MAGNUS ARCHIVES GET UNSETTLED www.rustyquill.com/

@maryz9319

3 жыл бұрын

#notacult Totally a cult

@slightedge8244

3 жыл бұрын

Would you please add names to the footages you are showing in ur videos?

@NASTIX24

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for recommendation actually! I haven't heard about this podcast and I wanted something similar to scp stories, that I listen to on the Exploring Series channel.

@greenisnotacreativecolour

3 жыл бұрын

@@NASTIX24 The Magnus Archives is fantastic, get in there!

@dustinbesser4780

3 жыл бұрын

oh hells yeah, great series!

“i think the witcher could use a bit more polish” “i thought it *was* polish”

@0ctopusComp1etely

3 жыл бұрын

Eyyyyy!

@Flowtail

3 жыл бұрын

I can't believe my brain let me hear that as i was reading

@Halo_Legend

3 жыл бұрын

I farded

"Shadow the Hedgedge" My sides

@imveryangryitsnotbutter

3 жыл бұрын

. *OW* ᵀᴴᴱ EDGE

@12345678abracadabra

3 жыл бұрын

Shadow the edge-hog

@thehellhound8582

3 жыл бұрын

@@12345678abracadabra Edgy the hedgy

Since you're talking about UI-less games, I was wondering if you could do a video on games that succeed or fail at going UI-less.

@LadyAhro

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed! This would be very interesting.

@DonkoXI

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. This would be very interesting. More broadly, it would be interesting to look at games which succeed (or fail) at removing something prominent from the UI. Removing the HUD is one example, but I immediately thought about Hyper Light Drifter. It has a HUD, but none of the interface (or anything in the game beyond the brief tutorial) has any words. In both cases, a significant channel of information is removed from the UI, requiring more to be presented by the environment. Without words, the HUD and inventory screen are forced to be fairly minimal (and well organized), but even still, their contents need to be explained indirectly by interactions with the environment, resulting in similar design decisions to something you might see in a HUDless game. I think it's more difficult to pin down how a game manages to work when prominent elements are removed than when they're added, so a whole episode specifically on the design choices resulting from omissions would be very interesting.

@DonkoXI

3 жыл бұрын

To be fair though, part of me really just wants to see more about Hyper Light Drifter. There's a ton of interesting design choices in that game.

@Vesperitis

3 жыл бұрын

Games that fail at no UI: GTA and RDR, cuz you're constantly paying attention to the tiny little corner of your screen where the minimap is.

@DonkoXI

3 жыл бұрын

@@Vesperitis Firewatch did a great job overcoming that exact issue by the way the map was integrated into the gameplay. They flipped it around into mechanic that supports the immersion really well. It essentially puts you in the exact same circumstances as the character and makes you do exactly what you really would do in the situation (identify landmarks, etc). As a mechanic, it also did a lot to support the efficacy of the environmental design/art by forcing you to pay attention to it. It's definitely not a universal solution though. It worked there because it complemented the premise of the game. It also puts requirements on the level design to make it work out.

Don’t forget in bowser furry when you finish a section if you walk away a little bit and turn the camera away the level will change when you look back. Making it even more seamless.

@GL_099

3 жыл бұрын

I would have personally preferred if I could do the different missions in any order I want, or all at once. Having to leave and come back for every one makes cleaning up the levels a bit more of a chore, but I do appreciate that a lot of things like enemy placements change along with the objective, that couldn't be done if you put all the missions into one.

@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034

3 жыл бұрын

@@GL_099 in my opinion the changing stages are cool as fuck

@suakeli

3 жыл бұрын

Fury, not furry. Important distinction.

@rompevuevitos222

3 жыл бұрын

@@suakeli Bowser's Fury is def a furry game

@asianman8712

3 жыл бұрын

Lol nice joke

I love how you managed to respectfully roast the hell out of Vexx's font choices.

I think all Witcher games are polish equally. They all made in Poland after all.

@PxHDB

3 жыл бұрын

Cyberpunk cries

@imveryangryitsnotbutter

3 жыл бұрын

Polish sausage

@MartinPurathur

3 жыл бұрын

Love me a good pun

@nayannmartinelli300

3 жыл бұрын

Noice!

