Planning the GUI

GUI is short for Graphical User Interface.  It consists of things like the menus and any in-game displays.  You might think that a visual novel would have a pretty simple GUI, and you’d be right.  The GUI for Aurora’s Nightmare will be a lot simpler than the GUI for a RPG, for example.  That said, there are still a lot of things to consider such as where the text is displayed (beneath the images, overlaying the images, overlaying only part of the screen, etc.).  And also how skipping previously read text is going to be handled (a straight up skip, a skip menu, or fast forward).  I have my ideas on how I’d like to do the GUI, though the final design will be somewhat dependent on the limitations of the game engine.  Since I haven’t done much with the engine yet (I’m waiting until all the content for the demo is completed), the GUI hasn’t been finalized, but I’ve got a lot of graphic design experience (including with GUIs) so I’m rather looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.