Cross-media bar, having it so you toggle between the items in each category with the R button, like the grid with tabs. Also, when it comes to the spiral, I'm not the biggest fan of how it looks and how you can't see that many options at once, so maybe you could have the spiral be viewed from the side. This might cause some overlap problems, but you could always just not squish it down onto a flat plane, since the spiral is going from left to right, so you don't have to worry about it going past the camera

[@gabilegameur]

23:28 I love how you usually expect some seriousness from Mark but on rare occasions he just casually says the most unserious thing of the century just to catch you off guard

[@MonsterJail]

Hooting and hollering when the Beyond good and evil Spiral menu appears

[@HZTBB]

The infinite radial menu from Beyond Good and Evil is one of my favorite bits of UI ever. I genuinely think it should be present in more games or apps.

[@losalfajoresok]

21:51 "There´s a LINK in the description". I see what you did there Mark.

[@kunalchandrakar4741]

13:00 this is also a big problem because switch doesn't have hall effect sensors so doing this many times ( which you will obviously do many times as it is the main feature of this game) will lead stick drifting.

[@elthion22]

I really appreciate how you went about this video both the disclaimer that this is more of a thought exercise than a criticism and the inclusion of the reasoning for Nintendo's decision. It's nice to know the intent even if it didn't line up with the experience some people had. I used the Notebook menu basically the entire game to select Echoes, and it did have the effect Nintendo wanted, I frequently came up with new Echoes to try while I was scrolling through the menu and the game being paused let me deliberate what might be the best option. I think the Grid with Tabs option both maintains that easy of discoverability for new options and keeps sorting through them a quicker process, and implementing that in the Pause menu is probably the best of all worlds, in my opinion.

[@darkhell66659]

Honestly I'm partial to either the play station cross grid menu or the spiral menu. It keeps the philosophy of making you see everything while you look for an echo while making it faster and less annoying. It also shows that the devs tried way more than what we got.

[@sass2836]

This was such a fascinating premise and so enjoyable to watch. I love how many options were offered (and showing the practical reality of implementing them in Unity), while being really respectful of the team and sharing insight into the intention behind the UI. Option 2's Media Bar was my favorite, as it gave a way to see a lot of the items at once while still being a fun way to engage. Fantastic work, as always!

[@fernando98322]

The UI (technically UX but we'll let it slide) in these last two Zelda games is a crime as you said. It's surprising devs and QA play and test the game a lot before release... And no one really made a huge deal about this? "Hey, I'm in the 2nd Dungeon and looking for an Echo is already tiring pls fix" EDIT: The spiral staircase is cool but too much for a Nintendo game imo. The best proposal is the Radial Menu combined with the categories of Option 3. Have more specific categories so you have less Echoes in screen but you can see ALL in a category at a time. You use the stick to point to an Echo and select but you can also use the Dpad to have a cursor go around the screen like Twilight Princess' inventory screen. Add more UI indicators like what's the next category and so on... Maybe with icons. And the sort options that are already in the game, pls add them to the pause menu screen: Last Used, Cost, Type, Most Used (the hidden favorites/OP option), and alphabetically too

[@Tatman2TheResQ]

They knew the UI was "bad" but they believed it supported their game design. It's explained in this very video...

[@fernando98322]

​@@Tatman2TheResQ Yes I know, but sometimes you have to find the middle ground

[@Tatman2TheResQ]

@@fernando98322 Well what you said was that you assumed no one "made a huge deal" about it, except that's not necessarily what happened at all. There could have been plenty of QA testers that mentioned it.

[@CalebWillden]

I agree with using radial menus. Perhaps with the right stick to switch back and forth between categories instead of a single button to advance through them.

[@EmilyMemily-it3xp]

18:26 This was my guess. Can’t BELIEVE you actually did it.

[@ignosis89]

I like the second option where you have tabbed pages, I think it's the sweet spot, you can see MANY echos, few pages to go through that are organized, and can still have that moment of "oh wait...there's this guy...".

[@PatNatGames]

One super small change that helps a ton is just to separate the monsters from objects and have their own sliders similar to BOTW with swords/bows. It doesn't solve everything but it's the easiest bandaid.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

I think what's most upsetting is that this design was implemented perfectly fine in Breath of the Wild. Then they decided "let's use this for EVERYTHING". You know what game has a UI designed to select from a hundred different objects that have unique behaviours? Mario Maker 2... they used rotary wheels because OBVIOUSLY.

