View Full Version : Preliminary UI?
SelorKiith
08-20-2009, 09:48 AM
Hi folks!
Just saw this Picture twittered by Zinc 9 Minutes ago and there is a rather good look on the UI:
http://img215.yfrog.com/i/5kt.jpg/
I like it, looks slim, sleek and cool :D
Zepath
08-20-2009, 09:55 AM
Until I see it up close, I'll reserve comment.
There is a point where slim is too slim. And that can be just as damaging to a game as information overload.
I see that one control that seems to be your shields encircling other ship's functions? I don't know that I like that, but again, I'll have to see it closer with less clutter on the screen.
To be fair, I don't like that screen shot even if the UI wasn't on it. ... its too busy.
TechDragon
08-20-2009, 09:58 AM
Huh... you know, that actually does look pretty good. No 50 different hotkeys cluttering up the screen, nice space scenery, looks like a fairly intuitive design. I can see those 3 sliders for Weapons, Shields and Engines on the bottom middle-right like Tamgros was talking about.
Thanks for finding this! I think the real lesson here is that the game looks like it'd be awesome to play on a screen that huge.
Zepath
08-20-2009, 09:59 AM
You know what else I notice looking at that shot ... where is the mini-map?
I hope its just something they've turned off, I don't want to have to keep flipping back and fourth between screens to see who's behind me or beside me.
Varrangian
08-20-2009, 10:01 AM
While I like the look of that, I'm going to guess that we are a good 3-4 months away from a fully conceptualized (note not finalized) version of the UI.
knightofhyrule730
08-20-2009, 10:01 AM
champions didnt have a mini map...sto might not either.
as for what i think, meh. its going to change 983401932840912384019238401983409183 times before the game launches, lol.
MyOwnSling
08-20-2009, 10:04 AM
Can't say too much about this as I can't really see enough to tell what is what. Nice to see, though. So far it looks relatively streamlined, if not a bit simplistic.
knightofhyrule730
08-20-2009, 10:04 AM
im more concerned with this image:
http://img39.yfrog.com/i/w22a.jpg/
mmmmm STO is in HD.... /drool
MyOwnSling
08-20-2009, 10:04 AM
champions didnt have a mini map...sto might not either.
as for what i think, meh. its going to change 983401932840912384019238401983409183 times before the game launches, lol.
Is your numpad ok?
SelorKiith
08-20-2009, 10:05 AM
champions didnt have a mini map...sto might not either.
as for what i think, meh. its going to change 983401932840912384019238401983409183 times before the game launches, lol.
Well... CO HAS a Minimap now :D
Zepath
08-20-2009, 10:05 AM
champions didnt have a mini map...sto might not either.
as for what i think, meh. its going to change 983401932840912384019238401983409183 times before the game launches, lol.
LOL! A tactical space game without a radar (mini-map)? That would be precious. The death of the game, but still precious.
williams.blaine
08-20-2009, 10:06 AM
You know what else I notice looking at that shot ... where is the mini-map?
I hope its just something they've turned off, I don't want to have to keep flipping back and fourth between screens to see who's behind me or beside me.
Hm... nice spot. I hadn't noticed that. I can imagine a minimap would be pretty nice to have in this game. Especially when you consider that with most games, a minimap doesn't really make thematic sense. Whereas a starship would definately have this sort of functionality.
blujester
08-20-2009, 10:08 AM
I like it from what my poor eyes can make out. Here's hoping the controls will be dragable so you can put them on the screen where you want them.
SelorKiith
08-20-2009, 10:08 AM
LOL! A tactical space game without a radar (mini-map)? That would be precious. The death of the game, but still precious.
http://img3.abload.de/img/tempssjid4.jpg
CO Minimap... I am Sure that STO will get one too ;)
I like it from what my poor eyes can make out. Here's hoping the controls will be dragable so you can put them on the screen where you want them.
You can freely move the UI in CO...
The UI looks a bit washed , prehaps due to the backround being the same shade roughly. It looks like a main menus which when you mouse over sub-menus open for options . Not sure i'm crazy about that set-up especially when it comes to combat .
jdnix
08-20-2009, 10:31 AM
LOL! A tactical space game without a radar (mini-map)? That would be precious. The death of the game, but still precious.
You mean like EVE doesn't have? I'll have to mourn the death of EVE so many years ago when I play it tonight.
cipher_nemo
08-20-2009, 10:38 AM
Thanks for sharing your find. :)
Note that Cryptic said the UI is still in development, so this may not be the final look and feel of it.
One thing I do like is that the status panels are at the bottom of the screen. This gives me hope that they can be customized/moved around by the player. CO's status panels are at the top of the screen.