@nayannmartinelli300

3 жыл бұрын

@@Benji-Lindz I don't want to sound like a jerk, but you do realize the original comment is a pun, right?

You outdid yourself with your 'bad design' transition this time. I audibly recoiled from it.

May I just mention how well-designed your "Bad Design" titles are for invoking that visceral, quintessential feeling of bad design? They're always so good, at being bad.

@DesignDoc

3 жыл бұрын

It's the most fun part. Sometimes we make things that are way too bad and have to tone it down a smidge.

@Kirbman

Жыл бұрын

Making something bad on purpose is an art in itself.

I did not remember the witcher 1 UI being that busy,In my head was a lot more simple with a lot of brown and less collor I dont know why.

@JZStudiosonline

3 жыл бұрын

It was either Witcher 1 or 2 that had a separate UI for keyboard and controller. Either way, they were all pretty crap.

@hhh0511

3 жыл бұрын

The UI was created for lower resolution monitors; It looks crowded on higher resolutions because of bad upscaling

I think the second set of UI problems on The Witcher 1 might be tied to bad UI scaling? After all, the game is pretty old and almost surely designed for something like 480p and the size suffers on the upscaling. Also, speking of fonts, loop Hero does a fantastic job with it's fonts. While the fancy font is the default, which is not bad, but can be hard to read if you can't see well, or are watching a video on the game on a lower than HD resolution, so the main menu displeys on the upper corner pretty prominently the fact you can change it to either a version with more resolution and no serifs, or to a dyslexic friendly font, which are a bit less cohesive with the aesthetic, but still look fine and more importantly, are much more readable then the default. It is a fantastic choice that seems simple or even borderline meaningless but actually does a lot of heavy lifting for the game

@Roooobb

3 жыл бұрын

I was thinking that about Witcher 1 as well. Those tiny icons probably look fine on a lower-res monitor but in the days of standard 1080 and a chunk of 1440 and 4k, they do scale well.

@stevethepocket

3 жыл бұрын

Isn't Witcher 1 a PC exclusive? Most PC gamers would have had a 1280x1024 monitor back then; 1080p is barely any taller than that, so the only issue is getting it to fill out the extra space in the widescreen format.

@TheMetalOverlord

3 жыл бұрын

@@stevethepocket At the time the standard good monitor was 720p, while most PC gamers still played at 480p 4:3 monitors, because more than that was pretty expensive to buy and they had all very low durability.

@TheMetalOverlord

3 жыл бұрын

Loop Hero did right what Blasphemous did REALLY wrong. Can't thanks the devs enough for that decision.

@stevethepocket

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheMetalOverlord Bro, what country do you live in? I have never once in my life seen a 1280x720 monitor-and hell no, 640x480 was ancient history by 2007. My monitor at the time was a CRT I got from a thrift store three years earlier and it was still big enough to do 1024x768.

9:18 Outer Wilds handles the real-time foreign language translation really well, in my opinion. The main objective of the game is to translate ancient murals to progress the game, so you end up using the translation tool constantly. All it really does is display a jumble of letters and symbols that quickly transition into the full paragraph, it takes less than a second but it still feels like the tool actually scans the hieroglyphs and real-time translates them. The tool itself is diegetic and your characters holds an old-fashioned narrow screen in their hands. By far one of the most creative "text boxes" I've seen in a game.

Age of Calamity's menu is... Less than ideal in the late and post-game...

@haruhisuzumiya6650

3 жыл бұрын

But it's appropriately thematic and can be traversed vs the witcher 1 weird uniqueness

@ruolbu

3 жыл бұрын

I'm not nearly done and I expected as much ^^

@zeldaenby224

2 жыл бұрын

Wdym?

I can see pretty well but because so many video games use such tINY FONTS AND MENUS I had to get glasses to keep playing games :’)

@ziuber18

3 жыл бұрын

Seriously, for me the first game with subtitles that are easy on the eyes was AC: Valhalla - big ass font with antialiasing. Design Doc coul make a whole 30 minute video listing games that failed when it comes to text on the screen

@bretdorman3433

3 жыл бұрын

This was me with God of War (2018). There was a patch to allow bigger font but it was still super tiny. And they had so much room to make it just a bit bigger. Why Kratos?? Why???