This is the comment I was looking for! MM2's item select rings are working really well

[@ausgod538]

Except that mario maker is developed by a complete different department of Nintendo.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@ausgod538 I know, but it's a game on the exact same console, with the same publisher, that uses a similar mechanic to the one they're trying to implement.

[@orions2908]

The weird part is that botw's ui was already a bandaid solution. The game spent a good chunk of development being a wiiu title, probably used the gamepad on all sorts of things, but then had to cut it all out so not to make the switch version the worse one. And somehow they thought THAT should be the new standard? It's bonkers man

[@CollinDeP]

Very well done on redesigning the UI! I've thought about this a lot since playing the game, and I really like your solutions. One aspect that I thought of was how robust the menu is to the slowly growing cast of echoes. One of the strengths of the approach Nintendo took is that when you only have 10 echoes at the beginning of the game, it's pretty quick to move through them. Something like the Favorites menu doesn't really make sense when you only have 10 echoes, and would REALLY stifle creativity. You were solving the problem that in the late/ endgame, it's terrible to move through the bloated echoes menu, but I think another consideration is the growing list of echoes throughout the game, and the UI showing that. I do think all of your alternatives would still work as well, but I think it is another consideration as to why they picked the row. With the grid, for example, as you add new echoes, either the position of each echo would change as they are added, leading to confusion, or there would be a bunch of empty spaces, which would be kind of strange. Just food for thought!

[@zaikhu]

I like this type of video - trying to fix a game design from an existing game

[@jwr6796]

Very cool to see you putting your new programming chops to work! I REALLY like this merging of classic GMTK analysis and practical, hands on demonstration. I'm sure it's A LOT more work, but I hope we see more. That said, I'm not sure I like where the wheel ended up. I honestly think blending the wheel approach with the category approach would be best -- a simple, 2D wheel with categories you can cycle through using shoulder buttons, maybe?

[@evan_mirDM]

I get what Terada was going for but the feeling that I got scrolling through echoes was “Ugh fine, this echo is good enough”. Anyway, I think the cross media bar + acceleration keep what the Zelda team is going for while clearing up the clutter

[@OmegaGamer1989]

NGL, if you're playing the game the way its meant to be played, selecting Echoes just isnt a real problem. Every time someone complains about this, its 100% a user issue, not a game design issue. You sort by most used by default. 90% of the time, this is gonna get you every echo you actually ever *need* right there within the first few slots. Learn a new echo? Sort by newest, and its right there. Think youre gonna want to use that new echo a lot? Just spam it over and over for a few seconds, and boom, now its at the top of most used. This is gonna cover 99% of cases. For that 1% of cases where you need some random obscure echo that isnt super new but also gets rarely used, just bring up the pause menu and select in from the big grid in there. It happens rarely enough that this shouldnt be a problem. Boom, problem solved. Its really not that difficult. When people have trouble with the UI, its because theyre trying to vary the echoes they use as much as possible, just for the sake of variety, rather than just using the few that are actually best. Youre not MEANT to constantly be scrolling all the way to the middle of the list to try qnd find an echo you never use, because 99% of the time, the echo you NEED should be at the very top of the list, in at least one of the sort methods. And if its not? Again, user issue, not game issue. Youre not playing the game the way its meant to be played if your "most used" doesnt contain everything you need for 99% of situations. Oh, also 23:28; its pronounced "High-lee-en" not "Hill-ee-in." They are gaurds from the kingdom of HY-rule, which is named after the goddess HY-lia; not gaurds from the kingdom of HIH-rule named after the goddess HILL-ia.

[@Challacade]

All of my favorite topics in a single video! The spiral staircase stuff is very cool, I've never seen a UI like that before!

[@aalabarces]

Great video! It could've just been an exploration of different ideas for UI designs, but actually making them and showing the code is an amazing and most welcomed plus. Loving your new coder outlook

[@20x20]

what's interesting about having a favourites selector, is that if you limit the number of favourites to something below what would solve every problem easily, you could then have a sort of challenge in that now your favourites aren't a catch-all set, so you'd have to get creative with them in order to continue to use it instead of searching wider.

[@MrFoxInc]

Very good video and the fact that you can show off your theories with practical examples now (that you let viewers try out themselves!) is really awesome. Good on ya, glad I still follow this channel! I think the "Crossmedia bar" is probably the simplest solution or at the very least seems like an absolute no-brainer in hindsight. Yes, it's comparatively complex now that the quick menu not only goes horizontal but also vertical but that wouldn't have been an issue when you just start the game and have like 10 echoes, probably none of which have varieties. I'm convinced that the majority of players would have caught on to how the crossmedia bar works once they see the first variety they collect. It declutters the menu and keeps the original idea intact - you still get to browse through all the echoes and for the very few times that you want to select i.e. a lesser Bokoblin, that option is still there. You just don't have to scroll through all the other options the entire time. Really hoping Nintendo comes off of the horizontal scrolling menus thing soon and finds more creative solutions again...

