GUI Mock-Up

What if you started at the beginning?
Like something we thing all tool panels should have.

We can then discuss this and refine as we move along further with specific ones.

To me, definitely.

hideable, moveable,

Expandable is nice too.
The chat box in SupCom was expandable, so if I needed to read more, I could open and drag it big.
Otherwise, I just left it small so I read only a couple lines.


Also, a "detailed" view would be good for "trees"
See how my mock-up shows the control groups can be expanded so you can see the composition?
Imagine if you can drag, drop units between groups.
I was thinking that would hold true for the production manager as well.

those are good principles to start from, i'm thinking now of lower part of panel make a grab-able icon to drag to resize the panel, right above that a lock icon. Naming panels and making the name chage colour when it has new information (like the chat text turning green when a new message was recieved)

I made my mockup to expand to the right, thinking about that further now it might be better to make them drop down so it's easier to position left or right of the screen (and make the window name more readable)

another thing that might be cool is to have them also dock to other panels? So you can make a larger panel , which you can resize and compose the way a player want's it, but when docked can be moved as a single panel?

oh man ... this is already a fun discussion ! Thanks !

I don't think I agree with this. chat is never in the way, and currently in my opinion it's not enough in the way (text dissapears to soon, open chat box doesn't reveal old enough messages, ect...).

but really a layout of text just off to the left side with no backround just smack dab on top of the game the way it kinda is right now seems the best to me.
if people start ignoring the chatt then it's going to be a headache.

hi Tatsujb, for players that don't play online (like myself) being able to close that would be very helpfull

i am reworking the example so that it's scaleable and you can lock it into place , i set a opaque colour just for the example , ingame i think a transparant colour would be best, i feel that if there is no background at all the text will not always be very visible (and you can make it as large as you want for that matter) as the background on which it will be placed can change from very bright to very dark, in terms of moveable and scaleable, it's gonna be in the next mockup i'll make (read the other comments)

personally, i'm not really a fan of ingame chatting, when i play games online with friends, i use teamspeak and a headset, seems to work better for me.

putting a large chat screen smack in the middle of your screen so you cannot see the battlefield seem worse to me but hey ... if that's what you want i'm not stopping you, neither will my next mockup design

Hope i clarified a few things for you, thank you for your feedback!

Hi, well the thing is (and yes i did read the conversation, i know about your next mockup) that currently the chat dissapears entirely if no chat messages have been issued. making it even less visible then if there were a button to unfold it. I never play unless I have friends on voice chat to do it with but being able to wish your opponents good luck and to have fun (and to help themselves from the bowl of fresh cookies I just baked as I am accustomed to do and have been making a trend of so far) and also to say they fought well and played well all in all at the end of the game, not to mention come to an agreement on what balance issues were present durring the game and where to report bugs ect. is of high value. and I understand if you don't want to chat, but in that case a simple hotkey (one already exists to turn off the music) would be the best solution rather than to clunk up the UI because currenty, as I said, this solution adds nothing, as the chat box currently is invisible if noone chats, is barely noticable if someone said something, a bit more noticable if you open chat to talk yourself and invisible again if everyone shuts up for 2 minutes, which is more than likely the case when everyone is focused.

my problem with hotkeys is that if you have 100 different hotkeys, that is not very user friendly and certainly not self explanetory. The panel is meant to give some control, if someone is spamming the chat channel, i think it could be very useful to close it, but still have some clue that new messages are coming in. Would seem to me to be annoying that when you're in the heat of the battle your view is blocked by incoming (spam)chatmessages.

For hotkeys for text chatting...
While not universal, these are very, very common shortcuts.
Enter = global chat
Shift+Enter = allied chat

How a GUI "looks" doesn't matter right now.
Not even remotely.

People will have their preferences.
If this game does well, I can guarantee you there will be countless options of modded UI skins to choose from.


My main concern is number of "features" and ability the UI has.
The modders can easily skin a chatbox and make a gorgeous and dreamy looking.
But what if Uber doesn't build chat into this game? Then good luck modding it in.

Same with drawing on the map.
I don't care what the "draw on map" tool panel looks like.
But if the "draw on map" ability is not present in the game, we may never get it, even with mods.

If "celestial view" is "2D" and top-down, do you honestly see somebody modding it out and replacing it with a true 3D version?

If they don't code in the ability to "drag-to-modify" a queue waypoint,
It doesn't matter what the queue line looks like.



I would rather focus on key GUI features and abilities.
Leave how a GUI behaves until much, much later....



