Design A New Lobby Client Interface.

[Argh]

Simply put, I think we need to fundamentally re-think how the Lobbies are designed, in order to better serve the Spring project's core needs, moving forwards.

I will make time available over the next week or so to develop a mockup of a better Lobby design (in my opinion, of course). I would like to invite any artists or game designers who would like to see this happen to participate, by submitting visual designs.

The results with the website competition were well worth the effort, so I believe this is worth doing, and I hope that this time around, more people join into the design competition, now that they know how this can work, and can change things. It may take months, but it's better than not bothering.

Now, everybody who wants to submit a design... please keep in mind the following ideas:

1. Don't forget to show the UI elements / features of things that are already done, in an appropriate context. I.E., I don't honestly think that a proposal to, say, eliminate the chat interface will fly. You can propose that in a design, just bear in mind, some features of the current generation of the Lobbies are well-liked by players.

2. As with the previous design contest, we're seeking a winner, not a personal e-peen boost. Don't attack people submitting designs, please- just express what you like about each one, or if there's one that really turns you on, explain why, and maybe it'll lead to further changes. Avoid the negative, accentuate the positive- our goal should be to seek winning ideas, not destroy the losers.

3. Game developers- like the new website, this is something where your interests are at stake.

So... think about how you would like a Lobby to support your players. Think about how you would like it to support all games. Think about how you'd like to see games be able to market themselves, etc., in an effective way. Or, maybe you don't want any of that, and have other ideas- well, it's all on the table.

But... give us pictures, not words. The big problem with discussions about this issue, imho at least, is that people get... a bit feisty, when we're dealing with words that may mean a lot of things.

Pictures, on the other hand, show people how something would really feel and act. Taking the time to put your visual stamp on this would help show people what you really want, very, very clearly.

That's pretty much it. Good luck!

[AF]

Basically what I wanted in my thread but without argh derailing it in the first post

[Machiosabre]

divine symmetry.

[Argh]

The reason why I've launched this is because we're not getting where we need to, by just seeing what random stuff shows up from programmers.

It's not that you people making this stuff aren't all brilliant people who mean well. The issue, as I see it, is that every one of the Lobbies seems to have mainly been built ad-hoc, without a detailed plan for what final features should be like, how they should look, etc.

We need to step back from the nuts-and-bolts issues and look at this in a serious way. Doing mockups serves that purpose, by getting everybody outside the box and thinking fundamentally about how an application can serve a need.

To start that process, we need to answer some questions: who do the Lobby clients serve now? Is it inclusive and helpful to everybody?

My answer those questions are, "it's various programmers' attempts to serve the current Lobby audience, which is dominated by one game design... and it's not remotely helpful to the wider audience of end-users".

My contention is that I think that we need to look at end-users in the broadest way.

Not just people wanting to find a game and shout abuse at one another, but the game designers trying to deliver said games and find an audience, the moderators trying to keep the lid on, and the server administrators who provide the background services that everything else depends on.

At any rate, I'll have my first concept completed here in a bit, so that, just like the website, we all have something more substantial to argue about, and less difficult to have misunderstandings about, than mere words.

I have some free time today, so what the heck... if I'm going to interrupt my development schedule for (yet-another) contest, it might as well be Right Now, so that it's off my plate, other than the baaaawing...

[SinbadEV]

Not done yet with my vision... but here's the start of what I'm thinking...

http://sinbadevsspring.googlepages.com/ ... 22lobby%22

Basic Idea is that everything is organised into panels which can be tabs, split panels (showing multiple panels at once) or split into separate windows... another idea I had was for certain tabs to have the option of colapsing them into menus... the "welcome" screen for example... I forgot to put a "settings" button on the welcome mockup I made... this would open up some general options for the acctual client it a panel just like every other panel.

Also I would assume you could save a group of opened and arranged tabs and have the client open them by default... another idea I had was for people to be able to add panels to the system... for example one could replace the default welcome screen with a screen that allowed them to choose single or multiplayer... single would open something similar to the welcome panel and multi would connect to the default server.

[Argh]

Here's my first WIP shot:



I really like the idea of being able to make things different windows, SinbadEV, I'll probably incorporate that into this as I get things fleshed out a lot more. Great idea there

Basically, though, what you have is a resizable, tab-based interface, with a number of key features that current Clients either don't have, or don't do very well yet:

1. Direct integration with the Website, to tie these resources together, keeping overall maintenance lower and improving players' connections with our doings around here.

