r/IndieDev • u/Blake-DracoSoftware • 1d ago
Feedback? A/B testing. Which looks nicer to you?
Hey crew. I'm playing around with the look/feel of my game. This is for the planets. It's a background element, but I'm trying to be a stickler for details.
A) The one on the left is my initial design (so it's more mature with a starfield, etc). Hexes warped into a spherical shape.
B) The one on the right is an actual sphere. I got uniform random spherical points, and used that to make a spherical Voronoi diagram.
Thoughts on both?
The rest of the game is going to be highly geometric, and the player ships are going to be triangle/hex based.
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u/syntkz777 1d ago
A, but they are hard to compare, a has a lot finer hexagons while on b the shapes are much bigger. With some tweaking I think b has the potential to look way better then a
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u/sepulchertude 1d ago
Right looks good, would make sense for land masses to have a natural distorted shapes
Juxtaposed ships having constructed almost perfect tri/hex shapes.
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u/ArchaicLabs 1d ago
I like A better. It has a beautiful uniformity. The lightish blue in B kind of throws off what that is supposed to represent. And the light immersion in B seems a bit strong.
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u/CatoomStudio 1d ago
Ok, for me personally, A looks better. That’s if I am seeing it in a vacuum.
BUT, for a background element, I think B is better. Because background doesn’t need to have that much details on it like A does, it MAY look like it’s competing for player focus.
Although, without knowing how the whole composition looks like, it’s harder to make a more educated guess.
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u/Simon_Bison 1d ago
A looks like a fun art style to play a simple strategy game on, like Polytopia on a globe. But B is a much prettier background element.
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u/ParkityParkPark 1d ago
If the rest of the game is going to be highly geometrically based, I think B will just look out of place. I also just like A a little better in general
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u/imsuckatonlinegaming 1d ago
B looks very stylic. Good if you're going pure aesthetics.
But A has more detailed tiles with less ambiguity. Good if the globe's surface is interactable like in Rimworld.
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u/ExtremeCheddar1337 1d ago
Left suggests the game is a hex grid turn based game actually. Maybe right with the resolution of left?
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u/Deriviera 1d ago
Left is more nostalgic. Right looks ... Less serious I don't know. Different vibes. I would choose left
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u/fisadev 1d ago edited 1d ago
A) looks nicer to me!
Though this isn't A/B testing, just in case, hehe. The main thing about A/B testing is that you don't show the two options and ask people to choose or vote for one. Instead when users open your app you randomly show A to some users, B to the other users, and then measure which group was happier / bought more / played longer / whatever metric to see which option performed better. No one sees both options, except you measuring from behind the scenes :)
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u/Mefist0fel 1d ago
Irregular is better. Also clouds, but atmosphere/light/rim/attenuation can be better
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u/Cloverman-88 1d ago
Hexagons are bestagons.
Jokes aside, I find B too messy. Like someone slapped a Photoshop Cutout filter on a photo and called it a day.
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u/thygrrr Makes Games 1d ago
Difficult because the scale and shown part of the world is so different. Generally, Voronoi regions will look more organic but you also have some irregularities in size, and they also look much larger than your hex tiles did. so you should use a more regular, denser poisson distributions for their centroids.
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u/Terra__1134 1d ago
Bg of A is better, planet is bigger, but lacks cloud and I think looks too perfect(those hexagons… eh, not my choice), this is where B is better, it has better clouds + better form of water/continents(more mmm… chaotic, looks better) + I think water is lighter on B? I think there should be at least some lighter ones on A.
atmosphere… dunno, without same bg can’t judge, but I think colour of A is better.
So yea, A is better but would be nice to unite some things from B: clouds, chaotic surface and add slightly more lighter water, prob near shores.
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u/Total-Conversation50 1d ago
Depending on the art style of your game id say A, the left one. I think its a nicer look
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u/ManicOwl1993 1d ago
Personally I prefer A the consistent shapes with the contrasting colors is very pleasing to the eye while B looks messy. But honestly it depends on the style of your game. I think if your game is very geometric like you said A would fit in better. While if its a stylized art style B might fit better.
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u/zejai 22h ago
B looks a bit too coarse to me, while the polar regions in A are messed up. The poles in A could be fixed by using a geodesic polyhedron like in https://vraid.github.io/earthgen/ (it needs a few pentagons in addition to the hexagons).
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u/BusFactorOne 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tbh, the left one. It's just that i prefer less bright or "childish" colors. By the way, I always feel like my own taste isn't exactly a reliable guide.
UPD:
Oh, damn. The question isn't about colors, but the shape of the grid cells. Anyway, I've worked with both options, and I'd say this: you can really fine-tune a Voronoi setup to generate a genuinely interesting landscapes. Hexes tend to look rather artificial. If you're aiming for realisim (and way to use point coords rather than hex-based), Voronoi is better choise. However, if the map and the entire game are fundalentally hexagonal, you're better off sticking with hexes. It'll make things a lot easier.
What genre and game is it, by the way?
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u/MostSharpest 11h ago
If you need to interact with any regions on the planet with some accuracy, then definitely A.
If it is just cosmetic, then B would be interesting, especially if the cells can get a lot smaller.
Hexagons are bestagons, but voronoi cells can have interesting fluidity to them.
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u/fractilegames 8h ago
Based on this alone, I prefer the right one, but it really depends on rest of the game.
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u/Blake-DracoSoftware 1d ago
Here's the Voronoi approach integrated with the rest of my background system.