What I would like to know is Who requested this, Who designed this and who approved this to go as far as the test server. That time and money could have been better used repairing bugs, hashing out content for KDF and making Romulans their own seperate faction instead of having to join with the Federation or KDF. Thsi is really a waste of funds.
Pretty much anyone who hates the current UI on holodeck requested this. And its awesome and sorely needed.
I wonder how a LCARS border and some color changes make it look dated.
I see a lot of people complaining about pixelation, but I don't have any, I wonder if they set the resolution on Tribble to match their LCDs native resolution.
I see complaints that it got huge, while its about the same size on my screen, in fact I felt like there were more gaps between my UI elements then there were on Holodeck. Maybe they have their resolution wrong again?
I will agree that the new viewscreen dialog window is rather large and a tad awkward, and Character Selection and Character Creation are both still in development according to Dev comments I've seen, so I an understand some consternation about those elements, and I guess I can even understand ugly if you don't like the colors, but clunky I don't get, the layouts are virtually identical to live, with a new skin to them.
I'm not sure that clunky, ugly, or dated are good feedback anyhow, because if I were a dev I would know you don't like it, but that lacks the information to fix it. How would the UI be made uncluncky? How would it be made unugly? How would it be made undated?
What this tells me is they optimized the ui elements for very high resolution screens. Even at 1440x900 I've had to scale the ui down to 0.8 just to make everything fit on the screen in a way that's tolerable.
If you want to see all the pixelization issues you aren't noticing, just set your ui scale down to 0.8 and you'll see all of it.
Here's a small comparison of the default layout (I reset it just before taking these screenshots just to be sure):
The pixelization is very obvious at 0.8. The UI doesn't look too terribly bad at 1.0, but elements are far too large to be useful (and they cover far too much of the screen).
If I'm going to give a reason the UI looks "dated," I'd point at square buttons with gradient backgrounds and aliased icons and text that look like they've been drawn in mspaint.
The whole visual style almost looks LCARS, except LCARS is supposed to be simple and minimalistic.
If I were to give feedback, it would just be to stop wasting so much space on my screen. I don't need, and certainly don't want, a 800x600 display to show me "Are you ready to beam down to Starfleet Academy? Yes/No." It covers a huge portion of the screen, and contact dialogs can often get in the way of what I'm trying to do with the current ui on holodeck, where they aren't that big. That problem is not just limited to the contact dialogs. The entire reputation UI is (and has been since launch) half wasted screen space. There are scroll bars a half a mile long in that menu just to select from maybe 30 options. Then there's the new tailor. Just go to the tailor and find the body scale slider which takes up maybe 20x100 px for the slider element, but houses it in a 500 px wide drop-down menu (I sincerely hope this one isn't intentional).
What I want is to see the information I need clearly and efficiently, and not the information I don't need, and by definition a large field of nothing is information I don't need.
It's neat that they are trying to use a nice visual style, but it's getting in the way of the actual function of user interface, which is to communicate information.
Oh, and one more thing. Can I please have my tick marks on sliders back? It's really nice to be able to tell where on the bar the slider is. And by "really nice" I mean absolutely imperative.
Two things I've noticed, the inactive low priority interactions tab under the TNG and Voyager color schemes are almost illegible. Mousing over fixes this, but it the text should probably reversed from white (on a very light background) to black.
It would be really nice to have an option of some alternate aesthetics, a more angular one, and one more in line with the current layout, preferably that the player could adjust independently of the color scheme.
Also, and this might not be a real option, but it would be amazing to have an advanced tab where we can muck around with the colors manually, using the color picker, sort of like the old windows color customization window.
The whole visual style almost looks LCARS, except LCARS is supposed to be simple and minimalistic.
Heres the problem... LCARS was meant to be nothing... its was meant to look not busy.... but it had no meaning as far as what the buttons actually did... so if we wanted LCARS... every button would have a series of numbers/letters and no words at all and it would be completely unusable. So... you know having actual LCARS would... be bad. So we have LCARS-esque that actually works as a UI.