@via3600

3 жыл бұрын

@@bretdorman3433 I really don’t get it. If I ever do end up following my dreams of making my own games, I’m definitely gonna make sure you can at least Read the dang text

@ziuber18

3 жыл бұрын

@@bretdorman3433 not only it was tiny bu also blended with the background. Whenever they started talking on the boat I tried to find an angle so the text would be on a dark background. To no avail...

@aidennoir597

3 жыл бұрын

I missed a lot of key information in Doom Eternal because I couldn't squint hard enough.

Never thought I'd see magnus sponsoring youtube videos

I was like "oh no not Magnus Archives being called out" The relief it was an ad 😅

i have a nitpick with Vexxs title screen. It really bothers me how the title "Vexx" is one stile and the "press start" is in another, it really feels jarring to me.

THE CLOCK STRIKES 12:00 but its 8 AM

@DesignDoc

3 жыл бұрын

It’s 12 somewhere

I did _not_ expect a magnus pod sponsor here. What a lovely surprise!

If you're gonna talk about display fonts, you can't just ignore Omikron: The Nomad Soul

@DesignDoc

3 жыл бұрын

You know what, you're totally right.

@kasane1337

3 жыл бұрын

Also if you're talking about uncanny facial animations. Those weirded me out even after 12 hours of playing the game.

DS games and 3DS games, at least many that I played, had really good UI's. All of the important information ends up on the screen where the most of the gameplay happens, while the rest was put on the other screen. This was a massive benefit for tactics games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem where all the stats of the unit could be displayed without obscuring the map. It also meant players could watch more of the game world. Given that some 3DS titles did have pretty open levels on a tiny screen, that's a big deal. I'm thinking of Ever Oasis and Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., probably Monster Hunter too. Kid Icarus is also one of those titles and it has a LOT happening on that tiny screen. Screen real estate is precious on handhelds.

16:36 - First witcher UI is tiny for you due to absence of scaling and resolution creep over the last years. On monitors and resolutions, that were available when game came out, it was competely fine. So its more of a tech issue, not the intentional design. Also imo radar being small is not an issue, cause its main function is to show you enemies around you (imitating general awareness of hero), not to help you navigate through world. For latter you have a map.

Man, I managed to be lost nearly the entire time in bowsers fury I loved it though, one of my favourite Mario adventures in a while

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love your videos. I've been working as a graphic designer for a handful of years now and I'm almost done with my BFA in graphic design and I still always learn something new and wonderful from your videos. Simply amazing. :)

I’d love to hear you talk about Killer7’s design, it’s utterly bizarre on purpose but sorta grows on you

I keep forgetting that TMA sponsors youtubers sometimes, that ad took me off guard-

Yesss I always look forward to these!

That sponsor sounds pretty cool actually, I-

@helloworld-tq7nm

3 жыл бұрын

it's great! highly recommend

oh hey it's that podcast that took over my entire tumblr dash for a while the shipping was such that you probably wouldn't be able to tell it was a horror podcast

Fire Emblem Three Houses' typeface works well with the theme of the game, but the font size is just a tad too tiny. Whenever I go back to play it, me and my nearsighted glasses-wearing eyes always have to adjust to how small it is, regardless if I'm on TV or handheld mode. And sharing screenshots from the game on twitter look kinda awkward bc of the small font. Compare that to Animal Crossing, which uses a big bold font that you can easily read without zooming in.

I remember seeing your first installment of this series when it first came out and was really inspired by it. Awesome to see you still killing it on Vol. 12!

Wasn't expecting the magnus archives sponsor.

One of my favourite series. I'm so in love with good UI. These serve as basic lessons in graphic design AND I LOVE IT!! Don't stop making these.

This is awesome, I can't wait to binge watch this series when it's over!

For most of the Mario segment I completely forgot that this was about graphic design.

Hmm, why do I get the feeling we'll be seeing P5 Strikers someday soon...

