You sunk my battleship!! (Tactical Overlay)

Pings, and Map Markers solve all issues with team communication in my opinion.

Can anyone think of a situation where you would need more than this?

Tactical Overlays would also assist this,
Mainly as a static reference so players can get their bearings on the spherical battle maps

I wonder how we can make the ping/tactical overlay "revolutionary" !
It would be great if the great minds we have here could devise a way of making this "Unique" or appear more "Fancy" than just a standard ping and grid overlay

Instead of the examples we did in our mock-ups.
I think it would be a lot cooler if the grid was a single pixel thin, but was embedded into the verticality of the terrain.

Somewhat similar to a 3D mesh used GIS renders they show in movies.

Maybe like this on a bigger scale?





I also found this while running an image search.

It's pretty, but at first glance doesn't seem practical.

You see that green "shell"?
I think the Orbital Layer needs a shell too for the grid.
It would help to differentiate the orbital layer units, and also help to extend the tactical overlay grid to their level.
Obviously make it further out than in this photo (which is something I hope Uber will be doing with their orbital units)....

I like the hexagonal look, it reminds me of old "Strategic Simulation Inc." turn based games i played many year ago.

The hexes would make an Awesome Ping layer, the pings could be colored hexes, all other hexes would be clear.

Why would you want a less precise ping layer? Just have a ping be a bolt of light or something. Easy to see yet also easy to see where it's pointing.

You guys are making things way too difficult.

Ping should be simple.
First it should play a short animation and have a sound alert (like all points do on all games) depending on the type of ping "attack", "defend", "assist" etc.
Secondly there should be a written message about the ping posted on screen.
"Player 1 used Attack Ping on World 2 Location B7"

Easy, gives all needed information, and anyone can easily understand it without having to study a manual.

Also you should be able to instantly go to that location by clicking on the Message.
So it would focus your camera on World 2 Location B7 (where the Attack Ping was placed) if you clicked on the message.

Agreed, precision is important.

In fact, a bolt of light is pretty damn genius.
It's a very good 3D solution to what was only a 2D problem.


That way, even if zoom out to strategic view and your camera is spun around, it still shows up.

Pings and tactical map would be separate (i think having them both in same layer would be awkward),
I'm just trying to get as many ideas from many people so we can refine it into a simple yet new sort of way of doing this.

I agree, text-based notification with camera links is definitely important!
I compiled a few of the suggestions in the Community Suggested UI feature list, but it sounds like you've got a better handle on it than I do.
Any chance you can take a quick look and review it?
I might have missed compiling some of the suggestions.

I only started this thread to discuss it in more detail so we can refine it,
What other areas of the GUI thread should we discuss to get a more refined idea to give Uber
many of the things in the thread are just general ideas with no substance to them yet, i want to make mock pictures and things for many items in the thread so we can further improve the look and feel of these individual items
i hope that made some kind of sense .. lol

KISS principle.

EDIT: Starting at way too complex.

Keep It Super Simple??
if so ,, I agree.
Too much UI or a complex UI will interfere/hinder with gameplay.
The more we can discuss and refine an idea down to its most simplest and effective solution, it probably makes it the best solution to use.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Absolutely, readability and accessibility are the most important things here. The keep it simple or your need a tutorial in order for people to understand it.

What about "voice macros"? ala Tribes, Smite or a number of other FPS games...

V - brings up voice macro menu
V+A - brings up "attack" voice macro menu
V+A+C - says "Attack enemy commander!"

So hitting VAC+click plays a sound of someone saying "Attack the enemy commander!" and pings the map at that location.

VIG+click may be [V]oice ncoming [G]round attack + ping.
VNA+click may be [V]oice [N]eed [A]nti-Nuke + ping.
etc
I guess the real question is what would the voices sound like...

At any rate, I feel like voice macros are a good helper for people not in voice chat and seems like it should be relatively low cost to add to the game. I pretty much thing all games in all genres should have them.

This thread
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-do-i-t-bag-a-scorch-mark.52321/

i think combining the "VGS" or "Text Team Orders" with the "Colored Ping System" is the best solution.

An overlay of Lat and Long grid would be really nice still, along with the ping. Just to help give some decent landmarks to ground yourself. Pings won't really help when you get lost from scrolling around a large and cluttered planet.

I still believe this is also the best option for minimap alternative. Except this would require to have transparency. In this case, we could have 2 modes : one mod for the "minimap" feature with transparency, one mode for tactical feature.