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Payday 2 UI Redesign
Payday 2 is a four player co-op FPS where players rob banks and get paid. Players can create various builds using different combinations of guns, skills and perks that change the gameplay drastically.Payday 2 is a game close to my heart which is why it saddens me to say a lot of its UI design isn't very good. A big problem stopping most people from getting into the game is how it presents its menus and how many of them are either too simple with little info or too complex with information overload. I wanted to take a look at the game's HUD and some of its menus and redesign them with a new coat of paint to hide unnecessary info, and highlight information the game normally hides.For this project, I redesigned Payday 2's HUD, Main Menu, Inventory Screen and Weapon Selection Screen making sure to research the exact issues players have with Payday 2's UI and redesign it in a way that's not too overbearing, keeping new players in mind.
Final Prototype
Includes the Main menu, Extras menu, inventory, weapon selection, weapon preview and in-game HUD! You can exit menus and pause in the HUD with P.I successfully created a new version of Payday 2's UI, keeping the layout similar while trading out some of the visible information depending on the needs of players. Some stats were shown but were generally regarded as useless, whereas others such as the buffs players can receive in-game were hidden. I also changed the layout of some menus to better group together similar information and make things a little smaller.
Player Personas
Locke (Payday 2 Fan)
Plays the game regularly
Familiar with the game’s HUD and menus, not receptive to change
Uses mods to improve the HUD and the information shown
Dallas (Co-Op Shooter Fan)
Plays co-op shooters with friends, will try out anything at least once
Friend group will not commit to difficult games, looking for a fun time, not a hard time
Is familiar with the general gameplay mechanics of the genre, but not anything game specific.
Bain (Streamer)
Streams games to thousands of people, tries to keep things entertaining
Unfamiliar with Payday 2, found out about it through friends who play the game
Looking to get into the game and make videos about it, getting other people interested in trying it out
Reference Images
Heading in-game and gathering screenshots for reference provided me with good visual reference for how things should be laid out, but also how that UI fails in a few areas.
As mentioned before, the game has a tendency to hide information most players would deem useful, such as buffs from skills and perks. I myself had to turn off my modified HUD to gather these screenshots, and the lack of information was a boon on my gameplay.
The game can also sometimes be very confusing with how it presents information. Stats on weapons are displayed purely as numbers, which while useful, doesn't provide the best visual representation of the data. It's hard to tell from a glance if something is better than something else without looking at the exact numbers.
Flow Diagram
Flow diagram visualising both how the HUD groups its information and how the player navigates through the menus. This provided a good point of reference to how I should lay out my own menus.
Scamps
When drawing my scamps I wanted to lay out my ideas early while still allowing for iteration down the line. The designs shown here did not make it through to high-fidelity laid out exactly the same as I made lots of small changes as I iterated and refined the graphical design.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
With the low-fidelity wireframes I wanted to refine the designs I had come up with while changing the position of some UI elements based both on the reference material I had gathered and feedback I had received. The HUD especially saw some major changes as I wanted to keep the 4 corners of the screen balanced with how much of the HUD was contained in each.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
The high-fidelity stage involved even more refinement and taking in feedback I had received. I brought the UI closer in line with Payday 2's design language, and added additional information to the HUD as Payday 2 has many HUD elements that are only temporary or only appear during animations and then vanish.
With the inventory and weapon selection screens, I wanted to keep displaying stats in numbers, while also providing bars as visual reference for how strong a weapon is. When a weapon mod, skill or perk affects a stat, another bar is added alongside the white base to visualise how much that mod, skill or perk affects the stat, while also providing the exact number inside the bar itself.In making this UI redesign I was able to understand not only Payday 2's visual language, but also how the years of updates have changed how the UI is designed. Information like numbered weapon stats and the hostage count being visible during a police assault were added in updates in response to community feedback. The inventory screen and weapon selection screen has also seen a redesign since the game released, also in response to community feedback, although these menus have are once again showing their age as it has been over a decade since they were first implemented.Due to Payday 2's modding support, implementing these designs in the game itself is in fact quite possible, and something I might look into trying out in the future.
Hi, I'm Andrew Coleman!
I am currently a second-year Games Design student at University, focussing on game design and character design. I have been drawing as a hobby for 5 years now, and more recently been creating small games, both for game jams my own personal amusement.I love working with others and have worked on a multitude of projects with like-minded individuals over the course of the past four years, from College to University, in a variety of roles from game design to programming, and even art! I hope to improve my abilities even further by gaining experience in the industry.You can contact me through any of the methods on the footer of the page.
Light Up The World
Crow-Bot is a 3D Platformer I designed, modelled and textured from the ground up for an end-of-year college assignment. It involves the main character, Poe, collecting lightbulbs to light up the world.