Also... get a bigger screen. The UI looks fine at .80 at 1920x1080. I'll have to get pictures next time I'm on tribble.
There's no reason in the world that a game developer should assume or expect their users to use a screen resolution of 1920x1080 or better.
And "Get a bigger screen" is a terrible solution to a UI problem.
Getting a Bigger screen can turn very expensive. First the Monitor may only be ?100, but if computer can not produce the required performance at the higher resolution.. You have buy a new graphics card... which can cost at least ?150 for a "gaming Entry level" Gfx Card.
Oh, if you're using a laptop.. The only option is paying at least ?1000 for a laptop that supports it.
I personally think 1280x720 being the only resolution for a game I'm working on is lot easier for everyone. (It just uses "bitmaps," so it's actually more down to if your screen can show it. I think it could run on the Pi.)
What I would like to know is Who requested this, Who designed this and who approved this to go as far as the test server. That time and money could have been better used repairing bugs, hashing out content for KDF and making Romulans their own seperate faction instead of having to join with the Federation or KDF. Thsi is really a waste of funds.
You guys realize a new Star Trek movie is coming out right? They're trying to polish up the game to make it more appealing for new users.
Some good tweaks to the UI went up on Tribble today.
I like that my KDF officers are talking to be face to face now instead of the View screen....Can't wait for my Star Fleet officers to do the same...Till then I'll pretend they are in the brig.:D
yup a lot of the black borders are reduced and completely gone on the Boff tray. and to me at least the fonts and textures looked smoother then the previous patch
the VOY and TNG skins no longer have the invisable text bug so they are more usable
Well, now that I had a moment to get some shots on Tribble and do some more "research", I can more specifically tell what makes the new UI boxy, impractical, stretched, clunky...
Let's start with the building blocs: Old:http://postimg.org/image/48tnnxkqp/New:http://postimg.org/image/olmu75dw7/
Those are trays from the old and new UIs, both taken from the same UI scale (1.00) at the same resolution, zoomed in equally. The abilities icons are actually a tad smaller in the new UI (which is rather bad in itself, lower readability), but there are spaces in between them that actually make the new tray take more space than the old one (now that's very bad knowing the functional parts are smaller than before).
Now we can continue in the same spirit:
There are far more places where unused space between funcional elements makes whole windows bigger, more cumbersome. Here, the trait screen:http://postimg.org/image/6r9p9gs15/Here, Doff screen:http://postimg.org/image/lyy4yq7xd/
On both left and right side of the trait list (same with the Doff list, as well as the list with slots for assigned doffs) there are quite large empty patches that make everything else much more cramped (which leads to items taking more "lines" and resulting in more scrolling needed --> very inconvenient). For example the Doff filters are almost unusable as they are rendered unreadable.
Oh, and why exactly are the tabs at the left of the Doff window so large? There's a lot of space wasted after the longest expression "Assignement chains" ends. Could always be cut a bit.
The Traits additionally have more than needed space above and below them (not the dark bacground, but the orange "buttons" themselves extend too far), again calling for more scrolling (again, very inconvenient). It's actually very similar with the Boff candidates list: individual Boff "buttons" are needlessly large given the size of text. http://postimg.org/image/xl928dggn/
Another potential drawback of the new UI, borders:
This is partially linked to the "size" problems explained before. If you want to keep the same amount of things visible you had in the old UI, you'll need to enlarge the individual windows. And then you can end up with many overlapping windows. Of course even without enlarging windows, you can easily end up with a bunch of windows opened one over another (I often work with the exchange, Doff and inventory window at once, already in the old UI, they're one over another).
The new UI brings a new problem with several windows overlapping: How do you tell them apart? They have no distinctive border. Hard to do anything efficiently without mistakenly dragging one window or another.