@sazafar6615

3 жыл бұрын

I swear every time I see it I just wanna buy it immediately ... Even though I'm playing P5R for the first time right now xD

Hi, just recently discovered and seen the all 12 videos. :) Some good designs that I didn't saw in you videos: - Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure - menu design and while doing graffiti - Darkest Dungeon - the great character, background, barks(bubles with mesages during fights), and onne of the most interesting: while attacking or defending, it seems like a cut scene but are actually just images slowly moving that gives the impressions of a cut scene - Split/Second - minimalistic hud - Crysis 1 - having diegetic hud (i remeber that you could look at the weapon and modify things... do not remeber what exactly, played it in 2007) Bad design that I didn't saw in you videos: - Dragon's Dogma - having 2 separate menus for equipping weapons and armours and then having other menu for the consumable - Skyrim - inventory items

Thanks for a great advert for The Magnus Archives!

The menu of The Wither is making my head hurt like there is so much different tiny little icon everywhere it's making the whole looking so messy

'what is this unique font used in VEXX" It's the font Exocet. If you've played DIablo or Diablo II, it's instantly recognizable as the font those games use for everything.

Omg i was NOT excpecting you to talk about Vexx. I have so much nostalgia for that game

I remember loving Vexx as a kid. tho it was so hard to beat. especially the final boss. I didnt expect to see it here in bad design, but it makes sense when you explain it.

Wake up honey! Design Doc upload another Good Design, Bad Design video!

For a bad design candidate: I'd say the levelup indication in Loop Hero. All the other information seems pretty intuitive and well-telegraphed, but it's super easy to not notice from the sound cue _or_ the visuals that your hero has leveled up and can add a perk.

Man, I really enjoy your videos about design, thank you!

I actually played Vexx all the way until the final boss ... and got confused by how to beat him ... I don't remember if I ever bothered looking for a walkthrough to figure it out I actually liked the text ... it felt right for the world they were trying to create ... that idea that it was like a foreign language being translated as it was spoken ... yes, exactly

Note on the Witcher UI: it was designed for a 4:3 computer monitor; played at a 1080x1260 resolution. Anything greater or 16x9 and the UI scales and stretches weirdly. Not defending bad design, but when played as originally intended, on a 2007 era PC with a CRT monitor, it's nowhere near as bad.

This channel made me love graphic design and realise hoe important it is, thats great

These videos are underrated. They are very educational about graphic design, but are clean and use good examples.

Its funny you say that about bowsers fury because there were amazing 3d platformers like Jak and Daxter doing this in 2001. The precursor Legacy was always extremely my cup of tea. Some fairly challenging platforming mixed with exploration and a structured open world. Yes please

Good video, as per usual I *slammed* that like button as soon as I saw Pyre on display. Highly recommend this overlooked gem to anyone reading this.

I'd like to see a dive into the information presentation in XC2's battle UI. Imo one of the best design showing almost everything you need to know. The only things missing is a better display of the elemental orbs you have already comboed and your current status since you often lose sight of your character when toppled and wonder why nothing is happening on your inputs.

Oh my God! 8:37 Vexx was one of my first Games i played on the Orginal Xbox That it just shows up here Nice I was so sure that it was a forgotten game

Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed it :) Have been waiting since the announcement hahaha

the display font vexx uses on the main menu is called "diablo" how much you wanna bet they chose it just because of the edge font name

I've been playing Yakuza 7 lately, and for those games I really like to turn off the minimap and UI to really enjoy learning the layout of the city. That said, this game specifically has a little "R" button toggle that's used to show or hide your party health and you can't hide, and it always stays in this awkward spot right next to where the minimap *would* be. It's maddening.

Bowser's Fury really is a great surprise.

3:45 That's a sweet transition.

Every time I CrossCode is included in any KZread video it fills me with so much joy

Hey, I've been playing Opus Magnum recently, too!

I know people love mario bowser's fury seamless approach but it stresses me out. I love hub worlds especially if it's a different pace or style of gameplay for a breather and way to bookend play sessions.

@Semudara

3 жыл бұрын

Yep; I think that issue is only compounded by Fury Bowser himself. You can never fully relax or hang out in a peaceful area, because there is always a ticking clock countdown to chaos.

Regarding text: YES! I hate most pixel-art indie games' text, I find pixel fonts are usually close to unreadable for me. I pointed this out on r/gamedev and they whined at me "but but but my aesthetic vision", well, that's great, but if I can't read your text, I can't play your game and if I can't play your game, your aesthetic vision really doesn't mean shit.

