Spectator/Caster GUI

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by zihuatanejo, February 18, 2015.

  1. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    Like many others, I enjoying watching @ZaphodX's, @wpmarshall's, @cwarner7264's, and many others' videos of Planetary Annihilation gameplay. In particular I enjoy all of the fantastic events that @exodusesports host. Not two weeks ago we watched @elodea vs @BattleBear and saw some fantastic, high level 1v1 play from two excellent players.

    However, arguably one thing that slightly detracts from the current experience, in my humble opinion at least, is the UI for in-game spectators. I heard some time ago that the spectator UI was going to get some love from Uber, so I'm creating this post in the hopes of getting a discussion going. What improvements do we want to see? What features would be most useful for casters and casual spectators.

    I believe these improvements are integral to making PA a more viewer friendly eSport. I strongly believe that it has potential to be a popular esport but it needs support from Uber and the community to do so. Exodus Esports are paving the way, the community needs to continually promote and highlight the game using videos etc, and Uber of course need to continue to polish the game and make it even MOAR AWESOME! It's a fantastic game, and I love it to bits, and I am proud to say I kickstarted it. And I listen to the soundtrack sometimes because it is so frickin' great, but there's always room for more awesome! :D

    Here are some of my suggestions:

    • A new tab that shows condensed economy AND army information. The eco and army tabs should then be expanded to provide more detail (see below suggestions). One of the things I Find most frustrating is when a caster has his UI set to show the army tab, and I desperately want to see what the eco stats are!
    • Army tab: I would love to see more detail in this. For instance, can we have two columns for factories, t1 and t2? And an icon to show if an orbital launcher has been started, and if it has been completed?
    • Army tab: more unit composition detail? Point defence, AA capable units, and most importantly, distribution of units amongst air, land (bot/vehicle), naval, and orbital. That would be great! You could clearly see in a 1v1 if someone goes heavy on air and the other goes heavy on land or naval, for instance.
    • Economy tab: more detail, again, how many t1 mex and how many t2 mex, same for pgens.
    Ok so those are just off the top of my head. I will come back with a screenshot later and maybe edit it to demonstrate how these changes could be implemented etc.

    EDIT: I forgot, I've always thought it would be nice for casters to have special hotkeys that would allow them to quickly zoom to one team's units. For instance, say if they want to check if a team has built/is building nukes? Just tap the 'zoom to unit' key, which perhaps brings up a menu from which they can select the unit they want to try and find. It would save them searching a whole planet, nay a whole system, for one thing. Almost impossible to do in large games with thousands of units on screen, and very time consuming.
    tatsujb, dmorchard, Remy561 and 7 others like this.
  2. cwarner7264

    cwarner7264 Moderator Alumni

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    I particularly like the idea of the condensed 'overview' tab, which shows basic eco and army info in a compact view. Then as you say casters can switch to the more detailed tabs to get full info as required.
    zihuatanejo likes this.
  3. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    Personally i feel as though the menu system you're going for is a little too complicated and unnecessary for on the fly spectating etc.

    I would even argue that for casters we could do with a more condensed UI that takes up less space. E.g. 3 tabs > General metal, General power and mobile unit count. Then 2 other tabs - detailed eco, detailed army etc.

    As for t1 t2 distinction, again unnecessary as t2 factory count is usually low enough to count by eye, and if high enough it implies you have an interplanetary slugging match going on.

    I'd just really like to have more screen space when casting - with player tab and PIP open enough space is taken up already and then for multi planet systems the planet tab as well....too much clutter :p

    Edit-ninja'd
  4. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    You as the caster can do that. But what the viewer may disagree with the timing you look around. A constant display of a simple army overview would be great to get an overview, even the the caster is only showing close up fights. Even more important for air/land/navy/orbital distribution.
    wpmarshall likes this.
  5. orangerinapay

    orangerinapay Active Member

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    moderator chain^
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  6. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    M-m-m-moderator kill- kill- kill.
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  7. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    And storage. Spectator view is nearly useless when I'm testing storage based based mods ;^)
    zihuatanejo likes this.
  8. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    Precisely, yes the caster can quickly count how many t2 factories each team has, but the entire point of this thread is to figure out ways for the viewer to easily find out in-game information. Obviously the caster is in control of the GUI so they choose what is displayed and when, but I personally think there should always be the condensed info tab open at all times so that if you're tuning in to a Twitch stream you can quickly get an overall grip on the game (his eco is stronger than hers, but he has more land units, for instance).
    Obviously there is a balance to be struck between too much space used on screen, too much complexity. The interface is nice and clean right now, and a little bit more has been taken up at the bottom with the latest patch, so we don't want to waste precious screen space. But I do think we need to let spectators see more data about the game in play.
    I totally agree regarding screen space, as said above. It has to be used efficiently. A more condensed UI specifically for casters could be interesting, with tabs for sections and perhaps a small area which constantly displays the key info.
  9. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    Another very good point, for large team games when a lot of build power is available, you need to see how much energy and metal a team has stored. They might each have a 100 fabbers, but who's got the greatest amount of resources stored!
    jtibble likes this.
  10. killerkiwijuice

    killerkiwijuice Post Master General

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    It would be even better as a spectator to select a player's factory and see what's in the queue.
  11. mayhemster

    mayhemster Well-Known Member

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    Radar ranges would be nice, + a much better notification system so casters can zoom to the sort of action they want, we need to be able to disable notifications for t1 structures being build for instance!
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  12. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    Unit select is a good thing as that'll alloow toggling of vision/artillery range circles etc.

    ninja'd AGAIN
  13. riderrockon

    riderrockon New Member

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    I would personally love to see a Production tab. What units and structures are being built right now?
  14. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    Unfortunately I can see that perhaps being as messy as the current notification UI - I think displaying build ratios as a sum across all factories might be better/more stable?
  15. jtibble

    jtibble Active Member

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    Yeah, but it might be helpful to have a little team-colored progress bar on the edge of the screen for big things, like halleys, nukes, catalysts, etc. Of course, you'd want all of this hide-able so it wasn't visible all the time, but it might be helpful to have.
  16. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Look at how Starcraft 2 does it:
    [​IMG]
  17. wpmarshall

    wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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    I would imagine you'd get a much greater fluctuation of construction in a PA game hence you'd have bars jumping in and out all the time which could get rather distracting, but yes, the way SC2 does it is a very nice, discrete and concise pop-up indeed.
  18. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    A production tab showing what each team currently has queued is definitely something that I would want the caster to be able to toggle on and off; you would not want that on screen the whole time.

    When I get home I will try and use my rudimentary GIMP skills to create some concept designs.
  19. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    at least for 1v1 I want it to be on the whole time
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  20. jamiem

    jamiem Active Member

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    A huge improvement for casting would be better camera motion.
    For example, switching between tactical and free camera isn't smooth, like zooming from surface to orbital.
    Also free camera navigation enhancements - like adjustable smoothing/dampening for mouse and key-based movements could really help.
    Zaphys and zihuatanejo like this.

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