Well, that should do for now, understand that the "unneeded space taken" issue extends pretty much all over the new UI. At least for my laptop resolution of 1366x768. I tried to be as constructive as possible. I think I can live with the new UI as it is, but it's still much less efficient, simple and clean than the current holodeck one, hence my trying to make it better.
Now let's end with two comparison shots, see the differences (good and bad) yourselves: Old:http://postimg.org/image/546fft21t/New:http://postimg.org/image/3wuabkrpd/
(Oh, and could something be done about those ENORMOUS buttons on the right? Now that we're also getting more and more of them (New Romulus). If only they closely followed the text within them like they do now...)
EDIT: All Tribble pictures taken after the latest (AKA April the 9th) Tribble patch.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Oh, and why exactly are the tabs at the left of the Doff window so large? There's a lot of space wasted after the longest expression "Assignement chains" ends. Could always be cut a bit.
I think your feedback is good (especially those filters being "...", yeesh), but keep in mind that the game is in multiple languages, so having something go to exactly as long as it is in English may not be feasible. Something to keep in mind.
The buttons on the right side seem like they are the same size, but they look a lot bigger because it's wrapping the text more since they aren't as wide for their text area.
At the moment the box could be wider to take up more of the space background. the symbols on some are still missing and only appear when you select the character. its not as responsive as the one we currently have, and the text is overlapping because its too narrow.
If the background of the new windows and trays were transparent instead of black, the wider spaces would at least let you see more of the screen. But as it stands, it just looks clunky and uses more space.
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
It's currently impossible to set character-specific, or even faction-specific color schemes.
Solution (other than figuring out how to set it to be character-specific):
Make the system so you set one color scheme for each faction.
For example, if I wanted to use Voyager on all my feds, Klingon on all my Klingons, and Romulan on all my Romulans, I'd simply set the Federation scheme to Voyager, KDF scheme to Klingon, and RR scheme to Romulan.
I wonder why it wasn't designed that way in the first place... unless there's a big problem I'm not seeing. (I hope not )
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I saw the new UI on Tribble and felt I had to post. Overall I like it, as it feels more like LCARS in a lot of ways, however there are some problems I've noticed. I've done a bit of LCARS design work before, as I've spent weekends slaving away over a PADD homescreen for my phone :L
(These are all using the default Tribble new UI, with no settings edited)
+ The new UI and structure. Things such as elbow placement and curves are spot on.
+ The old layout's been kept for most things which I'm happy with. Anything that's been moved has been for the better in my opinion.
- Rounded edges need softening/anti-aliasing. They look so pixel-ly on the end caps.
- The blue used for most buttons (such as the character, ship and BOffs in the 'U' menu) feels a bit out of place to me, especially in an LCARS scheme. I think it should be toned down a bit.
- When in space, it's great that you have the viewscreen frame, but it should be disabled for bridge officers - why is someone supposedly sitting next to me on the screen when I should be focused on where we're going?
- The 'glow' on most of the buttons is a bit bothersome, but if the colours are changed above (point 2) I think it may be alright.
- Some icons need to be redone because they use a black background and are therefore out of place with the new translucent UI - I noticed this on the Dabo items while gambling my sorrows away :L
- The new font is alright at best. Having a narrower font fits LCARS much better.
Did I miss anything? What does anyone else think?
Kurtis Wayne Alexander
Rear Admiral, Upper Half (45)
Section 31
The buff icons that appear above your ship status have timers that show how many seconds remain. In the new UI, the timer numbers now overlap with the buff icons, making the numbers difficult to read.
I really love almost everything about the new UI. The only exception is the extremely annoying "red alert" mode. Will we be able to disable that if we want at some point, please? The words at the top of the screen more than suffice for that.
Apart from minor adjustments, I find everything else is awesome sauce.
The TNG theme is my dream UI for STO. I cannot wait to see it on Holodeck!
