I like the overall look. It's very Trek. The big panes look the best, but the little bits here and there look very clunky. And the existing icons don't really mesh all that well.
How can you not say there hasn't been major improvements. I understand there is much better functionality, which is fine, but i don't want to be playing something that looks ancient. There is nothing wrong with the it looked before, and it doesn't hurt to make something shiny. I cross between XP and windows 7 every day and cant wait to get back to my windows seven each time.
I'm not talking about the design of the operating system, I'm talking about the UI chrome.
Here, you lose no functionality in the new UI- it's just colors, transparency effects, and the like. That's what it is: it's window chrome.
Thing is, you're talking about "looks ancient". That's not true. ST's user interfaces are 24th century and look just like that. Windows 8 looks like that. :P
I like the new UI
It's very reminiscent of older Star Trek games!
Nice work guys!
I was just going to make a suggestion (and if this has already been mentioned, then sorry)
With regards to the contact screen, it seems it always shows the viewer screen with whichever person you are speaking with. It kinda looks weird when speaking with certain people so I'm thinking make it different depending on the type of contact?
I'm not sure if you guys record what type of contact is speaking, but if you are:
While in space:
- Important Starfleet/KDF/Romulan contact, like an Admiral or Ambassador etc: contact screen could be like the desk computer in the Captain's ready room
- In space contact (while flying in sector space) - use the current viewer screen
- Bridge Officers - when a bridge officer is speaking to you, show a background of computer consoles, to give the impression that they are sitting at their "station" and have swiveled their chair around to face you.
On ground: kinda not sure how best it could be portrayed, as technically, you wouldn't receive a face to face video message, it would mostly be audio only (going off what's been shown on TV/movies). But I would say if its a fellow officer in your away team, then no background should be fine or perhaps use the "planet" as the background? (ie beam down to tropical forest planet, when bridge officer is speaking with you, show a tropical forest background).
Anyways, so far so good I quite like it!
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease.
It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
-- Hogfather, Sir Terry Pratchett
For the naysayers (so many of them) have you looked at LCARS before? It is very similar now.
And btw you naysayers were the ones screeching that you didn't like the old design. So they make it look more Trek and you still complain. You'll never be satisfied.
I for one am loving it and thank you Cryptic for making it more Trek and more colourful and interesting.
- Bridge Officers - when a bridge officer is speaking to you, show a background of computer consoles, to give the impression that they are sitting at their "station" and have swiveled their chair around to face you.
This. This. This. This. This.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
It's fine in layout, but less in function. A new theme, but few changes. By and large, the function has changed in small parts. For the future, I could imagine a few optimizations on the operability and interaction between the windows. I think this is for the first steps of a good layout. In the future, come optimizations determined yet functional, so you can then speak of a good design.
I'm sad to say that I'm fairly underwhelmed by the new UI as it currently exists on Tribble.
The majority of what we can see is a new skin. As the new UI is touted as one of the new features of LoR, I was expecting more features and/or improved usability. However it would be nice if we could choose between the skins that we use.
Can't see how we can customise the colours of the UI. I hope this is a feature that just around the corner.
The "lock" and "save" icons on the ships power sliders are unrecognisable without foreknowledge of what they are representing. They completely fail to convey their meaning.
The 3-d models of characters and ships in the Skills / is an unwanted bonus. Beyond the inital look, I'm never going to move and rotate those items again.
At the moment that new UI offering that on Tribble feels as if the group who worked on it had an aim to "make it better", but didn't consider what was wrong with the currently one. It's one of the classic development mistakes.
I do still need to give the new character creation a proper try, but first impress is that all the colour, life and vibrancy of the current colour pallett has been sucked out of it.
People have made conparisions between tablets and wWindows 8. None of these lack the richness of colour that this does.
I really like the majority of aspects of this new ui. If I recall correctly, I'm sure it was stated the final version will have colour customisation, if the particular colours are partof your issue.
