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For multi-player strategy games, you often end up wanting to show some sort of non-essential notifications. E.g. "Foo and Baz have started fighting" "Bar has entered your capital city" "Bob has been destroyed".

I only know of two popular ways to display them:

  • In a "chat window"-like area with each notification appearing as a line of text (ofter intermingled with chat messages);
  • As automatically disappearing "grow"-like notifications which may queue up and fade out / pop one at a time.

Are there any other methods I should investigate as well?

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instead of using text you could also convey the notifications as a series of icons.

enter image description here

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  • I recommend this, at least partially if possible. Users cannot always be represented with an icon, of course, but Team Fortress 2 does it quite well. Here is a screenshot showing multiple kill notification in the upper right. i.imgur.com/8KItdcm.jpg
    – Dan
    Aug 11, 2015 at 17:44
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The 2nd option is what I see in most games. You can also have a ticker somewhere on the screen (takes up a pre-defined space at all times, can also be partially translucent). They can also be in the start menu, which is a bit bland.

It also depends on the game. If you can somehow incorporate notifications within the game's plot, that will provide a much more engaging experience. For example, GTA5 has most notifications through the in-game cellphone.

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  • Do you have any image links to good "ticker" variants?
    – Nuoji
    Aug 10, 2015 at 10:45

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