In the current design I have taken a lot of these twirls and bendsout of the GUI Design and kept it pretty clean and it improved theperformance significantly. I’m still considering adding some moredetails, and at a later stage probably even more is going to be added,but for now performance comes first.
In this picture you can see how the GUI design evolved during the project.
 

Color Scheme
While redoing User Interface, I also made some experiments withdifferent color schemes. The colors currently present on the interfaceare a combination of purple, blue and red for the buttons. It will alsobe possible to change the color scheme of UI in game - we are currentlytesting another 3 color schemes.

The GUI Window
While playing the Chronicles of Spellborn gold users will see numerouswindows. As an example I’ll take one of these windows and explain alittle how it all comes together.

Let’s take the inventory as an example. First I will get a requestfrom the Gameplay department that an inventory window is needed. Inormally schedule a meeting. In this meeting Gameplay, Interactiondesign and Tech department representatives will be present.
- The Gameplay department writes a functional design and creates a complete outline of what it should do.
- Tech department checks if it is possible to create the technologybehind this window and will be responsible for the in-gameimplementation.
- Interaction design department (me) comes up with a templatedesign, which shows how it will function; shows where all buttons andinformation is supposed to be placed. Positioning of this informationis crucial for the window to be user-friendly. This normally takes acouple of tries to get it right. In this picture you can see an earlytemplate version of the inventory.
 

When all parties approve, I can create the final design for it.

For the final design, I use this template to create a mockup inPhotoshop. This has to have the same look and feel as the one that willbecome the in-game version. You can see here a finalized version of theinventory.
 

When the design is ready I hand it over to our dedicated GUIcoders. All art assets that are needed for creating this window are putinto a single big image together with all other GUI art. This is calledthe “GUI sheet”. The Code department uses this sheet to recreate thegraphics of the Inventory in-game. I follow the implementation progressvery closely and make sure that all functions are implemented the rightway.

Testing phase
When the window is finally implemented in-game the testing phasestarts. First I have to do an acceptance test. This is a final check ifall functions are implemented accordingly to the plan. At the sametime, the window is presented to the QA department and gets it’s firsttest-driving by the testers. Given feedback is taken into considerationfor further improvements. If every thing goes well, the window willreach the final state: implementation in the final build.