For me, the only bit I wasn't keen on was the health and shield bars.
On the whole, I think it just needs a bit of rounding of the edges in a lot more places, and generally a 'shinier' appearance, it looks a little flat and low image quality at the moment.
I play the game on a Lenovo T400, when logging into Tribble I have a mouse pointer, but can not select anything. I use the Lenovo Track-Point mouse, with the touch pad disabled. (I hate touch pads) Having keyboard shortcuts would be nice also to allow getting around this. Version: ST.30.20130310a.9
I like the new UI fine, but I'd like one option: let me turn the black backgrounds around the elements transparent.
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
I feel that this new look for the UI is a change for the sake of change. There doesn't really seem to be any kind of real improvements to usability or to the CPU utilization of the UI (which even on holodeck is very very hard on ones CPU).
I feel that, overall it is a missed opportunity for real improvement in fact, in some cases it feels like a step backward.
If you look at the UI while in space, at first glance it doesn't seem to have changed other than in colour. But look closely, you'll see that the icons for little buttons like the power settings have changed. Where before it was easy to see at a glance, that the buttons did different things. Weapon power was an X, engines was an arrow, balanced was an equals symbol (=).
Unfortunately this new UI has labels which look very similar to each other. Unless you already know what they do it will be impossible to know whether or not they do different things. It also makes telling which one is which rather more difficult, meaning more time is wasted in combat trying to figure out which button is the one you actually want! This is also compounded by the size of the buttons themselves. They seem very slightly smaller to me. Not much, but they do.
A strange thing with the space UI. On tribble, it seemed that even with my UI laid out exactly how it is on holodeck, each element ended up overlapping and conflicting with elements either side of it, forcing me to scatter everything like a wild woman scatters her faeces. This can hardly be a good thing for usability can it?
On holodeck, the very same layout with the same scaling and the same elements leaves a nice little gap between each element. Not much mind you, but just enough so that things don't overlap.
I believe that this overlap is being caused by the extra borders introduced with this new UI. It's wasted space that really doesn't need to be there. In fact, it seemed to me that there is a lot more wasted space in the UI elements in general.
That new character creation screen. Oh my. I like one thing about it, just one thing and that's the back drop of being in a station with the ship in the back ground. That backdrop really ought to be the character creation screen rather than that inexplicable star field.
But anyway, back to the creator.
In my opinion, this is the single biggest step backward ever made in this game. The old creation screen had it's flaws and more than a few bugs, but it felt generally fit for purpose. It worked, results of changes a player made were immediately visible and to me, it never felt like I was trying to thread a needle with boxing gloves on. Which is how this new one feels.
Functionally I don't think it's all that different, it's more a question of layout. The new one has dedicated 75% of screen space to one thing, then crams everything else including the character preview into the remaining 25%. It seems so claustrophobic, even on the 1920x1080 16:10 monitor I'm using. I dread to think how the players who run smaller monitors at lower resolutions are finding it!
I must note my opinion on the new status screen graphics. Who thought it necessary to put in the animated representations of the character and the ship? It serves little purpose other than the initial "oh hey, there's my ship". I think it really should go. Many players have a hard enough time with performance in this game as it is and non-essential garnish like this is not helping. I think it would be best to stay with how it is handled in the current UI on holodeck, but failing that I think it would be prudent to give the option of which way to go. Animated like the new style or static as it is currently on holodeck.
I like the idea of changing colour schemes. In fact, no I love the idea. Sadly I haven't tried it out, but the pictures I've seen look rather good.
One last thing. Why is the UI so bleedin' dark? Even if I turn up the brightness to the point of the game being a washed out mess, the UI is still very dark.
I'm sure a lot of work has gone into this update, but it is no where near ready. The UI needs a hell of a lot of work doing to it, perhaps even going back to the drawing board would be warranted, because the new UI does not lend itself well to helping the player play the game. The game should not be 50% about fighting the UI after all.
