Revised GUI

[AF]

He has a point with icons, as theyre easier tor ecognize as commands fi they match the cursors and theyre well designed ( if they're not easy to recognize that's because the symbol used is poor )

It also means font and text size become irrelevant, so does translation. Its also less mentally texing as you dont have to parse the text and its shape, when you can instantly imprint a symbol without having to look at its curves and lines. We recognize single words by their shape and size, and symbols have a vastly superior variety of these, aswell as use better of contrasting colours

[clericvash]

I have to agree with AF icons would look far better than text for certain actions.

[Stealth870]

Man, I can't imagine it's all that hard to make a GUI... I'll need to look into this as people seem to complain incessantly about it... then I will get bored and lazy and forget about it.

Don't forget please, it would be nice to see a simple tutorial or something since I too would like to tweak the layout, but don't know where to start....

GUI customization facilitation por favor.

[Beherith]

There is a widget that makes the buttons around the text ones much nicer looking and transparent. Its called gui_transparent.lua and I think I have it posted in the lua forum.

[cong06]

What about a user friendly method of attaching a small "Advanced"/"Basic" toggle button at the top, which would slip between "Attack/Stop" commands, and the more complex ones.

That way people that don't know lua can still hide the buttons that they don't always need.
It would of course also hide buttons some people use, but I'm suggesting doing it in such a way that any new player can access the buttons he absolutely needs, and nothing else, where everyone else has the rest.

[SinbadEV]

I've always wanted a huge list of collapsible categories and names...

Like

Code: Select all

[-]Commands:
	Attack
	Stop
	Wait
	Patrol
	Capture
	...etc...
[+]Defenses
[+]Factories
[+]Resource

[Tribulexrenamed]

Hmm, interesting.

I always use KB commands, so having it possible to hide or slim down the attack etc. commands, and making the build menu super easy to acces, good....

[Gota]

Spring is more than BA ...



current CA buildmenu (with auto-generated buildpics)

I just wanna say that these buildpics are not so good IMO.
If you want good buildpics you need to:
make the background be very blend yet clear and the units need to contrast with the background.
Everything must be sharp and not smudged all over.
And why the strange shading around the edges?
units and buildigns need ot be displayed form different angles.
Some units can be shown from the front,with their front end almost sticking out of the picture.
Some can be shown from the regular perspective some can be drawn as a few near each other.
In short diversity will help recognize them faster.
These buildpics are not crisp and look like low quality icons.

Here's a small tip for ya:allow players to flip pages using the right mouse button.
Especially usefull with CA's oversized buildlist.

[Hoi]

The buildpics are cool.

[Satirik]

yep ca build pict are pretty, on the screen above they are a bit too small that's all (people wanting MOAR AND MOAR icon on their 15" screens)

[cong06]

yep ca build pict are pretty, on the screen above they are a bit too small that's all (people wanting MOAR AND MOAR icon on their 15" screens)

well, there's a difference between pretty and clean.
The CA buttons are quite pretty, but more contrast would be good, so that it's easier to get used to them right away. The boarders around offensive units is useful, but even on highest resolution I end up depending on mouse-overs to tell which unit I want.

[CarRepairer]

Here's a small tip for ya:allow players to flip pages using the right mouse button.
Especially usefull with CA's oversized buildlist.

Some command buttons use the right mouse button to do alternate things. How about scroll wheel instead?

[smoth]

mmb zooms out/in, and some other stuff IIRC

[jK]

yep ca build pict are pretty, on the screen above they are a bit too small that's all (people wanting MOAR AND MOAR icon on their 15" screens)

well, there's a difference between pretty and clean.
The CA buttons are quite pretty, but more contrast would be good, so that it's easier to get used to them right away. The boarders around offensive units is useful, but even on highest resolution I end up depending on mouse-overs to tell which unit I want.

PROs use b&w scheme

(-> you didn't read teh changelog -> check the ca interface options menu)

[Tribulexrenamed]

pros play CA? lol

I played supcom the other day, and while its interface is refined and easy to use, it feels so closed up because i cant see everything at once.

There are 2 schools of thought, usability and compactness, or hugeness and accessibility.

Just thought i would point that out.

[jK]

<°)))o><

[det]

I strongly prefered the autogenerated icons from pre [3061], when you added the halo effect. I really, really, liked them. They were a lot easier on my eyes and I located things faster. They seem too "busy" to me now, with the halo. Here is a comparison, I took the screenshots on water, which probably serves as a poor background :/

[3060]:

[3189]:

[REVENGE]

I strongly prefered the autogenerated icons from pre [3061], when you added the halo effect. I really, really, liked them. They were a lot easier on my eyes and I located things faster. They seem too "busy" to me now, with the halo. Here is a comparison, I took the screenshots on water, which probably serves as a poor background :/

[3060]:

[3189]:

To be honest, they should be more sharply defined, with more contrast. I like how the border and background impart something regarding the capability / purpose of each unit, but implementation needs work. Less noise and smudginess please.

[KaiserJ]

The borders around offensive units is useful.

i never really considered this before...

but wouldnt that simplify things a bunch (in conjunction with some of the other ideas in this thread) if you were able to tell the nature of a unit by the border / background color of the icon on the bar? color code as to the units use (example... all attacking units get a red background, stationary defense gets purple, construction vehicles get yellow, economy buildings and labs get green, etc etc.) this would make it easier to locate units on the build panel quickly IMO because your brain would recognize the background color and filter out everything else so you can find the button you need ASAP.

even if the interface was not adjusted beyond this, i still feel it would increase its usefulness by leaps and bounds.

i really like the look of the interface proposed at the beginning of the thread, not necessarily the idea to remove buttons, but in general it really stands out and has a nice look to it (to be extra fancy, maybe make the border color the team color of the controlling player)

interesting ideas everyone!

just an observation, i know we're all talking about dead space etc, so lets have a peek at some old, inefficient layouts for a laugh :D



^ hohoho 1/3 of the screen just in case you forgot you're controlling a boat. the right hand and bottom borders are epic also



^ guys, we'd better keep the options button nice and huge, just in case they need to micromanage... their sounds settings?! that barber pole on the right reminds me, my troops all need a haircut to raise morale.



missile gun looks awesome! better make it a huge image, just in case they forget which unit they made. better leave a bit spot for the robots face too, so you can actually see him telling you that you suck instead of just hearing it (this actually does happen in this game lol) because the blue army has most of the map.

[MidKnight]

Ahem.

IceUI.

If only it worked with b5, if only it worked with linux, if only it worked...

IceUI is an OK UI based on the original Spring LuaUI layout, but i agree that some drastic changes would be a good idea.

An idea that IceUI half-implemented was teamcolored semitransparent windows, and Satirik added window gradients. Alas, it hasn't worked for me . Same with several other features, plus it doesn't remember settings half the time and crashes like an alpha.

What I'm trying to say here is that, if we want to actually redo Spring's UI, IceUI would be a good place to start.

PS: we also don't need the map text (IE: "MixedGrass elevation 500 Speed 4") IMO (I don't say IMHO to avoid confusion with the digg/reddit/4chan crowd ) it should be confined to a dev widget.

EDIT: I hate is when an ally loses his/her commy and there are 2 players with similar colors, maybe something to A: differentiate your units from allied units and B: see which unit belongs to who

SECOND EDIT: The newest version fixes a LOT of the problems i nebtioned in my post. I still want the functionality mentioned in edit #1, tho and it'd be VERY NICE if Noize (is he still the BA maintainer) incorperated some of the newer menu widgets into BA...