Number one on my wishlist: New FED transporter effect
Number two: 22nd Century Excursion Jackets
Number three: Handheld communicator animation for non-combadge uniforms
I appreciate the changes made to the login and character selection screens (pics: Login, Char Selection). The addition of one's away team is a very nice aesthetic. However, I simply do not feel the red spotlight is right - for Federation and presumably Romulan characters. I feel it also detracts from having your BOs assembled like that. We know who our characters are we don't need them pointed out for us, so to speak.
Will the light be staying red for Federation characters or will it become blue? (I'd rather it dropped).
Based on the screenshots I've seen, the UI looks basically the same, except with new colors. Is this the case? Or have the PvP queues finally received their own button not inside the dropdown?
I'm loving the Character select screen now with my Bridge officers assembled, I even like the light now, would be cool if it was blue for FED, RED , for KDF, and Green for RR....oh and some characters are cloned.:)
There are still issues with the character select screen, but its looking better with each patch. I really do like seeing the boffs there. But i would still prefer a different background.
Some issues.
When i first logged in, some of my boff heads where not showing. this can be easily cleared but clicking on different characters but still something that needs looking at.
the faction symbols still appear sporadically at the start, until you select them.
the selection box is still too narrow and text overlaps the buttons.
when you click on different character, sometimes the old character still stays there. so i had a fed in front of a klingon crew.
when you enter the game, only your main character beams out.
Some characters still show their shuttle even though their main ship is selected.
Comments
Pretty much anyone who hates the current UI on holodeck requested this. And its awesome and sorely needed.
What this tells me is they optimized the ui elements for very high resolution screens. Even at 1440x900 I've had to scale the ui down to 0.8 just to make everything fit on the screen in a way that's tolerable.
If you want to see all the pixelization issues you aren't noticing, just set your ui scale down to 0.8 and you'll see all of it.
Here's a small comparison of the default layout (I reset it just before taking these screenshots just to be sure):
UI Scale 1.0 @ 1440x900
UI Scale 0.8 @ 1440x900
The pixelization is very obvious at 0.8. The UI doesn't look too terribly bad at 1.0, but elements are far too large to be useful (and they cover far too much of the screen).
If I'm going to give a reason the UI looks "dated," I'd point at square buttons with gradient backgrounds and aliased icons and text that look like they've been drawn in mspaint.
The whole visual style almost looks LCARS, except LCARS is supposed to be simple and minimalistic.
If I were to give feedback, it would just be to stop wasting so much space on my screen. I don't need, and certainly don't want, a 800x600 display to show me "Are you ready to beam down to Starfleet Academy? Yes/No." It covers a huge portion of the screen, and contact dialogs can often get in the way of what I'm trying to do with the current ui on holodeck, where they aren't that big. That problem is not just limited to the contact dialogs. The entire reputation UI is (and has been since launch) half wasted screen space. There are scroll bars a half a mile long in that menu just to select from maybe 30 options. Then there's the new tailor. Just go to the tailor and find the body scale slider which takes up maybe 20x100 px for the slider element, but houses it in a 500 px wide drop-down menu (I sincerely hope this one isn't intentional).
What I want is to see the information I need clearly and efficiently, and not the information I don't need, and by definition a large field of nothing is information I don't need.
It's neat that they are trying to use a nice visual style, but it's getting in the way of the actual function of user interface, which is to communicate information.
Oh, and one more thing. Can I please have my tick marks on sliders back? It's really nice to be able to tell where on the bar the slider is. And by "really nice" I mean absolutely imperative.
It would be really nice to have an option of some alternate aesthetics, a more angular one, and one more in line with the current layout, preferably that the player could adjust independently of the color scheme.
Also, and this might not be a real option, but it would be amazing to have an advanced tab where we can muck around with the colors manually, using the color picker, sort of like the old windows color customization window.
Heres the problem... LCARS was meant to be nothing... its was meant to look not busy.... but it had no meaning as far as what the buttons actually did... so if we wanted LCARS... every button would have a series of numbers/letters and no words at all and it would be completely unusable. So... you know having actual LCARS would... be bad. So we have LCARS-esque that actually works as a UI.