1. It's very dark, literally. But then, the entire game is rather dark for some reason. I have to run the game on 125% brightness just to see things.
THIS, is very true.
Please add more light to STO!
In respect to the UI I expected more changes in the design of the UI, .. I personally do not like the huge boxes poping up during a mission/fight. Wish it was more integrated as part of the UI instead. Also I had hoped that the chatbox would be integrated to the side as well..
I have one suggestion that might mitigate a lot of the criticism of the new UI at a stroke.
Give us the option of remaining with the old UI as it currently is on holodeck. While the UI isn't perfect, the old UI is clearer than this new one, with less wasted space in UI elements and buttons that are easier to distinguish from each other, at a glance.
Fine: Comprise. We need an option to keep it as the current look as is. I wish we could keep the good updates from the new UI with out sacrificing what it looks like
" I believe that I speak for us all sir when I say: To hell with our orders." - Lt. Cmdr. Data
I have one suggestion that might mitigate a lot of the criticism of the new UI at a stroke.
Give us the option of remaining with the old UI as it currently is on holodeck. While the UI isn't perfect, the old UI is clearer than this new one, with less wasted space in UI elements and buttons that are easier to distinguish from each other, at a glance.
the old UI is the new UI with a different colour and less bloom (less bloom give better performance but most people dont pvp so dont give a damn about UI performance).I dont know how you cant distiguish .The old one had blue buttons on blue border and the new one has blue buttons on black border.How is blue on blue easier to distinguish than blue on black?
btw the original sto UI was more or like this one we have now.In beta sto had a UI very similar with what is now on tribble server ...no one complained about it but they changed it and when the game was released people start complaining about the change.
My number one complaint about the new one is it is too bulky, it will cause problems for people with smaller screens, 17" and smaller and it will literally cover the screen, I like that it is partially see through but it doesn't make a difference during game play.
Address this issue and many people will come around and accept it or even like the new change.
My number one complaint about the new one is it is too bulky, it will cause problems for people with smaller screens, 17" and smaller and it will literally cover the screen, I like that it is partially see through but it doesn't make a difference during game play.
Address this issue and many people will come around and accept it or even like the new change.
Tested on my old Dell 17" LCD screen.
escape > options >basic>set UI scale > default is 1.00 ,set it for less .
My number one complaint about the new one is it is too bulky, it will cause problems for people with smaller screens, 17" and smaller and it will literally cover the screen, I like that it is partially see through but it doesn't make a difference during game play.
Address this issue and many people will come around and accept it or even like the new change.
Tested on my old Dell 17" LCD screen.
Corner to corner i use 15.6", and I can tell you that it wont make a difference. The Change will not be liked
" I believe that I speak for us all sir when I say: To hell with our orders." - Lt. Cmdr. Data
After spending some time interacting with the new LCARS UI interface--which, on the whole, offers the feeling of an authentic Starfleet computer interface--I have only one major concern to voice at this time. This regards the use of a viewscreen on the new communications pop-up interface. The shift from vertically shaped portraits of NPCs to horizontal portraits in the communication interface does not seem natural. In fact, it seems completely counter-intuitive.
Not only does the imposed viewscreen format zoom or distort the faces of the characters, it creates vast amounts of unnecessary space. Additionally, the layout of the necessary text below and the accompanying interactive buttons seems awkward. Their vertical relationship in the current system seems far more natural than placing them side-by-side.
Even from a logistical perspective, this set-up fails to make sense. Why are my bridge officers communicating with me via a viewscreen? Aren't they at their stations, on the bridge?!
This is the one element of the new interface I find the most difficult to accept and interact with. The current communication pop-up layout is more compact, more natural, and more aesthetically pleasing. I would hate to see the layout of our current communications screen replaced with the new one.
the old UI is the new UI with a different colour and less bloom (less bloom give better performance but most people dont pvp so dont give a damn about UI performance).
