interactive buddy 2 user interface

well, it turns out i have decided to work more on the UI of the game, and leave the buddy design until later. sounds like most of you guys and girls would prefer that i stick close to the original buddy design with some minor improvements. i'm thinking the same thing. but we'll see, that's probably going to be a long way off (contrary to what i wrote in my last journal.. i guess that's just how independent game development goes).

anyway, regarding the user interface: i'm thinking it's going to be like this: two "panes" or "columns" (whatever you want to call them, i hope you know what i mean) on the left, and the main play area on the right.

the first pane will contain a folder tree just like you'd see in windows explorer or something where the items, modes, and all the game options are laid out in a tree. (naturally you can expand and contract each folder, as well as add your own folders/move stuff around--although for default items maybe i shouldn't allow modification... we'll see).

[side note: if anyone knows of any good free, opensource actionscript 3 tree components that i could use, i would much appreciate a link... something like yahoo's astra would be excellent, but that particular implementation won't work for me because it extends api's only available to flex builder, while i'm just using the free flex sdk with flashdevelop (also free) to develop the game. for the same reason i can't just use the built in tree components in either flash cs4 or flex builder (assuming there are ones), as i don't own the products. otherwise i'll have to build a tree display system myself, which will take extra time]

when you select an item in this tree, the second pane will show elements related to this item. for example, in the "game settings" folder, if you select "physics options" it will have a bunch of options for the physics. if you select a weapon, such as say "hose", the second pane will have options for that item, such as sliders for strength, volume of water, etc. (different for every item of course).

then of course the main game area will be to the right and should take up about 2/3 of the actual width of the whole game (whereas each pane is about 1/6 each).

this is different from the original game which was all menu driven obviously. but since i plan to have tons tons tons more items and modes (plus user creatable items and modes) i think such a system is a necessity. and since i'm making the game widescreen with bigger dimensions there won't actually be any less game area space than the original, which is important because i plan to have both panes visible at all times.

do you think that you (and people in general) would like such a setup? thanks for all of your comments!!