Prater Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 All great feedback from everyone, super helpful and refining these ideas. Still working on the compass area as alot is being shown in that one section. I agree on the customization piece of the UI. I figured all pieces would be draggable/movable to your preferred position. Text warnings would be optional say for those who like to have a text warning, or maybe for someone who is hearing impaired ( always good to have options for everyone ) I put the water level back in just trying to not cluster too much into one area. Here is a crude version of how the compass might work. Prater, I will also add somewhere the number of available cannons currently on your ship, and by shading do you mean the colors? (green) Trying to keep the UI as minimal as possible while providing you all the necessary pieces to your ship. So, hopefully as I hack away at this it gets better each revision. I feel the screen might look more convoluted when everything is fully active, but in normal standards is fairly minimal. Thanks everyone for the feedback. I'm going to keep cracking away at this and try to refine some of the design more, but glad to see everyone giving feedback. No, I mean the background shade behind the text. Nice work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theSpatchula Posted March 20, 2015 Author Share Posted March 20, 2015 No, I mean the background shade behind the text. Nice work. Oh ok. yeah planning to remove that once I get the assets figured out more. I started testing without a transparent background and it looks alot nicer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir. Cunningham Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 I'd prefer it if the wind direction was still illustrated with an arrow, as it's easier to read accurately that way IMO. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admin Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 topic pinned to top.. the current UI strategy is the following. We will bring more elements into the game and after we have a full clarity on what information we (and players) want on the screen we will then finalize it. Would like to discuss couple of changes we are thinking about. 1) We want to reduce the number of buttons: For example.. currently there are 4 buttons offer reload (1 2 3 4). What we can do is this.. replace it with one button (guns - press 1) it will bring up a separate screen with detailed gunnery management. with clicks and drop down ammo selections + deck locks (that are done by f1 -f4).. this will free up some space + free up 7 buttons. You will still be able to press buttons consequentially if you need.. for example.. Press 1 for gun interface press 1 for gun deck press 3 for chain which automatically close the window (1-1-3). On the other hand it is a popup and might get annoying if you switch ammo often. Same can be done for crew management.. instead of having 3 buttons you will have 1 button crew (press 2) pop up screen and then click on the crew focus. this pop up window for detailed ship management will be useful only if additional functions are added.. if not current system is less obtrusive. 2) What do you think of War thunder system of damage indication? which shows damage to the enemy only when it happens and does not show its state. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest raat Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 It's hard to critique without seeing an example, but I'll try my best here. 1) The f1, f2, etc. buttons are really out of the way for something you'll be using often in battle. Furthermore, popups are the last thing I'd want while in a tense moment of battle. 2) Are you referring to their damage indication for air or tank gameplay? They both use text that pops up saying "hit" etc. Other than that, there's no HUD indication of how damaged your opponent is for air combat. For tanks, there's a couple things. You get a HUD "list" of the different components of the tank damaged that popups as text. The other component is their "hit-cam" which shows you relatively where you hit the tank. Both are very arcade-y elements that I think are wholly out of place in a game like NA. Hit-cam for obvious reasons, but perhaps the most obvious is since there's no concealment, I can clearly see I hit the enemy ship. And the pop-up text of ship parts hit shows too much information IMO. I shouldn't know I took out an enemy's pump or rudder in the same fashion you know you took out an opponents gun barrel or locked his turret in War Thunder. I know that's not very constructive if I'm understanding your proposals correctly, but I don't have a good solution to propose either. All I can say is, I'm confident with the state of the game you've developed already that you can come to a better, more elegant solution that's unique to NA, but also easy to use and understand for the player. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazednConfused Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 I second Raatha on his comments. hit cams and damage indicators are would ruin the immersion IMO. the F keys i can understand however. in a complex game we will need more and more command buttons and will need a key matrix to support this. i think a good example is Operation Flashpoint/ ARMA bindings. where you get a drop-down on nearly all the F and numeral keys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Wiener_Von_Snitzel Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 (edited) This is so awsome! ! ! I really wanted to see a feature like that! and boom there it is! when in heavy combat sometimes i wanted to use one deck so i could fire at multiple tagets, insted of shooting the hole board side at one. Being exposed to the next 2 or 3 ships passing by. and was getting kinda tired of pressing f1 f2 f3 to shoot the one deck at the time. So thank you very much for this! cant wait to try it! But! i think it would be more user friendly to have the cannon menu on the side of the screen representing the ship as seen form above with the side deck form top to buttom. So the top deck in highst and the buttom deck are lowest Mad photoshop skillz Edited March 20, 2015 by mortenlnielsen 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueMyChin Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 (edited) 2) What do you think of War thunder system of damage indication? which shows damage to the enemy only when it happens and does not show its state. I'm of the opinion that we don't need to know what damage we've done to an enemy ship or what state they're in beyond what we can discern from looking at them. I understand some of those visuals (holes in the hull, two gun ports smashed into one) won't be possible until a further down the line if at all but we're already able to see sail damage, mast damage and when the ship has taken on water, so you clearly see the value in displaying the condition of a ship visually. Rudder damage wouldn't be too difficult to implement. Damaged/knocked out guns would be discernible from the fact they don't fire when the rest of the deck fires. Other than a ship sitting lower in the water to show the amount of water a ship is taking on, which is already in game, we wouldn't need any other information about the amount of leaks a ship has or if her pumps are damaged. If it's low in the water it's hurting, if it's not keep shooting until it is. No need at all for anything more there. Crew is something different all together. A ship with reduced crew should be