[@flamesdivde]

I’d love a menu where the “neglected” echos look sad and lonely after not using them. The object could look dusty and covered in cobwebs. That might promote the user to try them.

[@lijmoo]

Great video series potential with this one! With the tab approach I can even see minor improvements to make it more useful like category group names: "critters", "gizmos" etc. And if you just hold the control stick right, when you reach the end of a row, it moves to the start of the row beneath at the leftmost side, so it always cycles top to bottom left to right, OR stay on the same row, but the current selection just moves to the first echo in that row, otherwise you deadend and loss momentum and have to "backtrack" movement selection.

[@GardinerAlan]

Was cool talking to you at Develop about how making MoM was helping your regular GMTK content and this vid is another great example

[@lominero5]

I would love the circle idea with sub categories. It would be really quick and intuitive

[@verygoodfreelancer]

you know zelda is in a BAD place with UI design when youtubers are like “oh ill do a whole video where i fix this” lmao

[@Athinis_Crettos]

It's awesome to see the new levels you are taking your channel, Mark I always love your work, and after you game, your mindset changed, and it's really incredible to witness your journey

[@shmooters5599]

The UI was honestly such a huge problem. The game itself seemed to want to encourage you to collect all of these unique echoes, but the menu made me want to interact with the system as little as possible. Why would I collect echoes when it just makes the menu more tedious to navigate?

[@Kevorama0205]

Hey Mark, thanks so much for doing what you do on KZbin. Your videos provide so much inspiration for game development when sometimes it is hard to stay motivated or start projects! The idea of making a "fake" mod for a game just to showcase all the possibilities and provide an engaging learning experience is brilliant and I am surprised that I haven't seen this kind of thing before! It must have been a lot of work but you make it seem like anyone could try their hand at game dev and make something cool! Can't wait to see what you do next!

[@GatodeIfuturo]

the spiral menu looks weird because it doesn't scale vertically, only horizontally

[@Zeebameet]

The Spiral option is surprisingly quick and fun to use in your demo, I definitely wasn't expecting it to work as well as it does. I think it could benefit from one additional button option (similar to the Grid and Tabs) that would let you skip "up" or "down" by one layer. Also, the graphics are a little funky with it, as I think some other commenters have pointed out.

[@nishantrishinair854]

This needs to be a series

[@siondafydd]

The acceleration idea, doesn't even seem like a style, it feels like that should just be a feature of list searching, like a scroll bar is. Because you can combine acceleration with every other style.

[@bluethan806]

It's so funny playing this game and watching people play it and at some point everyone goes "oh wait how many of these am I gonna have to sort through"

[@Clemehl]

I think most of the ideas can be combined: - The base game line with its sorting (Last Used, Most Used...) - The Mario Maker idea - The PS3 grouping (upgraded) - The Radial menu (or spiral if too busy). Here how it can work: the Menu is cut in half. The bottom one is the Vanilla Line. If your joystick only goes left and right, it is basically the same as vanilla one. The top one is an half circle which has 5-6 categories: Items, Flying, Water, Land, and Warrior (perhaps a Miscellaneous one for those weird ones). You can access that half circle by going up with your joystick and position to the category wanted It will transition to its menu in 0.5 sec, or when pressing R3. The Vanilla Line would disappear as well. To come back, we can put the joystick on Neutral position and after 0.5 sec (or R3), it will revert back. The new menu will put all the Echoes in a circle. But, in order to not be overwhelmed, similar echoes are grouped together. (Maybe the spiral here would be helpful to not overwhelm.) When you put your joystick on a Echo that has variations, it will fork within 0.5s (or pressing R3) to show the variations. Ideally, it is better when there are only 3 of them. If the echo is at 3 o'clock on the wheel, the fork can just 30 or 45°(up-right) 90° (right) and 135 or 150° (down-right), reducing the likelihood of mix-up when selecting a variation by not scrolling the wheeling further. For example: I want to use Zelda's Bed to recover faster. I go the Menu, goes on Item on the upper half wheel, press R3, the wheel appears, I go to the Bed section (it displays the regular one, as the last used), press R3, the variation are displayed around the bed, and I go for the Zelda's Bed. R3 is for those who wants to be fast, we can wait a half second to show by itself. Afterward, if I need the one-echo triangle Bed for mobility, I either use the vanilla list with "Most Used", or do the same thing (going by the half circle). The main inconveniences are... it isn't a nervous system. It would be faster that the Vanilla ones to find what we need. But it would not be organic. Thus saving the Vanilla Line as well as the default, and adding the half circle as helping the user to search for a specific thing.