@DesignDoc

3 жыл бұрын

Loop Hero has some really good alternate text options you can choose between that I think is a great fix for the artistry/usability problem.

why is a side-game packed in with a rerelease of 3d world one of the unironically best Mario games ever made?

How about a video on combat UI, I think Ar Tonelico 2 has a really good whixh manages to balancd style yet practicality

One old and outdated game design mechanic that desperately needs modernization are random encounters within monster-collecting video games. I'm talking like every five steps you take and Bam! Another fight comes up (think Mt Moon from the Pokemon franchise). Some games have fixed this issue by implementing over-world encounters, some of my favorite examples include Dragon Quest XI and even Pokemon Let's Go. After being exposed to over-world encounters, it's really tough for me to slog through games that use random encounters throughout an area or a dungeon. Good game design is *always* appreciated

I always loooove that Persona BGM at the start.

Amazing episode! Keep up the good work!

9:32 I'm pretty sure the body text font is the _Diablo I_ and _Diablo II_ custom fonts, further evidence in the menu where you see the capital "O" with a cross inside it (8:50).

@BooJoh

3 жыл бұрын

I noticed it instantly. All three Diablo games used the font. While Diablo I used it pretty much everywhere - which looks dated but isn't that hard to read, Diablo II used a more readable font for dialog, and Diablo III pretty much limits the original font to menu headings and such. Diablo IV seems to be using it even less, though it's still present in existing alpha screens. I feel like with Vexx it wasn't just a case of using a poor font choice, but also using font settings and animations that made it even more difficult to read.

Played vexx a fair bit as a kid and liked it. I think the used font fits with the games vibe a lot and is very readable. I admit that i could feel otherwise if i didnt somewhat grew up with it tho

Hades is beautiful and charming and I love it but it NEEDS an option to increase the font size. It's the first game in years I've had to sit closer to the TV to be able to read at times.

@johnjohnson3681

3 жыл бұрын

That's true. If I'm too lazy to move closer to the screen I just skip the dialogue. Who knows how many potential witty jokes I've missed.

I really loved how Total War: Three Kingdoms used its five colour coded character classes to deliniate not only combat roles, but troop choices, city buildings, technology, and more together. So you knew that if a guy had a grey icon, he was a Sentinel, who excelled at defense and had the tankiest troops. But you also knew that he'd benefit from items in the grey branch of the tech tree, and in that area of the tech tree you'd see a lot of stuff about industry. When you went to the city building screen, you'd see all the buildings related to industry were coded grey, and if you placed a Sentinel in an administrative role, he'd give you bonuses to your industry. Rinse and repeat for each of the five classes.

I might have missed it if there’s a video I accidentally skipped, but I think you should talk about the good design of AI The Somnium Files, and its recurring UI motifs of diamond-shaped cells, detective noir flourishes, and the subtle eye imagery scattered about. Its really good.

design doc video on my birthday cool

Talking about the issues with the font in Vexx reminded me again of Blue Reflection. From what I recall, it's a perfectly innocent grotesque font that they somehow managed to just render completely wrong. It's baffling.

I liked the pendulum effect. Good video.

Can you talk about how important it is to know what platform your game is going to be compatible with and how important it is to build with that? I think Phobies needs to hear this

holy shit... Vexx! Now that brings back memories. I wish i finished that game back in the day.

Nintendo sometimes can miss in making a Hub World, You can see that Zelda Skyward Sword takes some inspiration from Mario 64 hub world but it misses the point in the area used as hub world is the sky were you have to fly wit the Loftwind (bird) and the warp points are very separated from each others so it's sloppy to get from one area to another since most of the sky is empty, navigation is slow, it just has a few rocks wit chests and a couple of enemies

@eduardorpg64

3 жыл бұрын

Not to mention that you have to constantly flap your Wii Remote to move around with your bird. It made my arms feel tired, and I dreaded each time I had to go back to the sky.

