3 replies to this topic

[allmhuran]

Been away for 6 months playing other games waiting for things to get updated.

The shell and mechbay are still very cluttered. Information and functions that are useful are hard to find, information that is not really useful takes up a lot of space, and information is presented in multiple ways redundantly. And what the heck... still no fullscreen here??

Similarly, the HUD is still difficult to use. The weapon grouping function is still not nearly as good as any previous mech games.

The indication for degree of torso pitch and yaw is not obvious. Having pitch and yaw ladders (like an aircraft hud pitch ladder, but a horizontal one as well for yaw) still seems like the best solution to me. This is why aircraft have been using them since forever.

I would have the pitch and yaw ladders intersect as a cross in the centre of screen when the torso has no pitch or yaw (ie, when centered). When pitching up (say) the yaw ladder would slide down towards the bottom of screen and be locked at the bottom edge beyond a certain pitch. Similarly, when the torso is yawed left (say), the pitch ladder would slide towards the right of screen and be locked against the right edge when yaw went past a certain amount.

Meanwhile, did convergence ever get fixed?

[Dr B00t]

try reading the Q&A posts...they are working on GUI 2.0...topic closed

[Mudhutwarrior]

They pug stomp even in the forums.

[allmhuran]

For the clutter, I'm talking about 2.0. It still uses large icons or images where text would be better (primarily lists), and text where icons would be better. And yes, as a programmer I do have 18 years experience in GUI layout.

I didn't see whether or not it was coming with fullscreen. If it is, that's a start. (Edit: found the note that it would be fullscreen)

Take this image as an example:
http://i.imgur.com/v56FYWq.jpg

The word "equipped" is unnecessary.

The mech overview box at bottom left is redundant.

The icons for hardpoint type and count are not needed and just take up space, the hardpoints can be shown in the same place as the available slots using colours to differentiate.


The text representing each section would be better spent as an outline image of the section with the items inside.

Both of those last two ideas were seen in mech 4.

The text for "empty" is the same colour as the text for a slot in use, so at a glance it looks like empty slots are in-use slots. Way back in Mech 2 a simple dash was used to represent an empty slot, which was much better.

Meanwhile the grey text representing actuators etc makes these slots look available. All weapons and gear added to a slot is the same orange colour, making it hard to see at a glance what your setup is.

The text for armour blends in with all of the other text, even though it is representing a completely different kind of information. Armour in this screen would be better represented as a vertical bar or background colour that fills up the section.

Edited by allmhuran, 30 June 2013 - 09:08 AM.