Uber, do you agree PA needs a huge UI update?

As long as I can't see the whole battefield in a blink, it will always be a regression for me.

Productivity can be measured in Results/Action
User Interface 101: The more actions you have to expend to achieve x-action, the more unproductive it becomes.
You can literally measure mouse x/y coordinates travels and clicks required for a specific action.

One: To me, scrolling around the planet IS bad.

OMG. Artementix is genius.
But I would only implement that on the visual part of the planet.
If you can see it, but it's "scrunched", then it gets the expanded leader.

then you admit that map unwrap is not the only solution?

Well, it's the obvious one, and I don't really see Uber coming with anything better so far.

maybe some genius comes along shows us all that E=MC², then we're all on our a ss like "....why didn't we see that?"

(side note: a s s is cencored? really now?)

Maybe. But what I'm seing is that we are talking of a solution since early alpha, and it's supposed to be released in 3 months...

and this makes me glad map unwrapping is a technical endeavor because I loathe the idea

I believe my topic a while back covered these UI hindrances that people have been experiencing since the alpha/beta rolled out.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...i-would-manage-the-navigation-ui-in-pa.45191/

Of course, I still think my solution is the best at this point for the users as well as the developers from an implementation side of things!

I don't understand why people expect a 3D RTS game to not have differences from a 2D RTS game. The simple fact is that the system is your battlefield and it's never going to have a single convenient view. That's part of the thing that makes this game different. We should be embracing the differences, not trying to put the game into the same box as starcraft. Sure there are things we do to make it more accessible, and we will do those, but things like unwrapping the planet to me ruin the feel of the game. The fact that the territory is 3d matters.

It's all about balance. Sure, a 3D RTS game can't be played as a 2D RTS game, and as I said, it brings very interesting new strategic perspectives. But it is also a design choice that makes the game more complicated to play, and the UI has to help as much as possible.

There is hope though. I just played a game, and I had much more fun than my first games. Can't say why. I just did

I totally agree with Neutrino.

Using viewports will solve most of these issues. The optimal viewport setup would be to have multiple small windows open along the edges of your game window, (or ideally on a second monitor) that show a realtime view of critial areas. (A simply hotkey could add a new viewport taken from your current position) At any point you can click on a viewport and it swaps it out, making it your primary view.

These viewports could be everything from a close up view to a zoomed out planet view. You could essentially setup two or three viewports on each side of a zoomed out planet to view it completely. Essentially your own custom minimaps.

Here is a crude mockup:

That's a weird thing to say, because UI that you have to fight against, alerts and camera saves are stuff you find in starcraft, not in FA for example (the game that has the best UI so far from the TA/FA/PA series). These ideas doesn't give the player any kind of overall view, or any kind of extra control.

Trying to do these things, for me, is actually pushing PA into the starcraft box (where you need to fight against the interface, not the enemy).

Alerts for example happens when you are under attack. Meaning you don't know you were. Meaning they are probably unwanted. Unwanted battles are a result of a failure in your strategy.
You need to give us tools that allow us to never be surprised if we do everything correctly, not tools that point a finger when it's already too late.

In starcraft 2, alerts means you are probably already dead. In PA, most likely the same (as battle can occurs very fast too).

I fully understand your vision of "3d RTS", and we surely don't want it to be a "2d RTS".
But we want the interface to be slick and non-intrusive.

I'm sure you also want a game that is difficult because of the scale, the deepness of the gameplay and the possibilities it offers, not because it's impossible to control.

I also understand why flattening the map feels like a stepback to your vision, but I don't think it is. It doesn't make the map 2d like starcraft. It's still a sphere.
And in the end, gameplay matters.
Gameplay will be untouched by doing that. And it serve your vision, because players will be able to actually spend time conquering planets and fight for them instead of moving a camera.

Maybe you should observe a "competitive" game (or a cast of), and use a timer to check how much time is actually spend by the caster/player to rotate around the planet, and how many time is actually spend doing things (moving units, attacking, ...).

I think you will be shocked.

Truth be told - I don't like how I have to fight the UI in StarCraft.

GUI mock-up first draft done
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/culverins-gui-mock-up.52739/

I don't think the projection is to hijack the 3D-ness of the game.
I think it's to help supplement it.

And yes, one of the big reasons I lean away from Starcraft is they intentionally cripple the interface.
The frustration is actually what brought me back to playing Forged Alliance again.

But to be honest, the TOP PRIORITY is to solve these issues :


There is two groups of bots. One of them is selected. To the people who are saying everything is clear, tell me what is the selected group. Bonus point : One building is selected too.

On middle zoom, it's just impossible to see anything. They are 3 bots on that picture. (the compression doesn't help, but I can't tell more in game either).



And of course, this annoying yellow ping each time you do a click to deselect, make you feel like you did something important, it's bad visual feedback, it's disturbing, I hate it, each build I'm trying to play and these issues piss me off... I'm so mad at the game right now sorry. I'm going to cool down

Zep,
I am tracking each and every single one of these issues
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/unofficial-official-gui-discussion-thread.52055/

[SUGGESTION] Strategic Icons ~ Selected units have a highlighted Strategic Icon. Currently user does is unaware of selected units. (Similar to SupCom).

[SUGGESTION] Remove default cursor glow/ping. It should only glow when awaiting for player to complete a noun-verb-target command (Select unit, click attack from Order Panel, select target).


I am trying to be very, very prepared when Uber is ready to tackle UI.

Everybody keeps talking and throwing out suggestions, which is good.
But it'd be nice to start getting these voted to "community priority" somehow.

I know these are already reported, I'm just hoping each time a build is pushed, so I can finally try to play a real game..

I know Uber is still building a lot of engine building, unit types, etc.
The art team has their hands full right now.
I guess I'm more patient than you

Eventually, I hope we can get some sort of acknowledgement that they have looked at that list.
And if they have any questions about it.

I think we are making a confusion there.

PA is a great different game because the map are sperical and randomly generated not because we see it as spherical. Important detail there.

Spherical random map brings to the game great features:

• no ends
• 360 degrees expansion
• 360 degrees + large open map => make the intel and large scale units movement very important
• every map is different, you will not defend the same cliff again and again

But spherical map has this really big drawback. You don't see the whole planet. It s a big problem seriously, Zep is right on this point. So right that even in the real life nobody use a globe, everybody use a flat map, because is simple.
So, flatten the planet is a relevant feature from the UI point of view, and it doesn't kill the fact that the map is actually a sphere with all the advantages.

I have the feeling that uber doesn't want to have this kind of feature, because it sounds like a disavowal. But it is not. It is just an UI improvement.