Developer Wishlist - UI discussion

[Coldfusionstorm]

Allright, so one of the items on the developers wishlist is a better UI interface so, why don't we sit down and look a bit at the issue and how to go around it, i will start out with showing my idea of how the layout should look and it's very much inspired by starcraft 2.

This is it.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/etb4ln

Now. At the bottom you see the unit selection, at the left side you see numbers, these numbers are for looking at large unit selections in this unit selection it's able to have 144 unit's selected at one time. by clicking on the numbers you can see all the different unit's in your unit selection.

in the right lower side of the UI you can see unit commands (slash abilitys).
in the left lower side of the UI you can see the current selected unit's stats. (health points, amor ect.). And the minimap

the black bar's are custommizable and can be colourd/given texture whatever, much like the current overlay we have.

The space between icons and minimap and stat's are in this picture transparent but i would imagine make the backround of the lower UI would be one colour. and not transparrent.

I think this UI design is very nice, is small, makes good sense, looks modern.

The second part of the design is command hotkeys.

Command hotkeys are a key assigned to a command.

So fx, the move command of a unit could have a key named "M", so when you press M it would work like you pressed M and a location with your mouse.
The real benefit of this is not on a move command tho, but that you don't need to move the mouse down over the fx, build command but instead can move the mouse over your build location and just click "b"(in this case for the build command). And then "c"(because you are now inside the build menu and the castle have the key "c" assigned to it.).

XML-wise it would look like this.

<code>

      <command>
         <type value="build"/>
         <name value="build_basic"/>
         <image path="imagehere.png"/>
         <unit-requirements/>
         <upgrade-requirements/>
         <move-skill value="move_skill"/>
         <build-skill value="build_skill"/>
         <buildings>
            <building name="castle" hotkey-value="c" />
            <building name="barracks" hotkey-value="b" />
            <building name="farm" hotkey-value="f" />
                <building name="farm_thingy" hotkey-value="t" />
         </buildings>
         <sound enabled="false"/>
         <start-sound enabled="false"/>
         <built-sound enabled="false">
            <sounds-file path="something.wav"/>
         </built-sound>
      </command>

</code>

This could be accompanied with a small tooltip where the hotkey is defined with a small "c" and if part of the name of the unit have it light up in a yellow colour perhaps, or red or something else.

This is a picture With the tooltip, IM aware the tooltip is VERY small, It's in the lower right corner but it should be enough to give a general idea, you might have to zoom in abit.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ds9e2f

I have abit more ideas, but id like to hear what other's think first.

[John.d.h]

I strongly prefer having the unit list in a column on the side.  Screens are wider than they are tall, so it makes more sense to put stuff on the sides instead of compressing the playable space into a thin strip at the middle of the screen.

[D.U.P.A.]

Those resolutions are already rather large, so you don't get a small strip. It's only about what are you used to anyway. I'm fine with horizontal panel too.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Try giving a bid on how your UI would look then. Perhaps with a explanation how it's sewed together.(fx, the black bars on my picture can be coloured with the overlay we have right now. and possibly the background too).

I would like to see a good sidebar.

And i agree Jhon, A Underbar does take up some space, wich is kinda annoying(alot in fact).
i personally like the fact that the current bar is in the side, but this was the way i could show how i wanted a compressed UI. That did alot of things in a nice manner.

[Omega]

To be honest, I'm not too concerned about our GUI. I think it looks pretty fine, and strongly dislike putting everything at the bottom, as it removes a lot of screen space. Personally, I'd rather see a minimized GUI. No solid backgrounds. I rather dislike the GUI overlays that some mods use, and always delete them personally (pity there's no INI option to disable them). Why? Because they cover up a large portion of the screen. Sure, screens are big, but look at any modern FPS. They put all the information in the corners of the screen, where it's out of the way, and even then it's often partially transparent to minimize how much space it steals from the most important part of the game.

I'd like to see the minimap resizeable, with a small button in its lower right corner that would toggle the minimap between the current size, a 50% size, and a 150% size. If we're not using the minimap much, or don't have enough room on the screen, we can make it smaller, while if we have plenty of room or are making heavy use of the minimap, we can make it larger. This feature already exists in GAE. However, I'd rather we don't use GAE's approach to that, as I find the larger top border that GAE uses is a bit intrusive.

The other thing of note is highlighted by this image. There's a LOT of awkward spacing inbetween the valuable information there. Also, the text isn't as crisp as I'd prefer (that might just be my version of MG, though; it's the current stable version, but not the latest SVN). I'd like to see that unnecessary spacing reduced, so the information is all compressed into one corner. The other beef I have is with the gawd awful buttons that the Indians sport. It's nothing to do with the GUI in general, but the mod does control a huge portion of the graphical appeal of the GUI, since the buttons and resource images are all part of the mod. The MegaPack, especially older factions like the Indians, which is largely reskinned tech models, could use a serious graphical update, particularly since they're supposed to be the "heart" of MegaGlest.

I'm not sure what the scope of this "UI update" would be, but I'll presume we're also talking about the menus outside of the game. First of all, scrollbars (such as seen in the hotkeys setup screen) seem to lack depth. This could be improved by changing the textures they use so the scrollbar looks beveled. As well, the controls on the scrollbar are a bit awkward. Dragging up and down on the scrollbar only works when the mouse is hovered over the vertical scrollbar. Moving the mouse off the scrollbar (without releasing the mouse button) prevents the scrollbar from scrolling until you once more hover over the scrollbar (but it doesn't release the scrollbar). This is contradictory to every other scrollbar I've seen.

The options screen could use a rework as well. It'd be nice to be able to change the majority of settings in game, without having to mess with any configuration files. A tabbed interface like many other games (off the top of my head, Civ V, for example) could allow us to easily have a large number of options without seeming overwhelming or "packed". It would also be nice to have tooltips for the options. Sure some things like resolution are pretty obvious, but I don't think a regular player would know what the "unit particles" toggle does until they try it.

On the new game screen, I'd seriously like to see drop down menus like GAE. It's ridiculously difficult to use the arrows when you have 80 maps installed. Yes/no options could be replaced with a checkbox.

Also, is it possible to have an animated background model? If I recall, animations are ignored for that particular model. After spending some time in the lobby, I couldn't help but want to blow that inanimate airship out of the sky. I'd be happy to animate the background myself, if such capabilities could be implemented.

[ElimiNator]

(pity there's no INI option to disable them)

Yes there is:

Code: [Select]

VisibleHud=0

[Omega]

(pity there's no INI option to disable them)

Yes there is:

Code: [Select]

VisibleHud=0

Thanks. Didn't realize such existed. Added it to the Wiki (is anything else new missing?).