Also... get a bigger screen. The UI looks fine at .80 at 1920x1080. I'll have to get pictures next time I'm on tribble.
And "Get a bigger screen" is a terrible solution to a UI problem.
Getting a Bigger screen can turn very expensive. First the Monitor may only be ?100, but if computer can not produce the required performance at the higher resolution.. You have buy a new graphics card... which can cost at least ?150 for a "gaming Entry level" Gfx Card.
Oh, if you're using a laptop.. The only option is paying at least ?1000 for a laptop that supports it.
I personally think 1280x720 being the only resolution for a game I'm working on is lot easier for everyone. (It just uses "bitmaps," so it's actually more down to if your screen can show it. I think it could run on the Pi.)
How about "most laptop players discovered windowed mode for gaming over a decade ago", boss.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
I dont see how the two connect? What does windowed mode have to do with anything, other than making it easy to multitask?
You guys realize a new Star Trek movie is coming out right? They're trying to polish up the game to make it more appealing for new users.
Some good tweaks to the UI went up on Tribble today.
Liking the updates to the UI.
the VOY and TNG skins no longer have the invisable text bug so they are more usable
Let's start with the building blocs:
Old:http://postimg.org/image/48tnnxkqp/ New:http://postimg.org/image/olmu75dw7/
Those are trays from the old and new UIs, both taken from the same UI scale (1.00) at the same resolution, zoomed in equally. The abilities icons are actually a tad smaller in the new UI (which is rather bad in itself, lower readability), but there are spaces in between them that actually make the new tray take more space than the old one (now that's very bad knowing the functional parts are smaller than before).
Now we can continue in the same spirit:
There are far more places where unused space between funcional elements makes whole windows bigger, more cumbersome.
Here, the trait screen:http://postimg.org/image/6r9p9gs15/ Here, Doff screen:http://postimg.org/image/lyy4yq7xd/
On both left and right side of the trait list (same with the Doff list, as well as the list with slots for assigned doffs) there are quite large empty patches that make everything else much more cramped (which leads to items taking more "lines" and resulting in more scrolling needed --> very inconvenient). For example the Doff filters are almost unusable as they are rendered unreadable.
Oh, and why exactly are the tabs at the left of the Doff window so large? There's a lot of space wasted after the longest expression "Assignement chains" ends. Could always be cut a bit.
The Traits additionally have more than needed space above and below them (not the dark bacground, but the orange "buttons" themselves extend too far), again calling for more scrolling (again, very inconvenient). It's actually very similar with the Boff candidates list: individual Boff "buttons" are needlessly large given the size of text.
http://postimg.org/image/xl928dggn/
Another potential drawback of the new UI, borders:
Here, merely two windows overlapping:http://postimg.org/image/7qv509e2r/
This is partially linked to the "size" problems explained before. If you want to keep the same amount of things visible you had in the old UI, you'll need to enlarge the individual windows. And then you can end up with many overlapping windows. Of course even without enlarging windows, you can easily end up with a bunch of windows opened one over another (I often work with the exchange, Doff and inventory window at once, already in the old UI, they're one over another).
The new UI brings a new problem with several windows overlapping: How do you tell them apart? They have no distinctive border. Hard to do anything efficiently without mistakenly dragging one window or another.
Well, that should do for now, understand that the "unneeded space taken" issue extends pretty much all over the new UI. At least for my laptop resolution of 1366x768. I tried to be as constructive as possible. I think I can live with the new UI as it is, but it's still much less efficient, simple and clean than the current holodeck one, hence my trying to make it better.
Now let's end with two comparison shots, see the differences (good and bad) yourselves:
Old:http://postimg.org/image/546fft21t/ New:http://postimg.org/image/3wuabkrpd/
(Oh, and could something be done about those ENORMOUS buttons on the right? Now that we're also getting more and more of them (New Romulus). If only they closely followed the text within them like they do now...)
