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Original post:
EDIT: Is Imgur changing it's hotlinking policy? Here's the album: http://imgur.com/a/Omm5u
Hey everyone! I decided to take a crack at re-designing the spectator tool. There are a whole lot of things which bother me about the way it's currently designed, and if MWO wants to find a place as an e-sport, much could be done to help the player understand what's going on in the game without blocking their view. Here were some of my thoughts going in:
- Most of the UI elements contain vast, empty space.
- Nobody cares about individual kills/assists being displayed all game long - there's a scoreboard key for that.
- Existing UI elements are boxes that obstruct the player's view.
- The maps will never be exactly square, so showing the entire battle grid (including out-of-bounds region) is wasteful.
- Translucent backgrounds aren't as cool as designers sometimes think they are. 60% transparency over opaque is just 40% hard-to-read over 60% hard-to-read.
- PGI's choice of red text for Team 2 is way too hard to read.
- PGI's font size is far too small to read on any media less than a 1920x1080 monitor.
- Health % + darkening colour is a nifty way to how close a mech is to death, but as players we're all trained to read a paper doll anyway. A picture is worth 1000 words.
So, what follows is my attempt to improve on this. Behold and criticize!
The above image shows the general idea. Try to imagine the team-coloured icons at the bottom of the screen lighten and darken in real-time according to which players are within the spectator's current field of view.
The ability to select mechs to bring up additional information is great, but MWO is about engagements. If the spectator wants to focus on a small engagement, they should have the ability to bring up additional information on all relevant mechs at once for comparison. In this example, when the player has selected mechs on both teams, they become arranged in a left-versus-right fashion (upper right is the default position a single selection - same as enemy paper doll in game). I've also added some extra information to the info panel, such as mounted equipment (like ECM, TC, etc.) as well as a heat bar. I'm still considering adding in remaining consumables for each player.
I like to watch comp matches on my television or phone, but cannot do this due to how unreadable the current spectator tool is. For reference, I used other games which don't have this issue as reference for how busy/small I could make the UI without running into issues. Honestly, I think I'm pretty much skirting the bare minimum already.
Please give me feedback on this. Also, feel free to post your own designs in this thread. I'd like to try to work out the best interface possible for this growing e-sport.
EDIT: Here's a possible notification area and airstrike being used.
Edited by Hornsby, 06 February 2016 - 04:55 PM.
