GUI Design

[Destructavator]

As we already have more than 8 actors on the alien and civ teams, there shouuld be no prob with the general code. Afaik it's mostly a GUI thing (and some GUI-related code maybe).
AND a matter of game balance of course.

Goodness!  Well, making the GUI is certainly something I can help out with - Is anyone else already working on it, or should I look at the proposals in the wiki and get started on something?  GUIs typically aren't that hard for me to do - the graphics portion that is (coding it is another story) - It wouldn't take me too long to come up with something.

[Bartleby]

that would be great. the gui is ugly =)

[BTAxis]

At risk of being redundant, note the mockups on the wiki.

[Duke]

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion for the battlescape GUI, right ?
So as a first approach (just to get into testing) I'd suggest to place a second row of buttons below the existing ones named 9 through 16.
We can think of a 'beautiful' design any time later.

[Destructavator]

I've already got several ideas fired up in Blender - more than one style, I'll post screen shots soon.

Heck, I could probably re-do the entire battlescape GUI - I've got several variants in mind, and when I get some things together I'll let you guys pick out your favorite one (or two, for an alternate as well), then work on developing those.

I'm surprised we didn't have very many people doing this already.  If I had known that we didn't have a new GUI ready, I would have started sooner.

[BTAxis]

Also, you don't have to make just one battlescape GUI. We already have two as it is, and they're switchable ingame.

[BTAxis]

As we already have more than 8 actors on the alien and civ teams, there shouuld be no prob with the general code.

I'm not sure - I seem to remember mattn saying otherwise. mattn - can you comment?

[Destructavator]

OK, here's a quick, early idea for handling the units in the GUI.  To be honest I don't really like how this one came out, but for making it better I could take a number of aspects and develop them in different directions, and that's the part I'd like to get feedback on.

In the second graphic, unit 2 is selected, 19 and 20 don't exist because the team wasn't that large, unit 5 is greyed because it already used some time units, and unit 8 got killed, which is why it is in red.

The larger buttons are of course for Tanks, UGVs, larger units, whatever.

As I said I don't really favor this design the way it is, but just about everything can be changed.  This took less than an hour of work.

Edit:  These are not to scale, if these were used in-game they would first be re-scaled!

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

On a different idea, I've been thinking about a translucent GUI much like the mockups for other interfaces shown in the wiki.  Something that glows and looks kinda like a heads-up-display, but still has parts that can be seen through.  That would actually be easier for me to build, and if done right would look quite impressive.

I'm also open to other ideas, of course.

[Marte]

Also, you don't have to make just one battlescape GUI. We already have two as it is, and they're switchable ingame.

as new user, I can say that second interface could be "standard one" for battlescape

In general I don't think that Ufo-ai need a new interface: need some kind of "optimization" in where buttons are, some internal standard things like:
- main menu on first main screen is on right, when i load / start a new game is on left, and so on..

i would help, but I don't know how to help, can anyone point me on right direction? I see that script could be my graal, but when I change it, i must compile it or just modify&go ?

[bayo]

This took less than an hour of work.

You really dont need to spend 1 hour to said that. A simple mockup with box take, at worst, 5 minutes.

In general I don't think that Ufo-ai need a new interface: need some kind of "optimization" in where buttons are, some internal standard things like:
- main menu on first main screen is on right, when i load / start a new game is on left, and so on..

That's half wrong. The gameplay itself need a lot of user interface for managment, then the GUI is a very important part of the game, and need a lot of work. It is not an "arcade" game. We can improve a lot the current 2.3-dev, cause there is a lot of problems. For example, the geoscape itself have some problems (but it is a very simple interface).

i would help, but I don't know how to help, can anyone point me on right direction? I see that script could be my graal, but when I change it, i must compile it or just modify&go ?

1/3 of the code is script inside /base/ufos/ui/, 1/3 is UI lib inside /src/client/menu, and 1/3 is a "binding" code script<->game inside /src/**/*_callback.c. You can found documentation about scripts in http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Category:GUIs.

Sure you dont need to compile anything when you only edit scripts.

[geever]

OK, here's a quick, early idea for handling the units in the GUI.  To be honest I don't really like how this one came out, but for making it better I could take a number of aspects and develop them in different directions, and that's the part I'd like to get feedback on.

Do we really need 20 buttons? I doubt. Why the original idea in XCom enough for us (nextUnit button) ?

-geever

[BTAxis]

I think the interface should not make any assumptions about the amount of units on the field. If the amount of soldiers is more than the amount of buttons you can't select them all, and if it is less you end up with useless buttons that take up space.

So instead of buttons for each soldier, make something generic that applies to any amount of soldiers, like a "next soldier" button.

[bayo]

"next soldier" can be a nice shortcut, but i dont think it must be the only way.
I think we often want to select a soldier we know (cause we know he use rockets, cause we know he'v got the only medikit...)
We can create the real number of buttons it is need, there is no problem.

[BTAxis]

On that note, maybe any new GUI should be done purely as vector graphics, for optimal scaling behaviour?

[Mattn]

hm? we don't have vector graphics support - nor do we need that imo. bayo did a great job with "scaling" on the menus/huds already.