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DS development > concept art for new on screen keyboard

#43986 - ohmushells - Sat May 28, 2005 10:32 pm

i tried doing concept art f?r my own "visually uncluttered" onscreen keyboard for the Nintendo Ds, inspired by pictochat.

it feature modal buttons, for a "binary" choice, for instance PEN/ERASER selection,

and click-and-drag multiple-state buttons which zoom out a menu of buttons to choose state from.

here is a gif-animation where i try to demonstrate the UI:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

here is the file as a 256x192 image file:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

(yes i do have rendered out glyphs for the font in question)

comments and suggestions are very welcome

#43992 - Darkain - Sat May 28, 2005 11:26 pm

looks good, altho, i would suggest aligning your buttons to a 16x16 grid, so they will be easier to represent using tiles instead of having to use lots of custom paint code. :)
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#44003 - headspin - Sun May 29, 2005 2:26 am

I think it's probably one the best looking custom keyboard I've seen so far. Although I understand all the benfits of using a 8x8 tiles, I think that it ends up looking a little too cramped. I'm still a fan of the Pictochat style approach like this example by ohmushells.

Perhaps it would easier to allow for a an image made up of tiles but not necessarily one tile per key, and then use a map to set up key location/trigger areas. More complex, but a cooler keyboard IMO.

Is anyone working on a nice keyboard system at the moment?

EDIT: Oops Darkain, misread what you mean't - and yes I agree - align your graphics to 16x16 tiles to make life easier! Just needs a slight adjustment in Photoshop. Actually this keyboard might look nice 1 key = 1 tile :)
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#44007 - Mr. Ploppy - Sun May 29, 2005 8:17 am

Wow, looking nice. I don't really see the advantage of re-woking the keyboard into nice even grid tiles, you'd still need a unique tile for each letter, and it's not like you'll be doing much with it other than displaying a static image anyhow.
In any case, it's a snappy looking job. Well done ohmushells!
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#44033 - dagamer34 - Sun May 29, 2005 6:38 pm

Mr. Ploppy wrote:
Wow, looking nice. I don't really see the advantage of re-woking the keyboard into nice even grid tiles, you'd still need a unique tile for each letter, and it's not like you'll be doing much with it other than displaying a static image anyhow.
In any case, it's a snappy looking job. Well done ohmushells!


Detecting which letter the stylus is on is as simple as comparing the position to a grid, since it's aligned to a bondary. No need for custom code.
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#44036 - tepples - Sun May 29, 2005 6:59 pm

Mr. Ploppy wrote:
I don't really see the advantage of re-woking the keyboard into nice even grid tiles, you'd still need a unique tile for each letter, and it's not like you'll be doing much with it other than displaying a static image anyhow.

You mean other than highlighting the pressed key?
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#44058 - Darkain - Sun May 29, 2005 9:34 pm

or not being forced into using a large bmp background layer, which eats up video ram?
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#44083 - headspin - Mon May 30, 2005 2:00 am

Yeah, I see what you mean tepples about the highlighting problem.

Perhaps you could have a normal key and highlighted key, taking however many tiles as you like, and place the letters on a different background. That way your re-using the key tiles and can re-use the keys for different character sets etc.
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#44087 - strager - Mon May 30, 2005 2:17 am

Nice. Although you could add like a scroll on the keyboard to scroll through different character sets instead. *

On the right hand side, instead of doing a corner then a slide down, why not continue it off-screen? In my mind, it looks much nicer.

And about the tile thing, why not make every button 12x12, leaving about 8x8 left for the button face. So every 3 tiles are 2 buttons. Simple and efficient.

Is it OK if I were to edit it a little and post my modifications? Or would you get mad.. hehe. :-)

* Sounds kind of dumb. Now that I think of it, it is dumb. :-)

#44092 - The 9th Sage - Mon May 30, 2005 5:01 am

ohmushells wrote:
i tried doing concept art f?r my own "visually uncluttered" onscreen keyboard for the Nintendo Ds, inspired by pictochat.


Very nice...I especially like the dragging buttons. I can't believe this never occured to me.
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#44099 - ohmushells - Mon May 30, 2005 9:41 am

strager wrote:
And about the tile thing, why not make every button 12x12, leaving about 8x8 left for the button face. So every 3 tiles are 2 buttons. Simple and efficient.


<-- since every key should have a highlighted version, the best would be to have one key per tile.

anyway., thanks for the kind words everyone,,, what i had envisioned was just drawing the whole thing out as a bitmap and not worry about tiles, since it is not so performance intesive to draw a keyboard anyway, then have a lookup matrix of coordinates. but on the other hand, wasting video ram is evil :)

it would be a very minor and quick adjustment to make the keyboard compatible with 16x16 tiles, let me now if anyone wants such a keyboard drawn or needs help pixling other stuff

#44104 - ector - Mon May 30, 2005 10:37 am

Why not use a transparent squareshaped little sprite to highlight the selected key?

#44105 - ohmushells - Mon May 30, 2005 10:42 am

ector wrote:
Why not use a transparent squareshaped little sprite to highlight the selected key?


because i would like to make the "highlight" more sophisticated than an alpha or tint... i want it to have apperance of a down-pressed key when i press a key :)

#44114 - strager - Mon May 30, 2005 2:56 pm

You could just make a whole lotta sprites, but that wouldn't be very nice, would it?

I have another idea: make each button 16x16, then hardware-scale it to 12x12 (making sure that the tiles scale properly). The buttons look neat, and it is easy to change the contents (push button, etc.).

A button idea: make copy and paste (like a square box or something), and put it on a stamp. Or you could make it more like Mario Paint...

It's all up to you.

Edit: More spacious:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]