2. Integration with UberServer (i.e.- wanna set up a LAN game with friends? Click a tab, click a button, and you're ready to host!).

3. Administrative tools for Moderators, built right in (only seen if you log in and have Moderator rights). More on this in a bit. I have a lot of ideas that would make Moderators jobs a lot easier, imo, that are policy-neutral (iow, I'm not here to advocate what's a ban / mute / whatever offense, etc., we all know I'd be a draconian Moderator, because I believe very strongly in the whole "kid friendly" thing).

4. My Games area, where people can manage their games directly, instead of ever having to dig through file folders.

5. Map / Game / File (i.e. Widgets, tools, etc.) browsing capabilities, built right in. More on this later.

6. Big improvements in the chat interface (not shown here, but it's coming).

[AF]

A few things queries

A common criticism of early AFLobby builds was too many tabs, and I see there are a lot of tabs in these 2 concepts. How would this criticism be handled when levied against these 2 concepts?

Research shows that programs that user native GUI styles are more popular than rivals that use skinned buttons and GUI widgets. Would this work in a Vista Aero, XP luna, and Gnome GTK environment while fitting in tot eh visual theme?

Also, how would you work icons into them? I found users requesting icons in my GUI and spring lobby got rid of tabs entirely in favour of icons initially, and satirik makes numerous updates, what sort of imagery outside of embedded web pages would be available?

[Argh]

A common criticism of early AFLobby builds was too many tabs, and I see there are a lot of tabs in these 2 concepts. How would this criticism be handled when levied against these 2 concepts?

Well, I think that's fair- interface complexity is always to be avoided, if possible. On the reverse side, having too much nesting is very bad, because it makes it harder to maintain and document the features, and greatly increases the learning curve. I found SpringLobby's UI confusing, the first couple of times I used it, whereas TASClient, aside from a few features I wouldn't reproduce in an ideal world, feels very much like a stock Windows application, and behaves like I expect one to.

Research shows that programs that user native GUI styles are more popular than rivals that use skinned buttons and GUI widgets. Would this work in a Vista Aero, XP luna, and Gnome GTK environment while fitting in tot eh visual theme?

What you're looking at, with mine, is a skin, basically- that's a basic assumption, that this isn't a static UI, but can change looks if the user desires it- this is just a default style. It could use various tab designs and color schemes without missing a beat, for the main interface, because my basic goal is to keep that end of things as simple as possible- the background's just a gradient, the borders would be easy to swap, the text is Arial, etc., etc. Heck, the tabs could be replaced with bog-standard buttons, and it'd be ugly but it'd be ok in terms of design needs.

Also, how would you work icons into them? I found users requesting icons in my GUI and spring lobby got rid of tabs entirely in favour of icons initially, and satirik makes numerous updates, what sort of imagery outside of embedded web pages would be available?

Dunno. TBH, I guess my first question would be, "why were users requesting icons?" Was it because the design didn't feature nice big print that tells you what's up, because it makes things look more lively, or because users want visual symbols, because it's easier to memorize? I went for big text on big tabs, but that's something that could be done in various ways.

[SinbadEV]

Okay... Basically I was just making my roughs... had meant it to look "default GUI skin" though skinning to look all groovey like arghs is also cool... should ba an option... different skin could be included in a games's profile too...
the "lot's o tabs" problem can be solved by having new windows and "sub-panels" as I described...perhaps we could make the default "profile" have fewer tabs and more windows...

you could also have "major tabs" and "minor tabs"

which would be more tabs but might make more sense

edit:
on the subject of icons... thats the part I hate most about spring-lobby... an easy way to impliment them would be to allow images wherever text labels are presented... then the various tabs could optionally be represented as images...

[Argh]

Chat interface, WIP 1:

Basically, Chat is separated from games, and has a lot of useful features that we don't have, or aren't really implemented in a really nice way yet (imo).

Main features:

1. Chat windows can stack, or be put into a tabbed set of windows. Here, I'm showing stacked, but there should be an UI element that makes it revert to the TASClient classic style.

