What about the user interface?

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usr404
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What about the user interface?

Post by usr404 » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 02:07

Will the user interface for commanding ships still be the same that it was in X3TC? Commanding ships in TC was very tedious task because you had to go throught several different menus to give even the simplest commands.

The command system should really be more like strategy games. It would be much easier to just left click on the ships and right click to give a move, attack or dock command depending on what is under the cursor. Maybe a shift+right click for a menu or right click after pressing a hotkey to access more actions that are available to the selected ships.

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Post by caleb » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 02:23

We have no info on this yet, but it is implied so, since they are remaking the game from the ground up because the old game system simply did not allow room for a lot of expansion.

So it's kind of a given that the UI will be changed... Well, I really hope so because the old X nested menu system is kinda bad :S It would be great to get some examples of the UI though...

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Post by em3e3 » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 02:48

caleb wrote:We have no info on this yet...
Yes we do.
Bernd wrote:I have already mentioned the NPCs who help you operate your ships (all of them). This is another of these BIG things for us.

We want to make the game easier to understand by controlling many of the complex things you can do in an X game through conversations.

Instead of dry and hard-to-interpret text menus, you will be talking to people. You will give them commands and they willl tell you about their progress - all in the form of conversations.
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Post by caleb » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 02:53

em3e3 wrote:
caleb wrote:We have no info on this yet...
Yes we do.
Bernd wrote:I have already mentioned the NPCs who help you operate your ships (all of them). This is another of these BIG things for us.

We want to make the game easier to understand by controlling many of the complex things you can do in an X game through conversations.

Instead of dry and hard-to-interpret text menus, you will be talking to people. You will give them commands and they willl tell you about their progress - all in the form of conversations.
True, I should have said we do not have 'much' info :P

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Post by pamme » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 07:10

I'm hoping that's more of a flavor thing and there is an easy access interface for when we want to issue commands quick and efficiently.

I too want to see an interface more like a strategy game for managing your assets. I think Europa Universalis 3, one of my favorite strategy games, did a pretty good job of presenting vast amounts of information. One of the key features that helped was map overlays and filters. You could zoom out and see a large portion of the map at once and when you click the different filter buttons, it would overlay shading regions in different colors or showing symbols in certain areas to tell you things like where all your money is coming from, your troop supply in different regions, etc..

This one is pretty simple so I'm hoping this or something similar will be done: filter buttons on the property page where with just 1 click, you could toggle to show just your fighters, or just your traders. The X3TC interface was a little too tedious in this respect. And selecting multiple ships with your mouse to issue commands to all at once would be pretty sweet too.

More complicated but another wishlist item: a universe map, where you can click the overlay buttons to see where your capital ships are patrolling, or where all your metals/whatever resources are being produced, etc.. Now that would be awesome :)

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Post by supahfly » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 08:06

Bernd wrote:I have already mentioned the NPCs who help you operate your ships (all of them). This is another of these BIG things for us.

We want to make the game easier to understand by controlling many of the complex things you can do in an X game through conversations.

Instead of dry and hard-to-interpret text menus, you will be talking to people. You will give them commands and they willl tell you about their progress - all in the form of conversations.
I really hope there are more meaningful ways to move your ship than "talking" to someone and telling (how??) where you want to go.

I hope Bernd was talking about some more complex things rather than moving and attacking.

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Post by Gman12 » Fri, 7. Oct 11, 08:35

Its a hard problem to solve, NPCs may be simpler, but slow and time consuming. Menus may be faster, but complicated and tedious. You can't be walking around to another area to solve every task, and you can't just throw every task into a giant menu system.

Theres so many options when managing it seems you need a separate UI for each task. I imagine the player ship will have different areas devoted to certain tasks, Hopefully each with its own management interface.

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Post by BigBANGtheory » Sat, 8. Oct 11, 10:29

We know next to nothing atm beyond using NPCs as an AI for manned assets.

You just have to spend 5mins with the property menu or sector map in X3 to understand the concern...

Try this:
- Move large ships in formation
- Move one group of ships to point off the 2D plane, and another group to a different point
- Select all your units in the sector and command them to move from one side of a populated sector to another
- Try to get a tactic assement of the sector in 3D

Personally I think they should have a tactical based UI (with 3D viewing, context sensitive properties & RTS style commands) that can be centered around any player owned capship, and a large scale UI that focuses on navigation and economics. I do not think these options should be given freely I think the player has to earn or purchase them as upgrades as they advance.

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Post by Ravna » Sat, 8. Oct 11, 20:44

usr404 wrote: Commanding ships in TC was very tedious task because you had to go throught several different menus . .
I sometimes have the same thoughts but compared to X3R, let alone BTF, the X3TC interface is a breeze to use. The question you have to ask yourself is: "What would I do differently ?" In X2, when docked at a station, you had to go through several menus to command a vessel.There was no hotkey for accessing anything anywhere. Today, you just hit "r". Looking at "X"s complexity, the current state might be as simple as it gets. Fine grained control can't be achieved with a single click.

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Post by caleb » Sat, 8. Oct 11, 21:14

Ravna wrote:
usr404 wrote: Commanding ships in TC was very tedious task because you had to go throught several different menus . .
I sometimes have the same thoughts but compared to X3R, let alone BTF, the X3TC interface is a breeze to use. The question you have to ask yourself is: "What would I do differently ?" In X2, when docked at a station, you had to go through several menus to command a vessel.There was no hotkey for accessing anything anywhere. Today, you just hit "r". Looking at "X"s complexity, the current state might be as simple as it gets. Fine grained control can't be achieved with a single click.
Oh gosh. Really? The current X UI as simple as it gets? Far from it. I love the old X games, do not get me wrong, but the UI, to put it nicely, is atrocious. X3 was better than X2 and XBTF, but it was still really bad and clunky. Even giving simple commands was a chore.

