A couple of UI pointers

I know, I know, the UI is not final. But I'd just like to know if what I'm about to ask for is *intended*, because it's important.

In Supreme Commander, one of the best things about the UI was that the building wireframe-style things *always* showed up, and the waypoints and such were real objects you could move at any time. The "future work" interface was far superior. In the Livestream I only saw really simple stuff in this area.

I'd just like to know if you intend to make the waypoints, future buildings, etc SupCom-style.

In cases like these I like to ask myself the simple question;

"Why wouldn't they?"

Honestly, the Uber team isn't dumb. They've got project leads with almost two decades of experience.

You're teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

Just so you know. The UI you saw on Friday was put in on Wednesday.

We had a different one that was, in many ways, more functional, before that. But it was developer art, so we made the decision to try and get at least a rough art concept of what the UI might look like before Friday.

I wouldn't sweat features yet. Like everything else, we'll be building them up, iterating on them, and make sure all the necessary features are supported.

I'd be weary of such "we are going to work on something but not specifically what" blanket statements.

Usually, not always, but usually it translated roughly into: "not gonna happen"

I would like to see green structures before they were created, so i dont que up a structure on a structure.


And for a 2 day ui, it was great

The only real recommendation i have for you devs is: do NOT, under any circumstance, have the HUD elements occupy more than a quarter of the screen in total. CoH 2 just made me regret buying it, as its HUD keeps the bottom third of the screen completely obscured and as such the game requires so much panning it's ridiculous for the size of it's maps.

How about a simple button or keybinding for disabling the UI? (Turn on/off)

I'm hoping almost every function can be key-bound.
As long as it's coded in early, then those these little requests won't be an issue.


After playing StarCraft 2 and going back to Forged Alliance, I really noticed how much I missed having the shortcut keys from StarCraft 2. It's was simply "think" and boom, build barracks, build bunker, build supply depot, build 5x scvs etc...

Umm... Starcraft has how many buildings/units per race compared to SupCom FA?

That's not really a problem. The same hotkey can do different things depending on what you have selected. For instance in Starcraft 2 if you have a unit selected 'A' is A-moving if you have a Barracks selected it is building a Marine.
Unless there is a factory which can build more unique units than there are keys on a keyboard, hotkeying everything should work fine. Even then there should be some ways to make it work well.

So I agree to this:

You want your hand to be potentially forced to use the "P", "L" and "M" keys?

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Hotkey what needs to be hotkeyed. Not "everything".

Oh come ON, as if you'd ever have it that bad, you have 25-27 easily reachable keys with your hand over WASD, if it takes more hotkeys than that it wouldn't be an RTS, it'd be frickin Orbiter or DCS A-10 r another equally obtuse simulator.

Not all people can accurate press 25 to 27 keys, blind.

I am 31, my fine motor skills only get inferior.

That's why you can use hotkey combinations.

Press B for the build menu, press B again for page 2 of the build menu, now press S to build the Solar power generator on page 2.

A simple grid style build menu should be even easier.

Grid here means a 3x3 grid with each corresponding to a key. For example:
Q W E
A S D
Y X C

This gives you 9 easily reachable keys. Add a modifier key to access them and you can go through varies pages of those grids to mapp all the actions and build orders to keybindings eventually.

So select a factory, the first 9 units are on page 1 of the grid, the second 9 units on page 2, etc. Use a key to flip through pages (for example B which is a very easily reachable one).

6 D D shift+Q B W W W ctrl+Y

Get hotkeygroup 6 which are my factories for this example, build the middle right unit twice with D, 5 times the upper left one with shift+Q, flip to next page with B, build the upper middle one thrice with three W presses and a hundred of the lower left unit with ctrl+Y.

Takes about 2 seconds to give those orders, you never have to look at the keyboard for it or even to have the factory in view. (And its a pretty complicated order.) And you never have to move your hand outside of the standard first person shooter WSAD configuration.

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As for the UI in general, I just hope it has the orders as first class entities as discussed on this board. I want to move building construction orders around with drag and drop when I misclicked, I want to add stuff to the beginning of a build queue, I want the build order stay alive even when the constructor dies, I want to move the goal of the attack command around when enemy resistance is too high, etc. etc.

And I especially want destroyed buildings remain as a possible build order, so rebuilding a lost base is easy and I don't miss building stuff I had gotten destroyed just because my memory got faulty with my advanced age. :mrgreen:

Good post!

One thing i like to add:
I would realy appreciate it, if one of the main advantages of FPS could be transfered to PA.
That is, you in general have always one or two keys pressed. This fixes the position of your hand, and helps a lot to hit the right keys.

So WASD in a 3x3 grid should be used for the 4 most pressed(time or ammount wise) keys.
Maybe: shift(queue up), attack, move.
And i would also like a deselect key.

I to would like to see everything with a hotkey. Starcraft style is my preference

The main thing for me is that there do not exist commands solely in the hotkey space. Hotkeys should be explained and replicated in the GUI. This way you can figure out the function exists and then figure out the hotkey for it.

M is what I press in FA to upgrade mex:


So yeah, please hotkey everthing. I even make T4 units with hotkeys in FA by now. Hotkeys are so awesome.

Just put shift and ctrl on extra-mouse keys and you can put your hand over the middle of the keyboard, resulting in 25+ easy to reach keys.

Gridkeys + cycling through stuff should make it quite possible to hotkey everything.

Pfft. Amateurs. Run out of buttons?

Way to much. I want to play a game, not fly a space shuttle.
Also if you need special hardware, I am against it. If uber will support such stuff its ok. But they shouldn't design hotkeys around such special input devices.