generally slower at performing particular tasks and maybe the amount of crew on deck represents the number of crew on board. So for every visible hand on deck they have 50 crew or something. This would change as you optimise the game and are able to show more hands or as the graphic settings are altered if you chose to give the option. If you disagree with this, please suggest why a player needs to know the state of an enemy ship in game beyond what they can see because I can't think of any. Edited March 20, 2015 by SueMyChin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ned Loe Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 This design is too modern. It feels like I am in a modern naval game. The concept looks good and I like it, but doesn't represent the age of sail at all. Can you try to add ornaments around buttons? Just my review. example: 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grim DeGrim Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 (edited) Mad photoshop skillz I like this concept. Might be a way to get the correct ship perspective and place it on left side of the screen ui. Edited March 20, 2015 by Grim DeGrim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theSpatchula Posted March 20, 2015 Author Share Posted March 20, 2015 This is great stuff guys! I will try it out and some of these things. Wind, Was planning on adding some detail to my design at least. just laying things out. Just gotta figure out a way to make it have that age of sail feel without being to overly in your face. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grim DeGrim Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 This is great stuff guys! I will try it out and some of these things. Wind, Was planning on adding some detail to my design at least. just laying things out. Just gotta figure out a way to make it have that age of sail feel without being to overly in your face. I love Wind's idea too. But you've the right of it... Get the placement and layout mechanic working, then with that structure make THAT look age of Sail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Wiener_Von_Snitzel Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 I like this concept. Might be a way to get the correct ship perspective and place it on left side of the screen ui. You could even take it as far, as using numpad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueMyChin Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 Yeh, I'm not so into the gold leaf/aged look personally, it feels gaudy and it's a totally over done cliché. Also, anything too elaborate on a UI detracts from the content behind it. Minimalist with maybe a more dated font and organic lines perhaps but don't get too carried away. The purpose of an interface is not to stand out if anything. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Wiener_Von_Snitzel Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 For me this would someting like this would be almost perfect 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigand Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 This seems a nice solution: Edit: You could inegrate the loading indicator into it: ~Brigand 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeRuyter Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 This ^^ I would vote for the top down gun deck view! I am always confusing which button is port and which is starboard and which deck is which! As for the damage cameras and text, just go to the WT forums and you'll see that not everyone likes it, especially the Simulator battle players. Also an argument for removing the name tags over the ships. In WT SB you need to know the silhouette of the enemy vehicles and look through your binos to see if you have knocked them out (unless on fire, ammo racked, etc.). So in NA you'd have to rely on the flags and when enough ships are in the game the type or class of ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_Wiener_Von_Snitzel Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 You can also put in the HP bars for the ship insted of them being in the top left 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theSpatchula Posted March 20, 2015 Author Share Posted March 20, 2015 (edited) Could give it that real MMO feel Edited March 20, 2015 by theSpatchula Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrezesOi Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 The discussion rolls back like a mantra - ascetic interface! Why it have to be so ascetic? Easy to read? Yes! As much as possible, but not poor! One of the fundamental advantages of Naval Action, is detailed damage model, trajectory of missiles and so on. Not everything can be show directly on the model of our ship. Part of the changes occurring in the structure must be reflected by the UI. For example - I would like to know the status of each cannon, not the whole battery. I want (on the basis of the reports of my crew) to know exactly WHERE leaks are, or what section is burning and how hard fire is there (for examle - easy/hard/impossible to stop by crew). etc etc etc That's why I would like to see at least star&portside mini diagrams of victory when sailing victory. https://bensimonds.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/turntablescreenshot2.jpg But that's probably impossible... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prater Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 This design is too modern. It feels like I am in a modern naval game. The concept looks good and I like it, but doesn't represent the age of sail at all. Can you try to add ornaments around buttons? Just my review. example: I don't know. I like the minimalist ui. We don't need ornaments on the ai, they just cover up the view of the landscape and ships, and I'd rather look at what game labs has created in the world instead of a fancy ui. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest raat Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 Could give it that real MMO feel I rather like this a lot. Only problem is the ship sits rather low in the screen and directly in the center as it is now so adding UI elements to the center would probably really clutter your view. Honestly, of all the suggestions, I still feel like the placement and look and feel of the current UI we have in game is superior. Spatchula's improvements are really nice, but I don't know about moving around UI elements from the current in-game positions. I know it's just that I'm comfortable with them, but they just feel right to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StuffinBeard Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 I think that everyone likes things in a different place it would be nice to be able to move them eventually. I always move my UI around to where I feel it is best used for me.. Jmo 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grim DeGrim Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 As such, you will not need the ui move option. I might want it exactly as is, but everything right side. It's up to the user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theSpatchula Posted March 20, 2015 Author Share Posted March 20, 2015 (edited) Best is to provide user with a suggested setup for how the developer sees the best experience (usually based on studying things like this forum) and also allow the user to enable - disable, lock - unlock, and move their UI as they please. Edited March 20, 2015 by theSpatchula 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now