Are you guys trying to tell me that this is too small a screen for the interface?

I'm not sure I understand.

*Covering the left side is the avatar portraits and joystick.
*Covering the right side is the minimap, vial icons, and vitapod.
*Covering the bottom is the joystick, chat, and the vitapod.
*Covering the top is your avatar's portrait and the minimap.
*Nothing is covering the center of the top.

The interface can be flipped if you want to switch hands.

I'm putting it on any smartphone. Order & Chaos's interface, for instance, works fine on the small iPhone screen. My proposed interface isn't much larger.

Whether OOO listens or not is another issue entirely, and I am not interested in discussing that here.

Let me walk you through the design process.

Moving is the first hurdle. Do you always face in the direction you move to simplify control, or do you separate facing from movement? The former prevents effective gunslinging, so the latter will be used. The most intuitive location is the bottom left corner.

So the joystick moves you. How should you face stuff? By dragging around the screen? That seems plausible, until you start trying to add other functions like attacking, charging, and dodging. If you drag to face, how do you attack? Maybe a button on the bottom right corner? And how do you shield? The same way? So you have to lift your finger to fire. That isn't very effective; it's best if you can attack in the same interface you face. That means tapping the screen.

Charge attacks are rather obvious now. In the computer game, holding the attack button charges. It need not be different.

What about shielding? Separate button? Good luck shield-canceling by lifting your finger to the shield button. Again, it's important to shield on the same interface as facing. A two-finger tap shielding allows you to quickly alternate between one-finger attack and two-finger shield, allowing this all-important technique.

How to change weapons? Swipe the screen? Then how do you dash and bash? Since dash is a dodge move, and since most people are familiar with one-finger swiping to dodge, I see no reason to change that. Bashing becomes obvious: since shielding is a two-finger tap (and hold), it makes sense for the bash to be a two-finger swipe.

But I still haven't addressed weapon changing. Why use another cluttering button when we have another swipe available? Three-finger swipe.

The minimap in the game is in the upper right corner. No reason to change.

Vials in the game are at the bottom of the screen, but that leaves us no place to put chat. In the game, chat is in the bottom left corner, but as you'll recall, that's where we put the joystick. The next most intuitive place is the bottom center, where Gameloft puts the chat in their games. Fine by me.

What about the party list? In-game, it's in the upper left corner. We have nothing over there, so no reason to change.

What about menus? Well, do you ever use them in combat? No? So they don't need to be on-screen. At first, I thought collapsible arrows would work, but then I realized that they'll fight the combat interface for space. Does anyone tap on the minimap much? No? Sounds like a good place to put the menus.