2. Friends and Groups:

Players, admins, and game designers can register Friends, which are people who you can deliver messages to, or invite to games.

I would like to see a delayed-delivery feature for the Friends, so that if you send a message, the Friend gets it when they log in next. This would serve as a PM-like system within the Chat area, although it might require too much server processing power to keep and forward this stuff, I suspect it'd be all right, if it wasn't abused.

Friends can all be shift-clicked or ctrl-clicked, to be selected in groups, for a quick chat.

Friends may be invited into a game, simply by selecting them and clicking Invite to Game.

Groups are any number of users, more than one. Groups are non-mandatory, and require acceptance by other users- people are invited to participate in the Group, and can decline if they wish (and Group invitations can be turned off completely, for folks who don't want to ever be in Groups).

If a user agrees to join a Group, then founders of the Group may send messages to the Group, and request Conferences. By default, all people should be enrolled in the #main Group, so that they can be sent special messages, etc., by moderators or Spring's admins. If a user wants to opt out of a Group, they simply remove it.

Obviously, spamming Group invitations to everybody in #Main should be a banning offense, and there probably should be a dialog with a timer (say, 30 seconds) when trying to send Group invites to more than 10 people, to prevent this, plus a Log Event should occur on the Moderator / Admin side, so that it's quite clear who's doing what, in terms of spam accusations, etc., etc.

Invite to Conference is like any chat with multiple people, except for two things:

1. It is a timed event (default should be 30 seconds, but people should be able to set to a specific time, for event planning, etc.).

2. Invitations are sent to a Group, including notice about what time the Conference starts, in your timezone. If you are part of the Group, and are online when the Conference starts, you will have a new chat open, with all members of the invited Group who are present.

Having a Group / Conference system would allow clans, large-scale event planning, beta test sessions, tournaments and many other things to be organized in various ways. This would be a very powerful and useful social-networking tool, basically. Between that and Friends, there would be a lot of power at people's fingertips to talk to people in various ways that aren't really possible now. Channels are great, but they're very crappy for certain types of activities, and Groups would solve a lot of problems.

[aegis]

I don't want any system using a centralized group or channel of any sort (i.e. #main)

[Argh]

Er, you mean you want to drop #main entirely?

That would be a pretty radical change. I'm here to look at outside-the-box stuff, for sure, but I'm not sure players would dig that- they need people to yell various horrible things at each other in.

What would we replace it with? A series of "game rooms", or something?

[aegis]

centralized channels are a logistical nightmare.... they don't scale efficiently

[SinbadEV]

RE:Argh's chat interface

Like the idea of having a specific buddy list in addition to the room's list... like the idea of conferences and groups... still think that rooms are necessary for people to idle in without having to be in a group...

So... to summarize,
Friend List, Good
Groups+Group Chat, Good... but only if it can be handled client side in some way
IRC style rooms, also Good

Also...

I like your idea of having a multi-window within a border PanelHolder, then when you "maximized" one of the sub-windows all the windows within that "frame" would become tabs, right?

[aegis]

sadly enough, a pile of overlapping windows isn't very efficient

[SinbadEV]

re-argh's design again now that I've looked at it... when one opens the client would ALL those tabs be there already or would the user open and close tabs as he/she needs them?

[AF]

One idea I've toyed with is making all the tabs and panels flexible enough to move around into their own windows or as tabs etc. The use of an MDI container would be a simple extension of this implementing the idea, and is quite a widespread component, it was even built into VB6

[Crayfish]

I really like Argh's design. The option to customise the interface by adding or removing tabs would be important, but the overall appearance is smooth. Retain that minimalist, simple approach.

Interfaces always seem to be tempted to spam too much information in the main window and become confusing (e.g. supreme commander before fallen alliance, most MS office programs and many others).

Have a look at Google Chrome, or the classic Google home, some Apple programs and most Apple hardware for examples of user friendly, efficient design.

[Wisse]

Here's my basic idea. Mind that it would look much nicer with some textures or gradients or shadows or all of those. But i used vector graphics to make it easy.
My main points here are use of tabs almost everywhere. I would still prefer to have seperate windows for battle and replays + other things that use windows in satiric's lobby too. I'll try to add some new features with time.

Beherith reminded me that i forgot to put logo somewhere x.x

[daan 79]

red is taken by piro btw