Such as contextual select.
Drag-from-left selection box = all army units
Drag-from-right selection box = all fab units

I don't care what color those boxes are.
But if Uber doesn't put these in, we're going to be in a bit of a pickle.

giving coloured cue's can give context to a icon that's one of your C's , if you don't care about how it looks why make a mockup yourself?

anyway good luck with your thread

My apologies, I didn't mean to marginalize your work.
I meant that the exact skin of the UI isn't as important as what functions it contains.

You ask why make the mock-up?
Basics is to: Graphically represent all the features and behavior we want in the tools.
Advanced is to: Demonstrate how they can talk to each other.

I think the excercise of putting our ideas onto "paper" will show what works and what doesn't.
And more importantly, bring up things we may of missed.

@mikeylow, you brought up a whole bunch of new ideas from doing "just" the text box.
That's not even a gameplay panel!

You discussed the different states of a panel and what it needs to have when open and closed.
- info state with notifiction "flash"
- integrating chat and event handler with a color coded priority system.
- proximity alarm for enemies close to base
- production interrupted
- notifications "move" into the notification system.
- grab icon for panel resize

These are all new features nobody's talked about.


You gave reasons for which "info" needs to be projected.
I totally agree with your point about limiting the snap to just along edge of screen.


I guess my whole exercise with this is to help Uber with their upcoming UI revamp.
Just from these few posts I think we have started to refine panel behavior we want to see.

- Floating panel
- Movable panel (along screen edge)
- Expand/collapsible panels
- Panel resize
- Panels dock, when docked can move in unison.

If you check your posts, most of those "refinements" came from you.
The colors and skin of the UI didn't matter as much as the capabilities.

hi , sorry , i was just getting a bit annoyed by some of the reactions over here (forum in general), the picture i posted was merely to convey my idea, it's not a final design in any sense trust me, i can design something WAY better looking but that's not the point, i am very visual minded, so for me i like to put things in an image. If people start talking about they wanting to say something about cookies wow ... that got me.

I had some contact with uber support , and they talked me into going on the forum and put some of my ideas over here, i post and think about this because well i want to help make it a good game, and i want to get into making and designing games (currently following a study on program design, and have some indie stuff i did).

the idea's on the panel were meant from my point of view as a blue print for other panels as well, i like it when GUI's mesh properly into eachother, like the UI from adobe photoshop, or 3ds max, those ideas could be so very well implemented into games.

Thank you for the pick me up, i needed that, sorry i came across a bit grumpy

thats does not constitute a counter argument. you care about one action I'm saying make it a hotkey.

so you have one hotkey to memorise.

as for the cue you can have sound for each chat message, a very faint blip, nothing too noticable, it's a mod, but could become stock.

really you're preaching to the wrong crowd here saying you don't want hotkeys. what kind of TA successor game doesn't have hotkeys.
what about hotbuild on FA, what about hotbuild on PA?


cookies? what? was your dog murdered by a cookie? in anycase I'm sorry.

i'm not saying i don't want hotkeys, never did.

I think there should be both, that's my point. For players that just want to play a few games for casual fun controlling everything with hotkeys is simply not something they would use a lot. If you're into eSports , yes then you will make extensive use of hotkeys. eSports players however are usually not the mayority of the gamers that play the game in the end.

The thing with your cookie comment is this, it's beyond the simple idea i was proposing. You have a firm believe of how it SHOULD be, not what it COULD be, at least that's how i percieved it. I just took the idea i had for panels, and i picked the chat window as the thing to show my idea. If you then start talking about that you want strangers who might be playing god knows where to have some of your homebaked cookies , then it's hard for me to take your comment seriously. Discussing where to post bugs , or how the game went would , in my opinion, be better to do in a post game lobby. Game tactics or gentlemen agreements can be made in advance in the game lobby itself.

Please don't talk about my dog and the cookie event ... it's still too painfull to talk about

oh and apology accepted

oh and on the sound cue thing, sure, that seems like a good idea. But it would be nice that players with a hearing disability would also recieve a que/notice , just like there's an option for the colourblind in a lot of games

As for the hotkey, it's not just about the hotkey for one action, just start counting ALL the hotkeys for every action proposed, it's the combined amount of hotkeys a user would have to memorize.

well it's a way of marking myself as an individual, lighening up the atmosphere because:
-"glhf"
-"glhf"
-"u2"
-"u2"
...
-"GG"
-"gg wp"
-"thk u, u2"
...is getting a bit cold and also because I want to start a trend.
as for mentioning it in the middle of my text it was to also lighten up the atmostphere and also keep your attention. did you ever notice it is a technique used by good professors to make jokes at regular interval in their courses?