How would I make it better? I would take inspiration from an 8 year old game (8 years!!!) that made commanding fleets, and fighters, really, really simple. The game is Homeworld 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4w50Gs5jZ0

That video is a bit long, but you can skip to about the 5 mins mark where you can see the tactical map in a little more details, the ease of controlling ships, even targeting subsystems is done with just a couple of clicks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... jZ0#t=300s

That game dealt with fighters and formations just as easily. The fighters kept formation, did not crash against other fighters or capital ships, they tried to dodge enemy fire, etc.

The building or research interface are not shown, but they are just as simple. So if they could at least emulate ideas from 8 year old games, then it would not be bad. Heck, it would be great!

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Post by shireknight » Mon, 10. Oct 11, 02:59

The game seems to be more Star Trekkie to me, in fact it seems to be more like Star Trek than Star Trek ever managed in any of their games which is great because I've always wanted a proper game where the interface is the crew themselves and you have to issue the orders to the crew and can't do anything yourself.

Much more realistic this way.
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BigBANGtheory
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Post by BigBANGtheory » Mon, 10. Oct 11, 10:00

As a captain yes it is more realistic, it has to be said though that Ubisoft (may they RIP) tried this approach in Silent Hunter 5 and it wasn't very popular.

If they go down this line I would recommend playing SH5 for a few hours as research with this play style in mind.

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Post by shireknight » Mon, 10. Oct 11, 21:34

Ah cheers I like submarine sims but not played that one so now I have a reason to try it out :)
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T.S.Zatoichi
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Post by T.S.Zatoichi » Mon, 10. Oct 11, 23:16

BigBANGtheory wrote:As a captain yes it is more realistic, it has to be said though that Ubisoft (may they RIP) tried this approach in Silent Hunter 5 and it wasn't very popular.

If they go down this line I would recommend playing SH5 for a few hours as research with this play style in mind.
I hadn't really heard many complaints about this aspect of SH5. The reason SH5 flopped was the really bad DRM system and Ubisoft shipping out an unfinished game then deciding to drop all support for it.

Fortunately the mod community is almost as strong for the SH series as with the X series and those guys have done wonders for what was essentially an unplayable game. Take a look at
SubSims SH5 mod collection.
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Post by JakBot » Mon, 10. Oct 11, 23:28

I don't think the SH5 comparison is that relevant. In SH's you're a lone submarine going from A to B (or circle around B), wreck havoc, and return to base. While I do agree that the approach in SH5 wasn't the best, I think the reasons don't apply to XR.

In SH5 there was nothing to do inside the ship. You could talk to your crew, but apart from the small morale boosts it was useless. You could access all the commands via function buttons so no need to talk to them, especially as the characters were very bland. You could also access the map and everything without using the "rooms" in the ship. Only reason to move was to switch from periscope to another or go on deck to fire AA/deck guns. Since the game was all about "fighting", depending on the difficulty setting, you spend most of your time on the map or on the periscopes.

On X games you're the head of an...intergalactic corporation or at the very least a small army (of drones in the beginning?). You spend much of your time building, maintaining and organizing that corporation/army and especially trade. Combat is only one aspect of the game and if one so chooses, a very small aspect (at least if it's the same as in X3). A ship where you can freely move around fits this type of game much better.

The world in earlier Xs always felt very empty and robotic and relied heavily on the imagination of the player (not always a bad thing though). Having your own crew, evolving ship (wonder if the interiors get filled with little details of your triumphs?) and better outside interaction may change that dramatically. Also the VR interface guarantees that the actual fighting isn't compromised one bit, except maybe for the feel that you're not inside the ship you're flying.

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s9ilent
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Post by s9ilent » Tue, 11. Oct 11, 15:18

There was a post (I think its in the stickies) that makes mention of .. I don't remember the exact word but I think it said radial menu's (or circle menu's, or pie menu's or w/e you want to call them)
This should hopefully help you to play with out having to keyboard mash (as much...)

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supakillaii
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Post by supakillaii » Tue, 11. Oct 11, 16:53

Radial menus for basic automated drone commands

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Post by stabile007 » Tue, 11. Oct 11, 22:24

I think an approach similar to Bridge Commander would be nice. You clicked the person for the responsible area (So tactical for tactical commands) is issued orders from a simple menu there which they would take as a "conversation" style statement and respond appropriately. Hopefully that is what we end up with because I loved the way Bridge Commander worked.

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NPCs don't really answer the question

Post by newname » Wed, 12. Oct 11, 01:47

UI is hard, and I'm not optimistic about NPC conversations. In other games they tend to be A) slow, B) ambiguous, and C) if they're dependent on good art and voice work, hard for small modders to extend. Saying it's NPCs only sidesteps the question; how do you tell the game what orders to give to the NPCs? It has to be some combination of text menus, hotkeys, gestures, radial context menus, joystick buttons, etc...

It only gets simpler if you're giving high-level orders like "be aggressive" as opposed to detailed orders like "follow and attack ship X", which you can do more cleanly with menus without the NPC facade.

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