While it is very similar, the 'new' ui actually introduces a *lot* of black borders which simply aren't there with the current ui. My layout on the the tribble side is identical to my layout on holodeck, yet on tribble everything overlaps. It is unsightly and horrendous to use.
Besides, I don't even have bloom enabled
I dont know how you cant distiguish .The old one had blue buttons on blue border and the new one has blue buttons on black border.How is blue on blue easier to distinguish than blue on black?
I am not complaining about the colours. If you would read and comprehend my post (it is a big post, so I'll cut some slack) it is not about the colours and it is not about distinguishing between the old and new.
The problem is that on the new UI a lot of the smaller buttons have had their icons changed so that the icons are almost identical. Look at the power distribution buttons in space and tell me you could tell which one is which out of the corner of your eye while in combat?
The current icons are visibly different, the new ones are not. This is what it boils down to, not colours are you seem to think.
btw the original sto UI was more or like this one we have now.In beta sto had a UI very similar with what is now on tribble server ...no one complained about it but they changed it and when the game was released people start complaining about the change.
That is all well and good, but this argument simply adds weight to my assertion that the new UI is a step backwards in terms of usability.
If cryptic wants to add this new UI to the game then fine. But please devs, please give us the option to switch to the current UI.
I would rather use a slightly uglier UI that is easier to work with.
A "hot sister" analogy for you.
Which sister would you marry? The "smoking hot but dim" sister or the slightly less hot sister who has a masters degree in nuclear engineering?
Imo, this change is a change just for the sake of it and a missed opportunity. The new UI provides no improvements in usability or in efficiency. With this UI 'upgrade'* Cryptic has a chance to radically improve this game with a UI that is redesigned for improved usability. As I stated earlier, I prefer an ugly UI that I don't have to fight in order to make it obey my commands.
*It's even posted as part of the hype for the expansion! Look at Page 3 of the features. I quote
"Choose the HUD color palette that works for you. Experience new and improve UI screens with easier to read options and enhanced interactions."
It is entitled "Improved UI".
Comments
I'm not talking about the design of the operating system, I'm talking about the UI chrome.
Here, you lose no functionality in the new UI- it's just colors, transparency effects, and the like. That's what it is: it's window chrome.
Thing is, you're talking about "looks ancient". That's not true. ST's user interfaces are 24th century and look just like that. Windows 8 looks like that. :P
It's very reminiscent of older Star Trek games!
Nice work guys!
I was just going to make a suggestion (and if this has already been mentioned, then sorry)
With regards to the contact screen, it seems it always shows the viewer screen with whichever person you are speaking with. It kinda looks weird when speaking with certain people so I'm thinking make it different depending on the type of contact?
I'm not sure if you guys record what type of contact is speaking, but if you are:
While in space:
- Important Starfleet/KDF/Romulan contact, like an Admiral or Ambassador etc: contact screen could be like the desk computer in the Captain's ready room
- In space contact (while flying in sector space) - use the current viewer screen
- Bridge Officers - when a bridge officer is speaking to you, show a background of computer consoles, to give the impression that they are sitting at their "station" and have swiveled their chair around to face you.
On ground: kinda not sure how best it could be portrayed, as technically, you wouldn't receive a face to face video message, it would mostly be audio only (going off what's been shown on TV/movies). But I would say if its a fellow officer in your away team, then no background should be fine or perhaps use the "planet" as the background? (ie beam down to tropical forest planet, when bridge officer is speaking with you, show a tropical forest background).
Anyways, so far so good
It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
-- Hogfather, Sir Terry Pratchett
It is so Trek.
For the naysayers (so many of them) have you looked at LCARS before? It is very similar now.
And btw you naysayers were the ones screeching that you didn't like the old design. So they make it look more Trek and you still complain. You'll never be satisfied.
I for one am loving it and thank you Cryptic for making it more Trek and more colourful and interesting.