thaaaaat's more like it!

oohhh not to my knowledge :
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/unit-launcher.51276/#post-785277
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/poll-naval-air-and-fixed-land-radar-blips.49424/
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/vertical-construction-stacking-factories.49664/


...and the examples go on and on.
I'm not really known for that, on the contrary, I'm maybe even too wild in my free-thinking.

look i understand you're being very passionate about the game , think a lot of people are over here.
as for the last quote , of could and should, i put "as i percieved it" in there, making it not a statement, but how it came across to me. It's was not just your comment of course, there were a lot of comments , yours was just the first one that came to mind.

The chat example you gave now is much more understandable , but also is exactly why i personally think having some control over things like chat is needed , may it be via a hotkey / or a simple small icon.

I can understand also a lot of FA players making a fuss, i like that game probably as much as most players here.
I'd hate to see a FA clone with planets ... and how much i like FA and SupCom, most of my RTS friends i never could get into that game (such a shame). What i am trying to do and think of are ways to

A) appease hardcore FA and Supcom fans, making the UI very customizable and letting them switch things on and off to best fit their own playing style
B) make the game easier to get into for less experienced and new gamers.

I had a quick glare through your links, i will give it the proper attention later on today to read through all of it.

Thanks you for further clarifing things , i really do appreciate that, thanks.

Oh Lassie .... why do you have to eat so many of them chocolate chip coockies ... LASSIE!

Back to OP GUI mock up

Best one I have seen so far, has a lot of great ideas organized well so they are useful but not obstructing.

On that note I would advise having your production manager change to manage every unit/building.
Sorry I will try to attach a picture later of what I mean but for now I will try to explain it.

Using numbers as row indicators and letters as column indicators:

Row 1 would be all factories: 1A basic vehicle factories, 1B advanced vehicle factories, 1C basic bot factories...
- There would be a number overlay for how many you have like you have done with your control group panel.
- Clicking on one of your factory type groups would drop down to a vertical oriented scroll-able list of the factories and what they are producing similar to your current set up. From there you could select and control each as you have mentioned (as well as being able to use shift or control to select multiple factories to control at once).

Row 2 would be all fabricators: 2A basic vehicle fabricators, 2B advanced vehicle fabricators...
- Same number overlay as above.
- Clicking on a group would drop down to 2 categories: idle and working.
- Selecting through them would work as you have already come up with in your idle engineers panel.

Row 3 would be all armed land units: 3A Skitters, 3B Spinners, 3C Ants, 3D Stingers, 3E Scampers (Dox)...
- Same number overlay as above.
- Clicking on a group would separate it into categories on stationary, assisting, patrolling...

Row 4 would be all armed air units.

Row 5 would be all armed naval units.

Row 6 Orbital ... and so on.


Each time a group selection is made (all basic land factories, all stationary Ants, all basic tier fabricators...) their icons would be shown on the projected view map window to make it easier to further narrow selection based on the location (as well as allowing you to see where the units are).


This whole manager would be set up on a planet by planet basis as you have done.

I just feel that just a production manager would not be enough when games get as large as you were talking about. Let me know if you think this would be helpful or not and why.

Again love your GUI and wish I could use something similar in the game now : )

Also love your camera compass idea; god that would be handy.

For single monitor people it would be nice if double clicking it brought up your projected map.

Would be very handy for managing alerts and quickly getting to where you need to be.

Nah, it's all good.

I model in 3D for my job. I find it very handy too.

You and a ton of people having been asking for this.
Most of us are suggesting for a "projection toggle".

Please do add your voice here!
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-can-i-see-the-map-of-the-planet.49280/

Culverin your GUI is awesome. its exactly what the game needs something that give information quickly and quick to navigate around the "system"

Here's what I have to add about your gui: Why isn't this modded in yet? Your idea is awesome and it's exactly what I'd like to see in the game. I only have this to add:
- You don't need the planets in upper right if they will also be displayed on the left - maybe replace that view with orbital units list of the current planet.
- I don't approve of the lines coming form the camera windows, they may overlap, specially of you put the small windows in strange positions, and this will all clutter to the main view that may already be cluttered. In addition it will make things look uglier.
- The square compass isn't really necessary unless you are playing without pole lock.
- I don't like the projected view. It takes away for the fact that this is a circular object and the celestial view is already there of you zoom out.
- I'd like the gui to be fully customizable - drag and drop as well as resize stile.