UI Guidelines

UI Guidelines

Forge is a volunteer project and creativity is encouraged! This page is not a hard rule-book — the guidelines below are intended to give some direction to contributors submitting UI changes and help maintain a consistent UI approach across the project.

Contents

• UI Design Principles
• Where Should a New Setting or Option Live?
  • Desktop
    • Game Menu
    • Dock Panel
    • Preferences Menu
  • Mobile
    • Game Menu
    • Settings

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UI Design Principles

• Aim to be intuitive and user-friendly.
• Involve a good mix of dynamic and static elements.
• Use reasonable, context-driven default options.
• User-facing elements should always use localisation keys, not hard-coded strings.
• UI elements should be compatible with theme skinning — prefer skin-aware components and colours over hard-coded styles.
• The default Forge skin should favour accessibility.

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Where Should a New Setting or Option Live?

Desktop

Game Menu

• Purpose: detailed in-match configuration options.
• Heuristic: if it affects in-match gameplay or display and the user might want to change it mid-match, it should live in the Game menu for easy access.

The in-match menu bar is divided into the following top-level submenus:

• Game — how the user interacts with game state (e.g. yield options, auto yields and triggers, concede).
• Layout — visual UI and layout (e.g. XML layout files, theme selection, UI panel options).
• Display — how game state is displayed to the user (e.g. card overlays, targeting arcs, stack/group token options, separate combatants toggle).
• Audio — sound and music settings.

Conventions:

• If a new feature involves suboptions (not just a single checkbox), group them together in a submenu.
• Avoid nesting menu items more than 3 levels deep (e.g. Forge > Game > Stack/Group options is as deep as we want to go).

Dock Panel

• Purpose: quick shortcuts and toggles for the most commonly used gameplay functions.
• Heuristic: if the user would need to navigate the game menu multiple times per match to change a setting, it should have a button here.
• The dock is only ever a mirror of a setting or option — never the exclusive entry point.

Preferences Menu

• Purpose: comprehensive access to all available user preferences and options.
• The search filter makes this menu cheap to add to — don't be overly concerned about menu length.

Mobile

Game Menu

Physical space is at a premium on mobile, so only the most essential settings a user needs to access in-match should appear in the game menu. Generally these will be settings that involve interacting with game state, not just display options.

Settings

• Purpose: comprehensive access to all available user preferences and options.
• The search filter makes this menu cheap to add to — don't be overly concerned about menu length.