SE V demo Interface

[PDF]

AMF said:
I resisted emailing Aaron with my complaints, but a lot of people ("those in the know") have convinced me that the more people that do individually petition him the better the chances that things will get fixed.

So...if you want something fixed, I would email him directly.

if enough of us do it, it will get fixed. Hopefully before the reviewers get a hold of the game.

Too bad I'm a reviewer...
Was Aaron really adamant about the interface ? At least the mouse controls could be, well, normal ?

[Captain Kwok]

I think being a lone developer/programmer caught up a bit with Aaron this time with the complexity of SE:V. I'm hoping that with the pressures of the release past him, that more time can be spent refining various items in subsequent patches.

[frightlever]

Okay I tooled around with the Standard System Display I posted at the start of this thread and came up with this. Ignore the crappy resolution (it's about an 80kb file) and the nasty *** cut and pasting - I just wanted to show what it could look like if more room was given to the actual system display by cutting away the thick border at the bottom of the screen. Just try to imagine it blown up to fit your resolution of choice.

And yes I am died in the wool 2D only. The 3D display is faux I tell you! Faux...

[Phoenix-D]

fright: where's the sector display? Or is that it in the lower-left?

If we're going for a revamped interface, the simple way would be to make everything movable. The complicated way would be to stick everything up top and on the sides, and make a "viewport", so the controls would never obsure the screen.

[frightlever]

Sector display is top left. It and the planet/ship display could as easily be swapped. And there's plenty of room down the right hand side for more "buttons".

Edit: and I've no problem with movable panels but the main thing IMO is that most screen resolutions (all?) offer more space horizontally than vertically so it make far more sense to use the space at the sides and thereby maximise the view of the system. With the standard view about a qtr of the height of the screen is unavailable to the system map.

[Phoenix-D]

Sectors are individual hexes in se terms. So what you called ship/planet display.

[wrongshui]

Whats wrong with the UI exactly?

Ive played SE 3 and 4 and im enjoying the demo, everyone else seems to be acting like the game kicks them in the balls or 2 or 3 clicks equals a MoO3.

It could be more intuitive I suppose but its not ruining the game for me.

[AMF]

Now this is definitely closer to what I am talking about. How did you get it to do this? Ditto on the 2D v 3D thing. 3D systems just don't work with this UI, but a 2D one, with moving windows around as you indicate, might be sufficient, provided something can be done about the planet icons and font size etc...

Good to know the interface can be modded, in any case.

Can you do a step by step HOWTO on creating this layout?

Edit adds: Can you send the pic to Aaron, also?

And, is there any way to offset the flag and other planet icons in the 2D view, so they don't obscure the planet? OR, can the hex selection color intensity be changed, or put on top of the icons, so I can tell which planet I have selected?

Thanks again, this is looking better and better. Will definitely do this to my UI when I figure out how to.

AMF

frightlever said:
Okay I tooled around with the Standard System Display I posted at the start of this thread and came up with this. Ignore the crappy resolution (it's about an 80kb file) and the nasty *** cut and pasting - I just wanted to show what it could look like if more room was given to the actual system display by cutting away the thick border at the bottom of the screen. Just try to imagine it blown up to fit your resolution of choice.

And yes I am died in the wool 2D only. The 3D display is faux I tell you! Faux...

[Suicide Junkie]

AMF said:
And, is there any way to offset the flag and other planet icons in the 2D view, so they don't obscure the planet? OR, can the hex selection color intensity be changed, or put on top of the icons, so I can tell which planet I have selected?

See if smaller flags help any:
Mini Flags

[Makinus]

First impressions of SEVdemo:

What i liked:
- The need to survey new systems (i simply found kind of strange in SEIV that your scouts scanned instantly all the system, with all the data of every planet and so on)...
- The 3D view... i know that a lot of people are complaining about it, and the difficulties of managing the view, but i found it not so hard and i think it gives a more epic feel to the game (this don´t mean that the interface should not be improved, as there is room for a lot of improvements in the UI)...
- The tactical combat, both in space and ground combat, and the moddeling of units in combat individually instead of stacks (one of my main gripes in SEIV).
- The way that research is handled, i find it much more realistic, and easier to manage than SEIV scheme.


What i didn´t like:
- Vehicle Design, i find the interface too clunky, with too much unecessary clicking, and i can see at least 2 improvements in the UI that would be simple and reduce a lot of clicking (see in suggestions below).
- Empire flags: even when small they obscure too much, while they are bearable in the 3D view, they are horrible in the 2D view, obscuring the planets nearly completely.
- Events display, maybe it´s only me, but i found the SEIV event display much more advanced, and i think the SEV events are too huge screen wise.

Suggestions:
- In Vehicle Design, when viewing a component, eliminate the need for the player to click the "Close" button to close the information of the component, allow the player to simply click the information screen again to close it. This should be applied to all static screens, i.e. all screens that the player don´t need to choose anything...
- In Vehicle Design, when you choose a component to put in a design, keep the mouse with that component after putting the first one in the design, only changing the component when the player chooses another one in the component list, this would make putting multiple components of the same type quicker.
- Events Display: reduce the size of each event, maybe with smaller icons, as the icons and not the message is what is occupying most of the screen.

I´m still playing around the demo (didn´t reach the turn limit yet) and will probably have more commentaries, but for now the major problem is the UI and not the game itself, aasi´m finding a much more advanced game than SEIV, but with a worse UI, as the majority of the people are finding too.

Just to add my 0,02 cents...