Art from this project
Gravi-T is a 2D platformer where you can control gravity! Help Gravi the robot traverse the dangerous caves and get to the exit at the end of each level. It's not as easy as it looks...Gravi-T was designed, programmed and drawn from the ground up for an end-of-year college assignment. Everything except the sounds were made by me.
Development Material
Gravi-T was based off of a prototype I had created a year prior with a basic environment and ability to rotate gravity. For the full game, I knew I wanted to add to it while trying new things both with gameplay and art.On the gameplay side, I learned a lot from Gravi-T as I learned how to properly implement game options and utilise post processing.
On the art side, I made use of parallax backgrounds and a 2D rig on Gravi, the main character, as I wanted to create animations quickly without having to make new frames on a sprite sheet. I really like the look!
Art from this project
With Gravi-T, I knew I wanted a robotic main character, but I wasn't sure how to go about the design. Typically when it comes to character design, I come up with the designs spontaneously, and that's exactly what happened here! The detached limbs made a 2D rig easy and I could make a sprite sheet containing all the body parts I needed for every animation.
ByteSized is a physics-based puzzle game about getting a ball to the end of a level... but you can't control it directly! Instead, you must use little machines called "Nodes".
The game's user interface design takes a large amount of inspiration from Windows XP and early 2000s technology.I made ByteSized in 4 months as the final assignment in my first year of university. The prototype is very short, but it's fairly polished! Everything (aside from music, sounds and the green field image) was made by me!
Development Material
With the development of ByteSized I knew I wanted similar gameplay to games such as Cut the Rope, where you only influence the object to its goal, rather than directly moving it. I created a few different "nodes", which are objects placed in the level that can be controlled and used to move the power core around. It can be pushed, sucked up, and even teleported!
Art from this project
I knew that I wanted ByteSized to be a 2.5D game making use of 3D models with pixelated textures. Using a low poly art style meant I could complete models quickly and get them working in game without having to spend too much time on the art.One thing you'll notice about a lot of this art is that it's for things not in the final game. I had to cute quite a lot during the development of ByteSized! I originally wanted 2 main characters (Byte and Malvir) and a smaller generic enemy character (Nibble) and I did create designs for them, but unfortunately due to time constraints I was not able to implement them in-game as I would have liked.
Exploring a forgotten temple, you'll find your reflection can wander off! MIRRIM is a 2D puzzle platformer where you control both yourself and your reflection simultaneously, opening up a world of possibilities for puzzles and solutions.Developed in 4 weeks in a team as part of a University assignment. I helped with programming and art!
Development Material
MIRRIM's development was a bit different than I was used to because I was working in a team. Before, I was used to having a hand in a little bit of everything, but with MIRRIM, I had a team member doing most of the art and another doing most of the levels. I quite enjoyed the experience, because while I did miss being as involved as I used to be, it meant that others could fill in the areas I wasn't strong in.On MIRRIM, I:
Chose the game's name
Created the game's logo
Designed the game's UI and created many different graphics for it
Assisted the lead artist with sprite edits
Programmed the player and mirror player movement
Lever functionality
Sound and animation implementation
Assisted the other programmer with bug fixes and optimisations
Created 2 levels and assisted on others, going through multiple art passes
Art from this project
As this was a team project, I didn't contribute too much on the art side, as I helped around with almost every aspect of the project. As mentioned prior, I did contribute with graphic design for things like the game's logo and the UI design. I also expanded the environment sprite sheet with additional sprites drawn in the same style, but as it was based on someone else's work, it won't be included here.
In Floop, there's no such thing as left or right. You'll just come back around! Navigate an unfamiliar and oddly colourful place as Gravi the robot, solving puzzles with screen wrap and level flipping, all while the game's original music builds up from a lonely bass to a full melody.Created as part of the GMTK Game Jam 2025. Made in only 4 days!
Development Material
Floop was my first game jam game, and as such, I was a little unprepared for it! I ended up using almost all of the 96 hours to create the game, as simple as it was, but I learned a good few lessons from it and next time I'll be sure to manage my time better.Floop takes heavy inspiration from VVVVVV, from its central mechanic of screen wrap to the style of the sprites. I loved working on the sprites for Gravi, the main character, and by keping the game's art fairly simple, I could spend more time on the programming and testing. I also got some friends to help out with the music, marking the first time I've gotten original music created for one of my games!
Art from this project
As mentioned before, I kept the art simple on Floop so that I could spend more time on the programming, and I'm very glad I did! I think the sprites in the game do a lot with little and I'll definitely be doing more pixel art for my games in the future.
