HUD Design Contest!

[»Ceiu]

Well, it seems my ability to design things has gone to hell, so I need some help.

 

 

 

Most of the directions are in the image. If there are any questions, feel free to post them here.

[Psythe]

Questions:

 

Do you want each frame of an animation or meter in separate files? (cooldown0.png, cooldown1.png...) Or as photoshop layers, or what?

 

"The number of charges built up/remaining" is this good for anything besides cat core? Or is a functionality to be added? (Dual Core being able to hold two charges would be really cool, now that I think of it) Oh wait. Or is this solely the amount of transwarps being held?

 

One bar of cooldown for the FTL, and one bar of recharge for the antideath? I don't see what else uses cooldown or what else uses recharging.

[»Ceiu]

Do you want each frame of an animation or meter in separate files? (cooldown0.png, cooldown1.png...) Or as photoshop layers, or what?

You should only need to draw the 0% state and the 100% state. This should be rendered as a bar or something else that I can put into segments rather than actual values that require separate images to display.

 

 

"The number of charges built up/remaining" is this good for anything besides cat core? Or is a functionality to be added? (Dual Core being able to hold two charges would be really cool, now that I think of it) Oh wait. Or is this solely the amount of transwarps being held?

Cat Core is an example of what would use this. There are a few other existing things that could make use of the counter, as well as some things on the bench that require it.

 

 

One bar of cooldown for the FTL, and one bar of recharge for the antideath? I don't see what else uses cooldown or what else uses recharging.

The progress bars should be identical, so what they're used for shouldn't matter. The only thing that should change from each recharge section is the icon (though, you can skip that -- icons are easy to make).

[Static]

Some ideas-

 

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3453/conti.png

 

Tetris-

Edited August 19, 2009 by Static

[Acer]

I don't know what I was doing. =p Just fooling around.

 

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8581/hyperspace.png

Edited August 19, 2009 by Acer

[»Ceiu]

I really liked the placement suggestion Tetris had, save for a few minor details. This is what I've got so far:

 

 

I still need to do something with the radar... So get to work.

[Acer]

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4152/lilradar.png

 

Easy border made from the item borders. =o

 

Prolly a little too small though.

Edited August 19, 2009 by Acer

[Psythe]

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5397/43928333.png

[Kilo]

The flag minimap should stay where it is, smaller would work, when its lit up it doesn't have to make the whole thing opaque. I was thinking about just cutting some black into the middle of all of the current light-ups but couldn't do it in a nonfugly matter.

[»Ceiu]

I don't agree. If someone can come up with a better place for it (and make it look better), then why not put it there?

[Kilo]

That spot is much better than right under the energy bar.

[»Ceiu]

Matter of opinion. The fact we have three placements with such a small number of player suggestions kinda tells you that not everyone wants it where it is now. Of course, it could be that it's just too damn big right now, but still...

[Kilo]

Considering it sat there for years without ever doing anything, the main problem is that now it goes opaque. Which isn't even really a problem unless you're running on a screen resolution popular in the '90s...but still annoying even if you're not. Basically the outline of the map should be there as before, doesn't need to be as big as it is now, when lit up for flags, the outline of that sector would get a 1-2 pixel glow, and that's it. A lot less intrusive that way.

 

Of course since it's a "matter of opinion" it's only a matter of time before doc sets up a personal preference option to let you move it to different places or even turn it off entirely. Lol.

[»Ceiu]

You done derailing this yet?

[Emit]

Just make it a bar instead of a stupid map.

 

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

 

With the | as light up things

[Dr Brain]

Don't use red and green. 4% of the male (aka subspace) population is red green color blind. If you feel that nothing will do as well as red and green, make sure the intensities are very different. Something like bright green and dark red, for example.

 

Oh, and don't forget about the flag timer. It has to go in there somewhere.

 

But keep up the good work everyone. These things look great.

[JoWie]

Don't forget the shields timer, unless you stopped using those.

 

Also, why not finally add a money and exp counter, it's so easy to do.

[Samapico]

The annoying-opaque-HUD-element problem can be partially solved if you use 2 superposed layers, one under ships and tiles, opaque, and another over ships/tiles/weapons, with 50% of the pixels black. This means you see things through it, while it doesn't look fugly normally.

