Diegetic UI
ダイエジェティックUI / 2009– / Technique / UI Expression
A name for the corner of game interface design where an element belongs both to the fiction and to the three dimensional world. A 2009 master's thesis at Chalmers University of Technology, written with EA DICE, mapped game UI on those two axes and reserved the word for that corner. Health glowing on the hero's own suit is the type case.
Health or ammunition shown on the protagonist's own equipment instead of in a corner of the screen / A map the character holds up and reads while still walking, rather than a paused overlay / Panels of information projected into the air that tilt with the camera because they occupy the space / Directions given by the color of a signpost standing in the world itself
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Moving health and ammunition out of the corners of a first person game and into the world itself · Placing information in VR or in a vehicle as an object in space rather than a layer stuck to the view
- Type
- Treat every character as printed or projected onto something in the world, so it skews with the camera. Some angles will be unreadable, so carry the same meaning in shape and color too.
- Composition
- Leave the four corners of the screen empty. Distribute information across the body, the held device, and the environment, and keep those roles fixed.
- Material
- Use only materials the fiction can account for, such as a lit tube or a projected plane. The style collapses when the material stops being explainable, so settle the world first.
- Caution
- Building an object into the world and then printing controller button names on it mixes fiction with rules, and that is exactly where the thesis's own focus group reported the illusion breaking.
- Further study
- チャルマースの論文にある、虚構と空間の2軸で描いた設計空間の図 / meta-perception や signifier といった中間の区分の定義 / 手に持つ地図や世界の中の標識で誘導するゲームの実例
Related entries
Cite this entry
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- Link
- https://indexstyle.org/styles/diegetic-ui
- Markdown
- [Diegetic UI — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/diegetic-ui)
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