[@ChaloopaJoe]

Honestly, if they had just added 2 or so more horizontal rows to the already existing menu, it would feel a lot better ahaha. This was so much fun!! Hope to see more videos like this!

[@brockmckelvey7327]

After reading the full Substack, I think it would have been fun if they included a "Random" or "Shuffle" button. That way it could have further encouraged the creativity of "how do I solve X problem with Y echos" instead of just using beds again. Plus, I think Echos of Wisdom would be a really fun Randomizer to play.

[@Gnurklesquimp2]

This doesn't really apply to this example, but I just wanted to say... Tags/labels and filters are amazing. I used to categorize with folders/tabs, but I struggled to decide which one should be in so often, so much simpler to instead give them multiple tags each, filtering for them being akin to opening a folder. Very common issue with music, it's x and y genres mixed, it uses a particular rhythmic and harmonic concept, tuning system, it's a certain mood etc. etc. etc. For anyone working with very long lists, I highly recommend this. Try to keep those naming conventions somewhat standardized, but never hurts to throw in more tags you may remember something by if you just type the tag and it's not clogging up some tag select list UI you made.

[@alphagators64]

I am terrible at coding, but I like problem solving and communication, and THIS is an excellent study in problem solving and communication. I work in business planning, and when it comes to warehouse layouts, logistics, and problem framing, videos like this really help me think about problems from new directions. Great work!

[@feronar-warsongus221]

One problem you didn't mention in the video was that the original game doesn't have an alphabetical sort option, yet in your demo the "original" option is sorted alphabetically. Also, here are some further improvements I would make: * For original with acceleration, allow the acceleration to be controlled with how far you push the thumbstick in a given direction. * For grid and tabs mode, add a title for each grid. (Objects, flying, aquatic/ice, creatures/monsters, soldiers) * For the cross media bar, the thumbstick is way too sensitive, noticeably more so than in the other menu options. Turn the sensitivity down to match the other menus. It also glitches out after a few seconds of me playing with it * For the spiral staircase, it could use a little more polish. It seems to only compress on the X axis, when it should also compress on the Y axis.

[@dr.unventor]

It’s really cool to see someone who primarily worked on and talked about game design for others to learn from become great at using their own advice to make their own projects. Great job

[@elviskleber10]

This spiral staircase menu is interesting and should be used more, I like it how it works in Prey 2017, very cool.

[@ValleyOfWillows]

To perserve the potential for creativity when using the radial, you could have objects, that aren't part of the radial, to be shown in the background or around the radial, passing by slowly while the objects are in random positions. Then you could also add the option to freeze the background objects and select one of those or maybe even put one of the background options on the favourites radial. That way the player won't need to exit the radial menu to try something different. Another way could be a radial of radials. At first, opening the menu let's you select a radial menu by tilting the control stick in a certain angle. Once you've selected a radial, you can tilt your control stick to select one of the objects on it. If you're used to finding a certain object in a radial at the 3 o'clock angle, then it's as simple as tilting right to select that radial and then selecting the object within that radial. Fast and efficient. + you still get the option of flipping through all the objects, which can be done by tilting the control stick in a 360º turn at the pace you want through all of the radials (so it would give more control to set your own pace as well). Visually, you could use an effect where turning the control stick right lets the new radial fade in from the center while getting bigger, and where the old radial is growing beyond the screen edges while fading out. Turning left would do the reverse. Or you could simulate an effect as if the radials were vertically on the edges of a horizontal wheel. The center point of that invisible wheel would be at the player's left. Moving the wheel counter-clockwise would make the current radial move away and to the left from the viewer while tilting and fading away. You could also imagine this as if the radials were cross-sections of a donut ring.

[@SlippyLegJones]

I think coloured grids for organization could help too. If you're looking for an enemy with a yellow background you'll find it much faster than scrolling through many many varied colours with black backgrounds. Just make sure it has colourblind modes.