 

And +1 vote for money/exp counter, maybe even a small fading/popping '+ 32$' animation above or under the counter when you get a kill (or flag game win). Nothing too flashy, just to make things more... alive.

 

+1 vote for ?commands to toggle the HUD panels... you could even have a few color schemes for the bars and stuff, and you could choose one. As long as download size doesn't get too high though.

 

Since it is kind of hard and it makes bigger downloads if you do a pixel-by-pixel bar animation, a bar with "blocks" might be more suitable... like the 2nd, 4th and 6th bars in this image:

http://www.essentialobjects.com/screenshots/progressbar_aspnet.gif

[»Ceiu]

Don't use red and green. 4% of the male (aka subspace) population is red green color blind. If you feel that nothing will do as well as red and green, make sure the intensities are very different. Something like bright green and dark red, for example.

The only reason it's red and green is because that's how it looks with the current 'alert status' for a given sector -- I just didn't shut off the filter before saving it. Regarding the intensities: If that was a major concern of yours (I mean, really), then I'd rather just find one of these colorblind jerks and have them tell me if they can identify a difference between the colors.

 

 

 

...

Wow... Want to request any other features that I'm already planning?

 

The annoying-opaque-HUD-element problem can be partially solved if you use 2 superposed layers, one under ships and tiles, opaque, and another over ships/tiles/weapons, with 50% of the pixels black. This means you see things through it, while it doesn't look fugly normally.

Not a bad idea, though it means doubling up the graphics and making them a pain to update.

 

And +1 vote for money/exp counter, maybe even a small fading/popping '+ 32$' animation above or under the counter when you get a kill (or flag game win). Nothing too flashy, just to make things more... alive.

I'm a bit hesitant to add a money counter to this. Mostly because it's not important to know how much cash you have at any given time and the amount of extra traffic that would be required to make it work really makes it hard to justify given how useless it is (though it would be neat/pretty, won't argue that one).

Regarding the animation thing -- I was actually planning on replacing the current kill messages with something like that.

 

+1 vote for ?commands to toggle the HUD panels... you could even have a few color schemes for the bars and stuff, and you could choose one. As long as download size doesn't get too high though.

?togglehud yes; extra color schemes, no.

 

Since it is kind of hard and it makes bigger downloads if you do a pixel-by-pixel bar animation, a bar with "blocks" might be more suitable... like the 2nd, 4th and 6th bars in this image:

I'm actually planning on breaking the bar up into 11 lvz objects: 1 for the completed bar and 10* copies of the "inactive bar" to cover the completed bar. This allows me to send a single collection of lvz object modification packets to modify the display time of each inactive bar segment to basically let the client do the entire animation and timing, rather than constantly sending lvz toggle packets. As a nice bonus, this means that the actual design of the bar can be anything, since it's the inactive portion that's actually being animated.

 

* This could actually be any number, I just went with 10 since it's a nice round number and will work well enough for what we're doing.

[Static]

Updated, with radar borders.

 

Tetris-

 

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/9021/cont2k.png

[Dr Brain]

For the record, I'm color blind.

 

I've really wanted a ASSS ?preferences command to handle saving settings for every player. Things like the HUD placement and toggling portions on and off could easily become part of that.

 

For a money+exp display, there's no reason it has to update multiple times per second. It could update once every few seconds and do its job fine. Another option is to not display the lowest few digits, and update whenever higher digits change.

[»Ceiu]

Minor miscommunication, Tetris. I was referring to the flag radar (which is just kinda floating) rather than the existing radar. Not bad, though.

[Samapico]

If that was a major concern of yours (I mean, really), then I'd rather just find one of these colorblind jerks and have them tell me if they can identify a difference between the colors.

 

For the record, I'm color blind.

 

I lol'd

 

 

 

Not a bad idea, though it means doubling up the graphics and making them a pain to update.

Yeah, maybe only for the sector map, or whatever large HUD item there might be. No use to do it for everything, really.

 

 

ok, so you could basically define like 100 screenobjects, 1 for each pixel, all using the same image, with different times, with the same objectID, and you'd get a nice fluid animation... interesting.

[JoWie]

you worry about the traffic generated by a 1 or 2, 11 byte ObjectMove packets every few seconds. yet you send a 1428 byte settings packet every ship change Edited August 19, 2009 by JoWie

[Static]

Okay, here it is-

 

Tetris-

 

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3299/cont34.png