This. This. This. This. This.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
http://i.imgur.com/M7jBikE.jpg
Put your present ship behind the character, instead of the Miranda.
You can get this screen but entering the character creator, and then backing out.
Use the stage for each faction's character creation. It would look amazing.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Please change it back. I have sooooo many channels, I can barely keep them sorted WITH labels.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
At the moment that new UI offering that on Tribble feels as if the group who worked on it had an aim to "make it better", but didn't consider what was wrong with the currently one. It's one of the classic development mistakes.
I do still need to give the new character creation a proper try, but first impress is that all the colour, life and vibrancy of the current colour pallett has been sucked out of it.
People have made conparisions between tablets and wWindows 8. None of these lack the richness of colour that this does.
For me, the only bit I wasn't keen on was the health and shield bars.
On the whole, I think it just needs a bit of rounding of the edges in a lot more places, and generally a 'shinier' appearance, it looks a little flat and low image quality at the moment.
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
I feel that, overall it is a missed opportunity for real improvement in fact, in some cases it feels like a step backward.
If you look at the UI while in space, at first glance it doesn't seem to have changed other than in colour. But look closely, you'll see that the icons for little buttons like the power settings have changed. Where before it was easy to see at a glance, that the buttons did different things. Weapon power was an X, engines was an arrow, balanced was an equals symbol (=).
Unfortunately this new UI has labels which look very similar to each other. Unless you already know what they do it will be impossible to know whether or not they do different things. It also makes telling which one is which rather more difficult, meaning more time is wasted in combat trying to figure out which button is the one you actually want! This is also compounded by the size of the buttons themselves. They seem very slightly smaller to me. Not much, but they do.
A strange thing with the space UI. On tribble, it seemed that even with my UI laid out exactly how it is on holodeck, each element ended up overlapping and conflicting with elements either side of it, forcing me to scatter everything like a wild woman scatters her faeces. This can hardly be a good thing for usability can it?
On holodeck, the very same layout with the same scaling and the same elements leaves a nice little gap between each element. Not much mind you, but just enough so that things don't overlap.
I believe that this overlap is being caused by the extra borders introduced with this new UI. It's wasted space that really doesn't need to be there. In fact, it seemed to me that there is a lot more wasted space in the UI elements in general.
That new character creation screen. Oh my. I like one thing about it, just one thing and that's the back drop of being in a station with the ship in the back ground. That backdrop really ought to be the character creation screen rather than that inexplicable star field.
But anyway, back to the creator.
In my opinion, this is the single biggest step backward ever made in this game. The old creation screen had it's flaws and more than a few bugs, but it felt generally fit for purpose. It worked, results of changes a player made were immediately visible and to me, it never felt like I was trying to thread a needle with boxing gloves on. Which is how this new one feels.
Functionally I don't think it's all that different, it's more a question of layout. The new one has dedicated 75% of screen space to one thing, then crams everything else including the character preview into the remaining 25%. It seems so claustrophobic, even on the 1920x1080 16:10 monitor I'm using. I dread to think how the players who run smaller monitors at lower resolutions are finding it!
I must note my opinion on the new status screen graphics. Who thought it necessary to put in the animated representations of the character and the ship? It serves little purpose other than the initial "oh hey, there's my ship". I think it really should go. Many players have a hard enough time with performance in this game as it is and non-essential garnish like this is not helping. I think it would be best to stay with how it is handled in the current UI on holodeck, but failing that I think it would be prudent to give the option of which way to go. Animated like the new style or static as it is currently on holodeck.
I like the idea of changing colour schemes. In fact, no I love the idea. Sadly I haven't tried it out, but the pictures I've seen look rather good.
One last thing. Why is the UI so bleedin' dark? Even if I turn up the brightness to the point of the game being a washed out mess, the UI is still very dark.