Tamgros
08-20-2009, 10:43 AM
I think a lot of the UI is customizable (from what I could tell). You can bring up a map if you want to, you can bring up an enemy bar if you want to. All of it is fairly intuitive and only a few clicks away.
Personally, i really like the UI. I kind of agree with Vuk, maybe if they let us change some colors and the opacity. But functionally I think it's sleek and easy to use...
Zepath
08-20-2009, 11:05 AM
You mean like EVE doesn't have? I'll have to mourn the death of EVE so many years ago when I play it tonight.
Well, since Eve's view is, in itself, a RADAR view that you can easily and quickly zoom in and out ... yeah, no radar would be the death of the game.
Now if STO is going to have the same views as Eve ... I'll accept that as Radar.
Of course, there's no instancing in Eve (except the Star Bases), so its a little bit of a challenge for STO.
Arachnidus
08-20-2009, 11:07 AM
Hi folks!
Just saw this Picture twittered by Zinc 9 Minutes ago and there is a rather good look on the UI:
http://img215.yfrog.com/i/5kt.jpg/
I like it, looks slim, sleek and cool :D
It's...beautiful...
whatinblueblazes
08-20-2009, 11:12 AM
I'm a fan of the aesthetic minimalism. I also like the hints of customizability suggested by Tamgros. Adjustable colors and toggling UI elements would be excellent.
It's actually quite reminiscent of the holographic displays shown in the recent Countdown comic, isn't it?
Tamgros
08-20-2009, 11:15 AM
I just explained a bit of how the UI works in my other thread:
http://img215.yfrog.com/i/5kt.jpg/
Correct, the red/yellow/blue boxes are for Bridge Officer skills. It kind of looks like there are two of each at the moment, I can't really tell through the blur. I think the way it works is you load up one of the circles icons into the black circle within the color, and then that officer performs whatever skill you loaded in at their next opportunity (which could be instantaneous if they have the opportunity now!).
From left to right:
- Not entirely positive on the first one, haha, good start! (but I think it's a hull strength and general ship status)
- Shield distribution. You change it by clicking the arrows. There also seems to be some other functionality that they didn't show us.
When a shield side gets hit, it goes from green to yellow to red as you continue to get hit. But only in this graphic, not on screen. It seems they changed this from the original plan (in a good way)...
- Power distribution sliders
I believe there are some preset options, but they are mainly switched by click and drag
- Forward and rear slots. It looks like this ship has three total.
When you hover over the slot, it tells you general info about what is in teh slot, and relevant info is displayed on screen (such as firing arc in a cool little graphic).
- I think this was were the map was when we watched, but it doesn't quite look like it, so I'm not sure..
- BO and ability slots.
- Menus
And that's it! As I said a lot of info is displayed on screen through hovering over/clicking on different objects, PCs/NPCs.
- http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=711927#post711927
knightofhyrule730
08-20-2009, 11:23 AM
http://img3.abload.de/img/tempssjid4.jpg
CO Minimap... I am Sure that STO will get one too ;)
You can freely move the UI in CO...
Ummm...yeah, CO's minimap was really just "GO HERE FOR QUEST" i didnt really consider it a mini map per se. then again, wow didnt have anything different either.
Though IMO, i hated how CO made it so easy to find where your quests were :(
HailingFrequencyZach
08-20-2009, 12:14 PM
Apolagies if this is a repost.
For many many months now, folks have been wondering just what exactly the UI or User Interface in Star Trek Online will look like.
Well that question has now been answered, almost in full, by a new picture that appeared today on Craig Zinkevich's Twitter from the Gamescon in Germany.
GO HERE TO SEE THE IMAGE http://hailingfrequency.com/boards/index.php/topic,1856
While this is in essence a picture of a picture, it is very much clear enough to see that the UI is well developed and very very clean.
Hailing Frequency will be contacting Cryptic Studios to attempt to obtain a clearer image of the User Interface, but in the meantime, enjoy the image at http://www.hailingfrequency.com/boards/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=4617&fullsize=1
SelorKiith
08-20-2009, 12:17 PM
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=24813
:D
HailingFrequencyZach
08-20-2009, 12:20 PM
Im sorry. I didnt see it was already posted. i was in a rush and excited about the pic
SelorKiith
08-20-2009, 12:23 PM
Im sorry. I didnt see it was already posted. i was in a rush and excited about the pic
No Problem.. it was just a Moment of Triumph about my Twitter Obsession and the fastest response xD
Azurian
08-20-2009, 12:32 PM
Well since we are in Alpha, it's obviously not the final product. But it just doesn't really feel right to me.
Seems like they are going to allow you to customize what you want up on the screen, which is good. But some of them seem like they shouldn't be so small and floating alone.
