Hey all, I've been distracted with the start of the Vanguards and the holidays and what not. I'd really like to start thinking about the UI a bit more. I've heard a lot of suggestions for this game lately in terms of mechanics ideas and unit suggestions and obviously balance changes. But the UI front has been rather slow. I'm hoping you guys might be able to pull things in from other games. Take their best ideas (that PA has yet to see) and make them work for our purposes. I randomly stumbled across this on video. It's a dev update on a game called Limit Theory. Sounds like it's just 1 guy developing it! The look and feel of space is pretty nice. The UI looks interesting. Multi/Split-screen is already in there. 3D star-map. holographic display for ships and the planets. What about Novus Aeterno? What about looking back to the Homeworld series? Really hoping you guys can continue pulling in ideas.
Auto-grouping of adjacent identical factories into selection groups. I forget what game had that, though...
I would like to see some form of pinging a area, when you ping a beam will shoot up into the air for a few seconds only appearing only to teammates then disappear. There might be better ways to add pinging, but it's a feature needed for team games.
I think it's quite difficult to come up with fitting examples of other games, because none of those games had the same problems as PA does. I think Mavor's biggest issue right now is also my biggest issue: What you see is what you get. It's kinda hard to see right now what a base consists of at a glance. I don't know how much the UI can help in that aspect, tbh. But better, more distinct strategic icons would be a good start. The civilization games always did a nice job in that regard.
Yeah I agree. There should be more than one kind of ping though, say red for attack, blue for defend and yellow for help.
My two cents. I like the notifications. I really think that it would benefit a lot from taking a leaf out of Sins book and not have a timeout on the notifications, instead allowing us to view historical ones.
Once the multi-window support is in, I'd like a mini window showing what happened for each notification - and if there are multiple notifications from the same area, the same window should show them all. I'd also like similar notifications when a radar notices new units and when a blob of enemies approaches you units. Some sort of "AI camera man" that always shows where the action is happening.
Strategic icons are going to be so customizable though. You can already find 3 player packs to install, that attempt to be as clear as possible. There are a few things these other game UIs suggest. That is probably going to need the most longterm finetuning though. A map for instance is very tricky but I think multiwindow would be useful and hotkeyed camera locations already are many times more effective than being blind. My biggest concern is things like factory assisting other factories, area commands, division of labor in area commands, and just "smart decisions" by units such as when area-repairing and fab-assisting to repair lowest health first actively (in order to save structures under attack) and don't reprioritize if current repair task is under 20% (stops them "shuttering"), and when area building having "density" of how close structures are and turrets having a default density of 80% their range (a good default distance). Stuff like that. Really small things.
I think it's time I peeled off Notifications into a new thread. It's been brought up a few times, but only in brief. Unless I'm mistaken, the community has not had an extensive discussion... I'll do that right now.