I'm sure a lot of work has gone into this update, but it is no where near ready. The UI needs a hell of a lot of work doing to it, perhaps even going back to the drawing board would be warranted, because the new UI does not lend itself well to helping the player play the game. The game should not be 50% about fighting the UI after all.
I'm sorry, but it just is not up to scratch.
THIS, is very true.
Please add more light to STO!
In respect to the UI I expected more changes in the design of the UI, .. I personally do not like the huge boxes poping up during a mission/fight. Wish it was more integrated as part of the UI instead. Also I had hoped that the chatbox would be integrated to the side as well..
Give us the option of remaining with the old UI as it currently is on holodeck. While the UI isn't perfect, the old UI is clearer than this new one, with less wasted space in UI elements and buttons that are easier to distinguish from each other, at a glance.
the old UI is the new UI with a different colour and less bloom (less bloom give better performance but most people dont pvp so dont give a damn about UI performance).I dont know how you cant distiguish .The old one had blue buttons on blue border and the new one has blue buttons on black border.How is blue on blue easier to distinguish than blue on black?
btw the original sto UI was more or like this one we have now.In beta sto had a UI very similar with what is now on tribble server ...no one complained about it but they changed it and when the game was released people start complaining about the change.
there is no legacy tab on tribble.Only holodeck has that tab.If you want your red matter for example you have to import it with your toon.
Address this issue and many people will come around and accept it or even like the new change.
Tested on my old Dell 17" LCD screen.
escape > options >basic>set UI scale > default is 1.00 ,set it for less .
- the border around the abilities on the hotbar seem to bright, its eye catching and it shouldn't.
- the countdown timer on buffs in the target box is a bit to close to the buff icon now, its harder to read.
- the names above allies is now green.. blue was better readable, make it configurable.
Aside of that it seems to look good.
Corner to corner i use 15.6", and I can tell you that it wont make a difference. The Change will not be liked
Not only does the imposed viewscreen format zoom or distort the faces of the characters, it creates vast amounts of unnecessary space. Additionally, the layout of the necessary text below and the accompanying interactive buttons seems awkward. Their vertical relationship in the current system seems far more natural than placing them side-by-side.
Even from a logistical perspective, this set-up fails to make sense. Why are my bridge officers communicating with me via a viewscreen? Aren't they at their stations, on the bridge?!
This is the one element of the new interface I find the most difficult to accept and interact with. The current communication pop-up layout is more compact, more natural, and more aesthetically pleasing. I would hate to see the layout of our current communications screen replaced with the new one.
yes it will.
Besides, I don't even have bloom enabled
I am not complaining about the colours. If you would read and comprehend my post (it is a big post, so I'll cut some slack) it is not about the colours and it is not about distinguishing between the old and new.
The problem is that on the new UI a lot of the smaller buttons have had their icons changed so that the icons are almost identical. Look at the power distribution buttons in space and tell me you could tell which one is which out of the corner of your eye while in combat?
The current icons are visibly different, the new ones are not. This is what it boils down to, not colours are you seem to think.
That is all well and good, but this argument simply adds weight to my assertion that the new UI is a step backwards in terms of usability.
If cryptic wants to add this new UI to the game then fine. But please devs, please give us the option to switch to the current UI.
I would rather use a slightly uglier UI that is easier to work with.
A "hot sister" analogy for you.
Which sister would you marry? The "smoking hot but dim" sister or the slightly less hot sister who has a masters degree in nuclear engineering?
Imo, this change is a change just for the sake of it and a missed opportunity. The new UI provides no improvements in usability or in efficiency. With this UI 'upgrade'* Cryptic has a chance to radically improve this game with a UI that is redesigned for improved usability. As I stated earlier, I prefer an ugly UI that I don't have to fight in order to make it obey my commands.
*It's even posted as part of the hype for the expansion! Look at Page 3 of the features. I quote
"Choose the HUD color palette that works for you. Experience new and improve UI screens with easier to read options and enhanced interactions."
It is entitled "Improved UI".