Hornet331
08-20-2009, 12:43 PM
im more concerned with this image:
http://img39.yfrog.com/i/w22a.jpg/
mmmmm STO is in HD.... /drool
Computergames are HD since... like forever I know played HL1 in 1600x1200 which means its far better then 1280x720, and with a few tweaks i could set the custom res of 1920x1080. :p
That was 11 years ago... even before there whre any HD displays... :D
thefreshjedi
08-20-2009, 12:56 PM
Enlarged (http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1331/uienlarged.jpg)for posterity.
It's hard to make out, but it almost looks as if the minimap might be a part of the Tactical shield display. There is a smaller circle next to the graphic of the ship, on the top right quadrant of the shield strength circle.
There is also a smaller orb that is to the lower left of the throttle guage to the lower left hand side.
There is another box that is obscured by trail glow coming of the port warp nacell, but if you look closely, that could also be map box, but I'm not sure.
-avery
phifur
08-20-2009, 01:07 PM
Still having a hard time making out the UI :(
Zepath
08-20-2009, 01:44 PM
Ok, from the enlargement, it looks like he has six control clusters ...
From left to right ...
The first one (that looks like a tornado) is likely your over-all damage meter.
The second one looks like its the ships shields and major systems (probably damage reports).
The third one appears to be where you adjust your power allocation.
I have no clue what the middle one is ... it looks like switches. I'm guessing its weapon control.
The second from the right might be the Radat/scanners ... now that we've seen what they put in CO.
And the last one appears to be our BO cluster (notice the colors) ... I'm guessing there that its a hover for options type thing.
And while we all speculate on this, the Dev's are laughing their asses off because its just something they threw together to the demo, that they have no intention of using in the final prduct. ;)
Varrangian
08-20-2009, 01:48 PM
Ok, from the enlargement, it looks like he has six control clusters ...
From left to right ...
The first one (that looks like a tornado) is likely your over-all damage meter.
The second one looks like its the ships shields and major systems (probably damage reports).
The third one appears to be where you adjust your power allocation.
I have no clue what the middle one is ... it looks like switches. I'm guessing its weapon control.
The second from the right might be the Radat/scanners ... now that we've seen what they put in CO.
And the last one appears to be our BO cluster (notice the colors) ... I'm guessing there that its a hover for options type thing.
And while we all speculate on this, the Dev's are laughing their asses off because its just something they threw together to the demo, that they have no intention of using in the final prduct. ;)
There is a post above from Tamgros that details what he remembers seeing in the demo from Vegas.
Zepath
08-20-2009, 01:55 PM
There is a post above from Tamgros that details what he remembers seeing in the demo from Vegas.
Damn, didn't see that ... sorry.
And kudos to me for some strong guessing eh? LOL!
Angelphoenix12
08-20-2009, 02:01 PM
i like it :), even though it has my fav ship in it and both looks sweet :D
Jintarai
08-20-2009, 02:03 PM
Cryptic really needs to release some actual pics/videos of in-game play with the UI, we're reduced to scavenging for information like this :(
Zepath
08-20-2009, 02:15 PM
Cryptic really needs to release some actual pics/videos of in-game play with the UI, we're reduced to scavenging for information like this :(
I really don't believe that's the final AI, so I don't think it matters. I suspect it will be much more impressive in-game than what we see there. And will likely look very different.
But as the game changes over the next 6 months, so will that UI.
I just hope they are giving us an API interface so we can make our own widgets for those functions. I'm not asking for mods (I really don't care about that) ... but we all have our own tastes, and it would be nice to be able to create (or use) widgets we prefer.
Sorbek
08-20-2009, 04:06 PM
I'm thinking my 28 inch wide screen @1920 x 1200 is gonna like this game a lot!!!
USS_Parallax
08-20-2009, 04:11 PM
UI changes the most in MMOs. This has like no chance of looking the same as what we end up with.
Lepton
08-20-2009, 04:56 PM
I guess I'll be the first to say it. It's frigging Federation Blue. I certainly hope that the Klingon UI is a proper blood red and without those feeble bridge officer colors that only a petaQ would allow on his ship. This is no UI for a warrior. May Fek'lhr torment the devs in Gre'Thor if we don't see a UI worthy of the Klingon Empire. Qapla!!
cipher_nemo
08-21-2009, 09:53 PM
I certainly hope that the Klingon UI is a proper blood red and without those feeble bridge officer colors that only a petaQ would allow on his ship. This is no UI for a warrior. May Fek'lhr torment the devs in Gre'Thor if we don't see a UI worthy of the Klingon Empire. Qapla!!
UI for a warrior, huh? OK, here you go... you don't need a UI if you're a Klingon warrior. You fire on the target, to heck with the shields, and who cares if your photon torpedoes are depleted? Ramming speed!
See, that wouldn't last long. ;)