Spring RTS Engine

I wonder what kind of GUI people like to use most?

I personally use a combination of many: mostly the standard interface with message separator. Recently I changed the resourcebars and tooltip to red resbars and tooltip, which I like (after tweaking the background colours and the sizes).

I've also tried some other one's: Ice-ui looks nice but I don't like the resource bars and the tooltip. Chili looks cool too but it has so many components I don't really need.

So what's the best solution then, to pick the things you like from different UI:s? Wrong! That loses the consistency, and consistency is what makes a layout beautiful.

So my current take on this matter is to tweak various components to make them look almost consistent, but it would be interesting to hear what other people do. If they think about this.

this^ I don't even know if it goes to anything but I love every inch of it

lol wtf.
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I use whatever is default in the games and engine.
I usually turn off widgets rather then adding more.
I like the chat of BA (is that message seperator?) but have not bothered to copy it over to use with ie XTA.
For playerlist I use the /info thing.
ally resbars is cool too, always move it to top right corner.

Sometimes I use widgets like the "walk instead of reclaim" or "hide useless buttons" but those do not draw anything to screen.
Also once had uikeys.txt and ctrlpanel.txt) for hotkeys and buildmenu that fits on one page but lost that.
I usually make minimap as big as possible without clipping into buildmenu or chat.
So kind of gave up on making it look good, only care that it works.

Is the "74" in the middle the fps?

I also want to have as little as possible to be visible in the GUI, so that as much as possible of my screen is left for the actual game. That makes me not want excessive tooltips like (big green text) "Press left button to accept" and (big red text) "Press right button to cancel"

Here's my default screen:

I thought the time of user widgets had passed.

Don't all games nowdays have a fully functional UI?

The BA Default is my favourite UI

^^ My favorite.

Sorry Forb, that is the same, lets super-shrink-ray important buttons interface, because all the cool guys know the hotkeys anyway, that i hated in zero-k.


Yeah it stylish, but for a firsttimer, it also means he has to read every fucking tooltip, while getting screwed on the battlefield.

LOL noob can built a decent base. LOL noob spend his time reading the description of the buttons.

Well, I wouldn't use chili for the reasons Picasso stated, but I must admit it's beautiful (albeit un-total annihilationish, more star craftish, with that monkey wrench = repair), but I also think that newbies want something like this.

I remember when I was new on spring, what annoyed me was the reversed mouse buttons and the fact that if you presses "b" or "delete" or middle mouse button, then you lost your screen. So many noobtraps.

Jools wrote:Well, I wouldn't use chili for the reasons Picasso stated, but I must admit it's beautiful (albeit un-total annihilationish, more star craftish, with that monkey wrench = repair), but I also think that newbies want something like this.

funny how that isn't part of chili it is just a command menu widget that USES chili.

just saying, you guys hate on the wrong stuff.

smoth wrote:

Jools wrote:Well, I wouldn't use chili for the reasons Picasso stated, but I must admit it's beautiful (albeit un-total annihilationish, more star craftish, with that monkey wrench = repair), but I also think that newbies want something like this.

funny how that isn't part of chili it is just a command menu widget that USES chili.

just saying, you guys hate on the wrong stuff.

Are you still surprised that people do not easily distinguish between an engine and things built with that engine? It seems to be the fate of underlying engines to be forever judged by what most people initially see running on it.

I am an optimist who constantly gets disappointed by the thoughtlessness of others.

Forboding Angel wrote:

^^ My favorite.

There are some horrendous UI problems there that can be fixed by simply shifting the 3 bottom widgets size and position for dramatic improvement.

AF wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:

^^ My favorite.

There are some horrendous UI problems there that can be fixed by simply shifting the 3 bottom widgets size and position for dramatic improvement.

You can't just say something like that without elaborating!

Also, keep in mind that absolutely positioning something in spring across many different resolutions is VERY difficult.

I love and use mine:

Do you really use that buildmenu? I used that UI for a while but got around the issue with hotkeys.

I dont build click the buildmenu more than 10-20 times per game. Everything I build is hotkeyed. Plus that pic is scaled down for better screenshot, my rez is 1920*1200.

Forboding Angel wrote:Also, keep in mind that absolutely positioning something in spring across many different resolutions is VERY difficult.

relative positioning ftw.

desktop cluttered with luafiles makes it hard to concreteconcentrate on the evershifting springtanks menue...