UI opinions

[SanadaUjiosan]

Is there a reason no one here thinks color is even a remotely good idea? Does everyone see in black and white or something? I'm seriously astonished at this hostility towards color.

[hoijui]

best is, you just do it as you want, and make sure you keep it all flexible, so you can change it relatively easy in the future.
then, when your mod is played, you will see yourself, and you can request feedback from users. then do not engage into demotivating discussions too much, and rather spend the time working, and changing something 3 times, after you tried it.
i think colors are important/good for this, but i could also imagine that if there are like 5 different colors on a build icon, that all mean something, it may be ignored by the majority. but as said, this is best tested in practice.

[SanadaUjiosan]

Well, the first thing I'll need to really set the UI we want straight is one that'll give me 92x92 buildpic size. That's really the thing I'm most concerned with right now. I've looked around at UI's, didn't find much, so if someone could give me a hand that would be great.

[Pxtl]

If I were going to use color, I'd print the actual text I wish the player to observe in that color, or in negative in the border. That is, the player can see "Oh, this brown text means XXXXX" and then look for the brown.

Too bad tooltips are so limited - it would be nice to have full color icons in the tooltip would be good. You could use the icons/colors on the buildpic, and have icons/colors + descriptions in the tooltip so the player will learn what the icons mean.

[SanadaUjiosan]

So I just actually looked and 92x92 sized buttons/build pics are really big. Why does the wiki say to have them be this large?

[Neddie]

Probably a classic hold over. They're not really that big, particularly considering the classic UI was 2 x 6 buttons in size.

[AF]

Make the build icons large for flexibility. As I keep saying, the size of the build icons in the side menu is arbitrary and is defined in settings somewhere. It can be changed

[jK]

btw using 96x96 will give different results depending on the platform and may increase the gpu memory usage, so on older ATi cards (which don't support nonPowerOfTwo textures) those will get upscaled to 128x128 with a drop in quality.

PS: AFAIK the 'default' 96x96 was left over from OTA compability

[oksnoop2]

Thanks for the tip, good to know we are backwards compatible...........

[AF]

Your anything but, Change to a power of 2 size now before you have to do it in 6 months time and its triple the work!

[KaiserJ]

in reference to the first post...

i've seen graphically stylized interfaces like that, and i've seen a bottom-of-screen interface as well. maybe im missing the point but i feel like the example picture you posted could be recreated in spring with some photoshop work and a sprinkling of magic LUA powder

[oksnoop2]

magic LUA powder

is in short short short supply

[xzalion]

I saw your whole UI! I can assist you with the UI Mate! Drop me an "PM" Then i shall aid you.

Regards

Dewaldt Steenkamp

[xzalion]

That UI. That Age of Empires one is very easy to make mate? let's hook up & i can aid you, I will make you the Best UI ever on this site :)

Then you can post it, & show that i am true lol

[knorke]

Is there a reason no one here thinks color is even a remotely good idea? Does everyone see in black and white or something? I'm seriously astonished at this hostility towards color.

I dont think colors are that bad but how many different colors do you want? If there is too much it gets confusing:
Grey / white for Tech 1 / 2 would be good.
red for fast stuff, yellow for armor, green for anti air, teal for sea etc would be too much.

Problem why the buildmenus in most games seem so much better is also because they are usually fewer units. Like 2 planes for air warfare. Now how many different planes does the typical spring game have? Even non-ta games like gundam have ~6

Arrangement of the icons also helps. In Starcraft it always a 3x3 grid. I still remember the terran engeering bay being in the middle. But I have no idea what the picture looked like.
C&C Tiberian Sun (like all early c&c) had 2 scrollable build menus, one for buildings and other for mobile unts.
Powerplants are at the top. For units first came infantry, then tanks, then aircraft. BUT if you had to rebuild your infantry barracks because it got destroyed, it would now be in a different order. That was always very confusing.

spring buildmenus are like this:
[Mex] [Solar][vehicle Factory]
[Lasertower] [Windmill] [Flak]
[heavy laser tower] [advanced Factory] [Radar]

It is just all units listed in a vaguely sorted order.

why can they not be like this:
[Mex] [Solar] [Windmill]
[Lasertower] [heavy laser tower] [Flak] [Radar]
[vehicle Factory] [advanced Factory]

Each line would be one group/type of buildings.
Some lines would be longer, some shorter. Maybe this is an idea that can be done with little work?

For example xta:

Why are the T1 factories at top, then comes some water stuff, then come the T2 factories.
Why can the Floating Dragonteeth and the Hover Factory not switch places? Then all advanced factories would be in a nice 2x3 grid.

[SanadaUjiosan]

Yeah, the order of the units in build options are consistant and I try to keep similar things clumped together. An example is mex, power, converter, all t1 factories, radar, and then all t1 defences.

You're right, where they are on the grid is something we tend to remember a lot sooner than other things.

[oksnoop2]

By foo2 at 2010-05-31

Trying to sketch out a UI.

[oksnoop2]

Recently occurred to me that the UI might look different from the way it is "supposed to look". Could people please post screen shots of what the CT UI looks like to them?

[slogic]

I don't like the idea of border colors at all. This is meaningless. Better use tabs for unit groups. Though background color has sense from my point of view. But this needs good looking (contrast, recognition) composition of unit and background. Also take a look at CA menu concept (press "B" there cause this is not trivial), you could take some ideas (or inspiration) from there.