@timedasher

3 жыл бұрын

@@eduardorpg64 I agree, it just a gimmick that feel "fun" the first 5 minutes, but after that it gets annoying fast, hopefully in the remaster they could fix that by making fast travel just like in Botw using the shrines or the travel medallion

Oooh boy, nice surprise on a Monday

You should check out "The Caligula Effect", both the original and the updated release as both a bad design and good design respectively. EDIT: Oh and one other game you could check is Hellsinker. That game is kinda infamous for it's UI, both for how well it fits the style the game is going for, but also for being incredibly unintuitive.

@Ramsey276one

3 жыл бұрын

Got the first on Switch last week Saw a few vids of the Vita version. Kinda glad for the update! XD And the next comes out on June! (JP)

Didn't expect to see Vexx here, I must have rented it like 4-5 times, didn't beat it as a kid but was fun. Only ended up finishing it much later on an emulator.

I legit learnt more from this channel than my design university

I think this is the first time someone has talked about Vexx since I played it as a child.

And one game I now found that I think that maybe you should check as it occupies a pretty peculiar spot. Cruelty Squad.

I never considered audio design could be part of graphics design. I'd love to see more stuff in good design/bad design that talks about how elements not normally thought of as part of graphics design could be related to graphics design.

Actually I just remembered: You know what game took an innovative and surprisingly logical approach to overworld design? Clash at Demonhead. It looks like your typical Mario 3 style map, but each point actually represents one of the two end points of the level, and the lines between them are the levels themselves. You select one of the routes branching off from where you are and that's the level you play, and you can even run a level backwards (yes, literally right-to-left) if you approach it from the other end. And you can't just waltz past levels you've already cleared if your route takes you back around, either. I can't vouch for the game itself as a platformer, but I'm surprised I've never seen another game use that approach. It's made me realize how little sense the Mario 3 approach actually makes when you think about it.

Isn't the Witcher UI that small, because it scales with the resolution? Half Life 1 has a tiny hud on 1080p, while 480p glory has it quite big. Btw you should talk about Wipeout 3 or HD sometime :) Great video as ever nonetheless

Did Persona 5 Strikers fix the UI elements Design Doc wasn't a fan of from the original?

On the subject of games that try to avoid menus, let's talk about the prologue in System Shock 2. They built an actual level that you have to go through to access the optional tutorial as well as make the three decisions that determine your character build (which works similarly to the multiple-choice backstory in Mass Effect). But instead of being an immersive part of the story like Vault 101, it's just a series of empty rooms and hallways, with no signs of human activity, because the game wasn't built to handle NPCs or anything that might have made it work. They even spent precious man-hours creating prerendered cutscenes depicting various ships taking off, presumably the ones your character was supposed to be boarding. But they all just look like cheap CGI scenes of generic spaceships taking off. So all it does is waste your time.

Can you make a video about hidden information? When its annoying and when its interesting...

@svenbtb

3 жыл бұрын

I mean EVERY game has hidden information. Just depends on what type of game and the intended experience, but even Tetris relies on hidden information.

@gniludio

3 жыл бұрын

@@svenbtb What does tetris hide?

@Melecie

3 жыл бұрын

@@gniludio pretty sure there's been a bad design segment on badly hidden information

Sort of related to the subject matter, I'd like to request not using preview/thumbnail images on KZread with a lot of red color towards the bottom edge. It can make the red progress bar practically invisible, so it's difficult to see if you've watched/finished a video already.

The opus magnum one I couldn't parse the SFX from the music. I kinda need one of them on their own before I can hear what you're talking about.

Opus Magnum sends into trance like no other game

@KVR020

3 жыл бұрын

Factorio does this more

Great video

I found the first Witcher menu easier to navigate... I could easily brew potions on the first one, on the second and third the interface was really bad and I tried to spent less time as possible in it, sadly without success.

I may be miss remembering but many issues you have with the witcher's UI may be due to your computer's resolution, as honnestly some of them didn't seem to be present back when I played it (although it was some years ago). Have you tried reducing it to see if it fixes some stuff like small icons ?

Hello from the future and what the fuck?! The Magnus Archives sponsored Design Doc! What a blessed union!

Lookit Bowser's Fury implementing the Plessi Everywhere system, lol.

8:30 Man I fucking LOVED Vexx on the PP2.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned for this series, but you should look at the updated Pathologic. It's not an easy game, but the design of it is an unbelievable upgrade to the original, and a wonderful cleaning up of ideas.