[@themarkandrus]

I go between the UI being bad game design and it being weirdly good because my kids (7 and 10) really like the game, and don't have a problem navigating it. It's the first Zelda game that they've really been able to get into, although they do enjoy messing around in Skyward Sword

[@elolawynladriel]

1:34 from the point of view of a software developer i can, 100% confirm, that they just recycled the item selection bar from breath of the wild/tears of the kingdom and called it a day. The buttons to sort, the controls tooltips. It is exactly the same. IT. JUST. WORKS. TM. And at the end of the day, people will still buy the game. One funny fact, someone bothered to remove the horizontal scrollbar because, you know, if you are going to use the worst possible ui, might as well make it worse.

[@ruolbu]

I knew about the design intention from that interview already, so I kept thinking "no Mark, that's good UI and UX for sure, but it messes with their intent." Fast scrolling gives you barely enough time to recognize the thing you already have in mind, but it obscures all other available option. Vertical scrolling can obscure the variants as well. On top, the vertical categories and the Tabs from the next option both - while great for lategame - make the early game weirdly cumbersome. Imagine some kid going "where is my new monster? Huh, it's on a separate page? Oh and there is the bird from earlier. Why do I have 5 pages, for 4 available Echos?" But then you dug up that super wild spiral design and I LOVE IT! It's probably a bit too fiddly, and maybe Nintendo has design restrictions on mechanics that require constant stick rotation (dunno what the most recent Mario Party says about that). But in principle does all the right things. Long list that people go through, enough time to observe and consider every option, nothing is permanently obscured, it works the same in early and late game. It's a great idea.

[@DarshanBhambhani]

They really didn’t need to make it one giant long row list lmfaoooooooooo

[@daijoupoi700]

I absolutely love this format!!!! Such a cool way to see the channel evolve after finishing your game, I would absolutely love to see more of these kinds of videos

[@cheekyninja8]

I think it isn't just a UI problem, but a gameplay one. As it's said, the devs want the player to think creatively, but the player can just use some op echoes to beat everything. I believe this needs to be solved through new mechanics. Here are some ideas: 1) Temporarily unabling the echoes the players use too much 2) Randomly unabling a selection of echoes The previous two added punishing mechanics to the player. Instead, reward mechanics could be implemented: 3) Giving the player rewards for using new echoes (maybe cosmetics for zelda, or secret levels?) 4) Randomly choosing some echoes by making them glow. If the player is able to beat the given challenge using only those, he can get a cool reward. I would love to hear more ideas :)

[@xerveeon]

I had a thought of another way to incentivize using more types of echoes, but I then also immediately how it could go wrong. It was, "what if echoes you haven't used in a while used less resources, like a freshness bonus?" Then I realized that would likely lead to thoughtless echo spam. A part of incentivizing the player to take certain actions is reframing things like a bonus rather than a punishment, so I think if my idea was combined with your first listed idea it could work to that end. It would be along the lines of: Echoes have a higher default cost than they currently do, but if they haven't been used recently they use the amount the developers balanced them with. What "recently" means could be balanced per object (because some types of objects will inevitably be needed more than others), or tied to similar objects (like, "use tables to refresh beds") so you are incentivized to use different objects in similar categories. Even with all that guiding, it would still be possible to use something that you use often so the player isn't totally locked out of using it during the cooldown. Implementing an idea like this with one of the UI change ideas from the video would (hopefully) keep the spirit of what the developers wanted while not having a poor user experience like EoW currently does.

[@tirvine9102]

That goes against Nintendo's philosophy with the past three Zelda games to give players complete freedom. Beating a puzzle in a way that was never intended is lauded. It's up to the player to experiment, but that's a tricky line to walk because it can result in a dull experience. Especially when the UI gets in the way. An incentive with a lighter touch could be to reward players for simply trying every item once. Although, I did forget about the OP tile echo for most of the game so, to my frustration, I did have to be more creative.

[@mrbrookah4117]

I would say of the versions you proposed, that the "Grid & Tabs" offered both the clear and simple visual representation of all echoes, (allowing the player to view all, and encourage the player explore with new echoes) and also a more rapid way of scanning through the many "cards".

[@Puessitalvez]

18:54 SHAME!!!

[@trevorvergesart]

Yeah...

[@Toppot2]

The Beyond Good & Evil Wheel doesn't get used enough in UI design. Its so elegant a solution, obviously its not fit for every problem. Such a great video explaining everything, many, many more videos like this please. If I could Like the video 100 times I would!

[@Llusou]

It's incredible how much of an improvement these are, Nintendo should be taking notes

[@Caboose2711]

Love the idea to showcase the entire process from design to implementation of solving a problem in game development. Having the humility to admit your stumbles only makes it that much better. Killer work!

