project-navigation
Personal tools

Author Topic: GUI Design  (Read 84937 times)

Offline H-Hour

  • Administrator
  • PHALANX Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1923
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #105 on: June 05, 2010, 02:08:51 am »
More pie in the sky ideas for the soldier panel, now with fiddlier buttons!

Offline vedrit

  • Sergeant
  • *****
  • Posts: 438
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #106 on: June 05, 2010, 05:50:29 am »
I like that mock-up, but I think the stat bar options is a little useless. TU's, Health and Morale should be the only options, as those are the most important on the battlefield

Offline Marte

  • Rookie
  • ***
  • Posts: 46
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #107 on: June 08, 2010, 11:51:42 am »
H-Hour I like your mockup, some suggestions (IMHO):
1) make soldier panel resizeable when therea are less or more soldiers. For example if I enter into battlefield with 4 soldier, could be smaller, with 16 soldiers max size and so on?
2) no names for a soldier? maybe could I set advanced option to see it?
3) soldier with no more TU could have corresponding item with a background that explain this state ? For example with gray background, like in windows, linux, etc ?
4) Can I select more icon at same time ? For example to show health and weapong, or just health?

Offline H-Hour

  • Administrator
  • PHALANX Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1923
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #108 on: June 08, 2010, 12:43:48 pm »
I think Vedrit's right: TU, Health and Morale are the most important (I completely forgot about morale!).

H-Hour I like your mockup, some suggestions (IMHO):
1) make soldier panel resizeable when therea are less or more soldiers. For example if I enter into battlefield with 4 soldier, could be smaller, with 16 soldiers max size and so on?
2) no names for a soldier? maybe could I set advanced option to see it?
3) soldier with no more TU could have corresponding item with a background that explain this state ? For example with gray background, like in windows, linux, etc ?
4) Can I select more icon at same time ? For example to show health and weapong, or just health?

1. It would expand or contract to the number of soldiers that enter the battlefield.

2. I would probably put soldier names on the long bar below, so that it appears when you mouse over the soldier.

3. I think no-TU is not very useful, since players will reserve TUs for reaction fire, and you could get to 2 TUs but not be able to move one more square, etc. I prefer the light that says only when a soldier has not yet moved in the turn.

4. Well, the icon system would need entirely new features to be developed, so I wouldn't count on it that soon.

None of this is likely to go anywhere for a while, but it's fun to think about different options. There's talk of having a GUI preview feature in the Eclipse IDE some of the devs are working on, and that would make it a lot easier for me, since I'm still learning how it all works and prone to lots of errors. But who knows what the priority is on this, or what priority there is on expanding the cvars available to the GUI. A lot of what I've proposed is not currently possible because the GUI doesn't have that kind of information.

No reason not to think about it, but just putting it out there so we don't get too far ahead of ourselves.

Offline Prinegon

  • Rookie
  • ***
  • Posts: 47
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #109 on: June 09, 2010, 08:05:42 am »
Afaik the most common and also most effective way to show TU (or TU used) would be TU shown on the field you are about to move as mouse_hover_over effect (using an extra symbol, if moving to this field means, you will not be able to sit down).

I think, since it depends most of personal preferences if one experiences a gui of a game to be good or bad, it even might be a good idea to make the gui costomizable. One loves really small gui not using up much screen size at all, the other one prefers the gui to hold up more information. One might be fine orientating by unit numbers, the other one likes the units heads inside, one needs the names, the other one not and one even doesn't use the gui at all. Being able to costumize the gui to ones own needs may improve the usability of the game significantly.

Offline Soul

  • Rookie
  • ***
  • Posts: 14
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #110 on: June 16, 2010, 06:27:18 pm »
Hi. Would it be possible to use some more detailed graphics for GUI? I guess it would be necessary to change something in the engine, but maybe that's not insanely time consuming?

I think it looks very nice with the attention to detail of... i.e. UFO:ET.

   

Offline Kildor

  • Project Artist
  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 757
  • Project mapper and some other stuff`er
    • View Profile
    • http://ufoai.nx0.ru
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #111 on: June 17, 2010, 05:42:09 am »
Oh no, please, do not ufoet. It is very ugly piece of graphic.

Offline Bartleby

  • Squad Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 102
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #112 on: June 17, 2010, 07:05:35 am »
More pie in the sky ideas for the soldier panel, now with fiddlier buttons!
great design :)

Offline Soul

  • Rookie
  • ***
  • Posts: 14
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #113 on: June 17, 2010, 10:08:14 am »
Oh no, please, do not ufoet. It is very ugly piece of graphic.
;D

I meant only the details (resolution) of the GUI.

Offline TrashMan

  • Captain
  • *****
  • Posts: 833
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #114 on: June 18, 2010, 01:57:34 pm »
Well, it does demonstrate that portraits could be small and still very visible and distinct.

In that example, there are 11 soliders and their portrait bar takes up only a small fraction of available space.

Offline Winter

  • Captain
  • *****
  • Posts: 829
    • View Profile
    • Street of Eyes: The Writing of Ryan A. Span
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #115 on: June 19, 2010, 03:37:31 am »
Well, it does demonstrate that portraits could be small and still very visible and distinct.

In that example, there are 11 soliders and their portrait bar takes up only a small fraction of available space.

Yes, but what point is there to having a portrait bar when the portraits are randomly generated? This kind of dead, dull facelessness is perfectly demonstrated in those UFO:ET screenshots. Even if there were no duplicate portraits it would still look awful. Uncanny valley, man.

Also, strangely enough, I think the portrait bars in ET are actually a bit too small for what they are. I would've given up 1 or 2 faces for extra size and clickability. They're already tiny on 1024x768; imagine how small they'll be on higher resolutions.

Regards,
Winter

Offline Bartleby

  • Squad Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 102
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #116 on: June 19, 2010, 09:22:51 am »
Yes, but what point is there to having a portrait bar when the portraits are randomly generated?
hm... if a portrait is fexed to a soldier, when soldier is generated, i wont call it randomly. i liked it like it was in ufo afterlight (also gui was too big in that game). and it was also great that the biginning crew had a "history" :).
btw. i still like h-hours disign and would like to see it added by portraits. makes things more personal. well... it feels personal and individual then :).

Offline Origin

  • Rookie
  • ***
  • Posts: 59
    • View Profile
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #117 on: October 14, 2010, 03:57:57 am »
Since I havent seen any progress on this, I though I would try making some new GUI graphics myself.
I dont know anything about actually moving stuff around, or adding new features though, so only visual stuff so far.
Tell me what you think.

Offline Crystan

  • Project Artist
  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 572
  • UFO:AI Lead Sound Artist
    • View Profile
    • http://crysea.cr.funpic.de/
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #118 on: October 14, 2010, 04:06:04 am »
Nice! I really like it.

Offline Kildor

  • Project Artist
  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 757
  • Project mapper and some other stuff`er
    • View Profile
    • http://ufoai.nx0.ru
Re: GUI Design
« Reply #119 on: October 14, 2010, 04:52:19 am »
First image is wrong :-)
There are more buttons on the sidebar (where radar, nation borders and so on placed). XVI button will be shown later in the game.

Also, by my opinion we need not repainting but complete redesign geoscape. But I like color scheme.