Spring RTS Engine

This thread is to indicate the current progress on the XTA user interface overhaul now known as Blade. The goal of this overhaul is to create a clean, sharp, minimalistic, intuitive, and powerful user interface for XTA, which is how the metaphor of a blade or knife is brought about. Blade is being created because spring mods lack simplified intuitive interfaces with the clean looks of modern games. Spring games are becoming dated, and are very hard to pick up for new players. The main obstacle for beginners is understanding how the interface works, and why pressing keys such as 'b' and 'l' cause the game screen to become incomprehensible or ugly. This is an immediate turnoff. Blade is designed with the user in mind. Developer commands are run through the specially set aside developer's console, which is accessible as in most games using the tilde key.


This post will be a check list.

Framework

• Inheritance and OOP model Finalized
• Drawing, Texture Scaling, Blur, and other ui drawing 80%
• Secret Sauce (its delicious) Finalized
• Animation System Starting Over
• Events 20%
• Optimizing 50%

Actual UI

• Waypoint dragging, viewing Done, full of bugs
• Minimap Finished
• Player List/Share/Alliance screen 30%
• Resource Bars Finished
• Chat 70% Needs scrolling, which relies on animations
• Megabar (Factories, units, builders, commands) 30%
• Menu/Options 10%
• Notifications 0%
• Dual screen support 0%

[*]Music DONE DONE DONE :D


Update:
People keep asking for screenshots, but instead I am doing a mockup in mspaint, so you know whats going on.


Questions:
What is the megabar? The megabar is the bar at the bottom of the screen that managers builders, factories, and units (it has 3 tabs/screens). It allows you to que commands, build orders, manage groups, and find idle builders. Imagine something like the buildbar widget from jk combined with the awesomebar from Firefox, the ui from Warzone2100, the supcom2 ui, and a little bit of secret sauce. This probably doesnt make any sense, but basically, this is where the real innovation of Blade will be.


Website pending.

Keep it up

Screenshot please!

Beherith wrote:Screenshot please!

this is why i didnt want to make this thread. Dont reply unless you have useful feedback.

No screenshot?

Ok, please post something to give feedback on then.

What you posted seems marketing stuff (good for some purposes), but how do you do it ?

As an example: explain how do you solve drawing on map (this is a question I have seen 100 times in games).

or give the widgets to ur clanmates for testing and suggestions

Trib have you thought about adding diplomacy options?
I dont mean the CA alliance widget or any way of actually creating a situation where units form both sides do not attack each other.
I mean a way to quickly communicate basic stuff to whichever player you choose.
ATM you have to type what you want and a lot of the things you want from players repeat themselves.

The UI can handle this in several ways.
1)right clicking on an enemy unit or radar dot will immediately open a quick options menu from which you choose requests,like asking to attack an enemy opponent,saying you are weak,telling an lly to attack a position or just telling someone who you think is stronger or gonna win(or whatever stuff that are offered and are useful).
2)right clicking on an enemy's name in the player list,this would also be convenient when you do not see the enemy units or even his radar dots.

This is also the place to allow all sorts of things if you wish like for example showing an enemy your line of sight for a few moments or portions of it.

This is a suggestion and maybe other people can add some stuff they think might be useful but the bottom line is creating a simple system of basic communication if its with your own allies or enemies in an FFA game.

For such a system to make any sense it of course has to be much quicker than trying to type what you want to say in the chat and would be best if it was as much customizable as possible so people can add their own types of announcements.
This might also be the point where giving units and resources to others merges in.

Good job, I think what you're doing is really important.

You wanted feedback, here's some:

*keep it simple: most problems with spring are really easy to fix and don't require much coding, examples are the b-button thing and the many camera shortcuts.

* think quality, not quantity: spring has already lot's of great functions, and some functions that are great to the programmer, but not to the newbie user. Better to have one well-done function than many not-so-though-through functions.

I was gonna reply to this age-old thread, there's this guy who has done a very good review of spring, and in my opinion most points are still valid and it's constructive. But for some reason the developers reacted to it in a very defensive way.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... lit=review

suggestion: make it like iceui but less cpu-intensive, why:
+customizable (size, fonts, color)
+easy to use
+gives me all informations i wanna know
+dev. hears for my suggestions (pure win for every widget :D)
+saveable options

-cpu-intensive

what could be added:
-less clicks for some add. informations (e.g. ressource bar of ur friends, but u have to click on small buttons when u wanna see the kills/losses)
-no line break
-add. tooltip, e.g. i use inline-bt-widget (shows name oif the unit while hovering over buildpic) but i want to see E/M-costs under it
-better camera-widget (i dont get comfortable with the ghood all in one camera widget of TFC (?) )

I offer one suggestion:

Keep the player list small. Advanced Player List is a joke. For those of us who run Spring at lower resolutions, that thing can take up over half of the vertical space in large games. Also, it doesn't display actual pings, just green, yellow, or red symbols. WTF is red? There is a huge difference between 1000 ms ping and 25000 ms ping. In one case, the user may just be experiencing high latency constantly. In the other extreme, that person is probably about to drop. If we absolutely don't want numbers, can we at least see a ping when we mouse over the symbol (the way WoW does it).

My favorite player list was in Lolui. Very small, compact, shows vital information (actual CPU and Latency numbers). The downside is that it probably could have looked better. Maybe some that looks like Lolui player list, but is more visually appealing. Someone made a version that was similar (think it is called Simple Player List) but even that was about twice as big as it need be.

Mav wrote:I offer one suggestion:

Keep the player list small. Advanced Player List is a joke. For those of us who run Spring at lower resolutions, that thing can take up over half of the vertical space in large games. Also, it doesn't display actual pings, just green, yellow, or red symbols. WTF is red? There is a huge difference between 1000 ms ping and 25000 ms ping. In one case, the user may just be experiencing high latency constantly. In the other extreme, that person is probably about to drop. If we absolutely don't want numbers, can we at least see a ping when we mouse over the symbol (the way WoW does it).

You can see it when you hover mouse over the icon...

And most games you dont need those pink/cpu displays at all, hardly vital information thatd need to be visible all the time.

there is a smaller player liost (i think of bd)

how can we give feedback to this?
like "minimap Finished", what will be different to the default minimap?
Megabar sounds like something to eat but its guess its a buildbar...if its good depends on how its done not what it is.
i prefer as little clutter as possible if thats helpfull.

knorke wrote:how can we give feedback to this?

This

Although I can say that Blade UI is an awesome name.

Or at least it doesn't make me cringe like every time you mention "gewy".

JohannesH wrote:]You can see it when you hover mouse over the icon...

And most games you dont need those pink/cpu displays at all, hardly vital information thatd need to be visible all the time.

1) Just tested the mouseover thing and I most assuredly can't see numbers. Some sort of bug?

2) Depends on who you're asking. Some like it, some don't. Maybe leave it in there as an option.

Mav wrote:Also, it doesn't display actual pings, just green, yellow, or red symbols

I use adv. playerslist as opposed to any other list for exactly this reason.

Also, we could take away the health points numbers from below the screen to reduce clutter, it's enough to see the health bar.

ake away the health points numbers

no no no nonoooo.
its usefull to see hp bonus due to exp.

playerlist/ping display:
99% you will have it switched off but if you need it you will want to know the real ping and not see some color. keep numeric ping or color the number if you like.

Ill update the first post with some informations.

HOWEVER UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AM I POSTING A SCREENSHOT. STOP ASKING PLEASE.