[@icconicc7421]

Was into this until the chat gpt part. Unsubscribing, didn't know you used the plagiarism machine (that also burns the planet). Very disappointed

[@NicoGonzalezEstevez]

Amazing video, I like that you also showed a little bit of the coding process without getting too much into the details.

[@tebasak1]

Love the videos! Loved the game and was just as surprised how fun this was as I was surprised that TotK wasn't a Zelda protagonist. The only other complaint about this game was lack of creative problems. Bed, bed, bed, bed. I could 90% solve all my problems traversing the problem with a bed. There were a few puzzles that required a cloud or a spider line or a non-melting rock but most solutions were a bedslength away.

[@heikesiegl2640]

Reminds me of me almost only using bombs in BotW xD

[@dopaminecloud]

"People think they want complete control over their experience, but what they really want is to cut down trees to cross ravines, something they'll never actually do when they have complete control over their experience." -ol' matosis' botw review It's an inevitable result of merging problem solving with sandbox elements. And part of why the experience in such games can be very lacklustre unless you're still high on the novelty of being able to do things in a game to begin with.

[@tebasak1]

@dopaminecloud Good point! I think the level design folks didn't talk to the game mechanic folks. I see a lot of potential that was wasted because one game mechanic overpowers what's "suggested". Even in traditional Zelda games it's like "oh yeah, that WHOLE area is cut off from you because you don't have the hookshot. In this game, they don't even ramp you up; meaning you're collecting echoes faster than getting one and learning it strengths and limitations. That's where getting creative comes in and not giving them a toolbox of 100 tools but knowing what each does and presenting problems repeatedly where a few can solve.

[@tebasak1]

@@heikesiegl2640 Arrow guy myself

[@heikesiegl2640]

Exactly, so there is no need for the bad UI.. to "stumble" over cool solutions

[@batmabel]

Loved that you mentioned at some point that you took into account the intention behind the menus. While I agree that they didn't succeed on their original vision (I also ended up using only very few echoes to avoid scrolling, especially since 90% of them are just less effective versions of others), it's really important to keep in mind what the UI is being used *for*, what is the idea you're trying to convey. In an exercise like this one we have the benefit of hindsight, so it's easier to end up with something better (especially in this particular case where the original result was... well, this), but I see way too many "UI redesigns" that just plainly wouldn't work in practice. That being said, I still think that a "favorites wheel" would work fine for what the game was trying to do. You'd still need to open the menu and assign your favorites, which you'd open anyway when you get a new echo so you could read what it does and all that. So you wouldn't be too far off of just adding it to your favorites to give it a try; in the end, even if it ended up making you use say, 8 echoes in total, it would still be better than using less than 5 like I did.

[@sohiearth]

I guess it's all about the "flow" of the UI. A PC game would have smaller buttons for use with the mouse, and a console like the Switch (2) would have much bigger and simple menus.

[@jayphonic9244]

I need more content like this, it's really helpful to see other people's unity work flow, but this is also way more interesting than a basic tutorial

[@alvaro3599]

If encouraging creativity really was nintendo's reason for leaving the UI like that then I am inclined to call them kinda lazy. There are lots of ways to encourage creativity that don't include having a long and horrible menu, in fact, having all options at all times may just trivialize decision making like in breath of the wild where, when you have most hazard protection armors, the weather conditions just become an annoyance because it means that you have to switch armor without that much choice. Most people I have met agree that these games are at their best with a few solid but not op options like at the begining of the game. I would argue that that feeling can be replicated throughout the game in many ways like, for that breath of the wild example, what if you can only carry a handful of goodies in your backpack and choose only one armor set before going out to adventure, then if you go to a magma biome, you can choose to use the magma armor but trade of your health and power since that armor is not that sturdy and cannot change it while beign there. Then if you reaaally want to limit them more in their decision making and encourage them to use more options, you can do that if you die, you loose all of those goodies and your armor is damaged (maybe repair cost little but takes like an hour to be done so you have to choose another option while that is beign repaired). I don't know if you can do something exactly like that in echoes of wisdom since there are waaay more items in that game and that could make the process of preselection way more tedius, but i would argue that even that would be better than having everything at all times and in a horrible presentation.

[@zonabelindajoven]

🙌🏽

This is a really cool type of video that I would like you to keep making. Its like a mix between a game design video essay and a tutorial. Idk how scalable this concept is for things outside of UI but keep it up!