EDIT: All Tribble pictures taken after the latest (AKA April the 9th) Tribble patch.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
I think your feedback is good (especially those filters being "...", yeesh), but keep in mind that the game is in multiple languages, so having something go to exactly as long as it is in English may not be feasible. Something to keep in mind.
The buttons on the right side seem like they are the same size, but they look a lot bigger because it's wrapping the text more since they aren't as wide for their text area.
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx26/revo_2010/select_zps90f439be.jpg
At the moment the box could be wider to take up more of the space background. the symbols on some are still missing and only appear when you select the character. its not as responsive as the one we currently have, and the text is overlapping because its too narrow.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
It's currently impossible to set character-specific, or even faction-specific color schemes.
Solution (other than figuring out how to set it to be character-specific):
Make the system so you set one color scheme for each faction.
For example, if I wanted to use Voyager on all my feds, Klingon on all my Klingons, and Romulan on all my Romulans, I'd simply set the Federation scheme to Voyager, KDF scheme to Klingon, and RR scheme to Romulan.
I wonder why it wasn't designed that way in the first place... unless there's a big problem I'm not seeing. (I hope not
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
(These are all using the default Tribble new UI, with no settings edited)
+ The new UI and structure. Things such as elbow placement and curves are spot on.
+ The old layout's been kept for most things which I'm happy with. Anything that's been moved has been for the better in my opinion.
- Rounded edges need softening/anti-aliasing. They look so pixel-ly on the end caps.
- The blue used for most buttons (such as the character, ship and BOffs in the 'U' menu) feels a bit out of place to me, especially in an LCARS scheme. I think it should be toned down a bit.
- When in space, it's great that you have the viewscreen frame, but it should be disabled for bridge officers - why is someone supposedly sitting next to me on the screen when I should be focused on where we're going?
- The 'glow' on most of the buttons is a bit bothersome, but if the colours are changed above (point 2) I think it may be alright.
- Some icons need to be redone because they use a black background and are therefore out of place with the new translucent UI - I noticed this on the Dabo items while gambling my sorrows away :L
- The new font is alright at best. Having a narrower font fits LCARS much better.
Did I miss anything? What does anyone else think?
Rear Admiral, Upper Half (45)
Section 31
This is still happening after the patch on April 9, 2013. Please increase the distance between the timer and the buff icon.
Was this change also made to the character selection screen? The character still looks pretty dim there.
Apart from minor adjustments, I find everything else is awesome sauce.
Scaling down the UI introduces alot of pixelation and no smoothing or anti aliasing what so ever.
Just my 2 cents.
1920x1080 screen here, im NOT blind.
Number two: 22nd Century Excursion Jackets
Number three: Handheld communicator animation for non-combadge uniforms
I appreciate the changes made to the login and character selection screens (pics: Login, Char Selection). The addition of one's away team is a very nice aesthetic. However, I simply do not feel the red spotlight is right - for Federation and presumably Romulan characters. I feel it also detracts from having your BOs assembled like that. We know who our characters are we don't need them pointed out for us, so to speak.
Will the light be staying red for Federation characters or will it become blue? (I'd rather it dropped).
I've also noticed that its still buggy, example: http://i.imgur.com/P1NxoJk.jpg
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
The login screen. Why is my character just floating in space? Why is there a glowy light?
Why isnt this:
http://i.imgur.com/M7jBikE.jpg
the login screen? It just looks so much better... and isnt pants on head TRIBBLE... seriously....
Some issues.
When i first logged in, some of my boff heads where not showing. this can be easily cleared but clicking on different characters but still something that needs looking at.
the faction symbols still appear sporadically at the start, until you select them.
the selection box is still too narrow and text overlaps the buttons.
when you click on different character, sometimes the old character still stays there. so i had a fed in front of a klingon crew.
when you enter the game, only your main character beams out.
Some characters still show their shuttle even though their main ship is selected.
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx26/revo_2010/1-4_zps8aadcd1c.jpg
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx26/revo_2010/2-2_zpsd6ece7e9.jpg