A Quick Look at UI Customization

[DarthSammich]

As someone who plays SWTOR in eyefinity mode all I have to say is BRAVO SIRS, BRAVO!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and about fargin time.............

[Prenavo]

Love it!!! One question thought. Do we get the ability to add more than four bars to the UI? I really hope so cause the four we have just don't seem like enough, especially with Legacy.

[Astralll]

I am really excited about this addition. And I am glad BioWare waited to get player feedback after release. It is really coming together.

[idoevilthings]

So..1.2 is the end to Beta? or is it going to be 1.3?

[AtomicDP]

Okay, if you teach this stuff, please teach us what is wrong with red and green boxes? I found looked it perfectly adequate, functional yet not ugly. How would you have colored them (or distinguished by other means)?

 

Such a good point. Criticizing others work is so easy, but I bet you anything that people would hate anything this guy would put out more than the changes we've seen in the video. Grow up guy who "teaches design." Get over yourself.

[RAma]

This looks like a great update, I just hope it includes the ability to hotkey the bottom and side action bar buttons as well though.

 

Can't you already do this?

[Darth_Haderach]

You outdid yourselves! But to make my comment humbling I will also add - should have been there at launch.

[Tahana]

I downloaded the PTR just to play with this feature.. Once I got used to how everything worked it was rather easy.

 

One thing he alludes to in the video in a way is how you can configure the bars. In order to make the vertical left and right bars horizontal you have to change the way they display.. As I am at work right now and unable to log into the PTR at this time I don't remember the exact spot.. But it has to do with the sliders and how many slots per column/row.

[Sirsri]

Okay, if you teach this stuff, please teach us what is wrong with red and green boxes? I found looked it perfectly adequate, functional yet not ugly. How would you have colored them (or distinguished by other means)?

 

If you're colour blind red and green are generally the same or very close to the same colour.

 

 

So really blue yellow, grey, brown white. Or as you say, distinguished by various other means (icons outlines etc. ).

 

For the UI layout the colours can even be particularly bad, because you don't need to like it, it just needs to work. Icons for example that fail at colour blindness are distinguished by placement.

[Sirsri]

Ah OK, I see where you are coming from on this. I'd say it's a scientific/academic critique mostly. Not that I'm saying I disagree with you.

 

No, it's a 'how does a live game production environment from a company as big as EA with 400 developers screw up such simple stuff'.

[Tahana]

If you're colour blind red and green are generally the same or very close to the same colour.

 

 

So really blue yellow, grey, brown white. Or as you say, distinguished by various other means (icons outlines etc. ).

 

For the UI layout the colours can even be particularly bad, because you don't need to like it, it just needs to work. Icons for example that fail at colour blindness are distinguished by placement.

 

As an FYI when you click on an item it tells you in words what it is for on the item itself.. It also states what that item is in the edit window. As the video stated the colors are there just to let you know where those items rank. ie red ones aren't enabled by default.

[Sirsri]

As an FYI when you click on an item it tells you in words what it is for on the item itself.. It also states what that item is in the edit window. As the video stated the colors are there just to let you know where those items rank. ie red ones aren't enabled by default.

 

Right, as he explicitly states in the video they're using colour to convey information about the window. So you can search through all the windows to know which is which, because they're too lazy to put thought into colour choices. Because their development staff didn't think about this sort of thing in advance. It's amateurish. Lots of other major releases have colour blind modes (the CiV games, modern warfare 3, League of legends is adding one etc.). It's the sort of thing that you'd think with 400 people on staff they'd know. Some of them have to be colourblind almost certainly, it's common enough.

 

Building a game this big is in part anticipating problems, and solving them before they become actual problems. Knowing what the customer base will want, and minimizing the amount of work to get there. If they do it properly now they won't need to do a colour blind mode later, for example.

[Warrior_Goel]

The customizable UI is great .

 

However, in the video preview, I saw that the Player/NPC names and classes had been moved from below the portrait to beside the portrait, inside the player info box.

 

I hope the option to keep the Player Name/Class and NPC Name/Class where it was (outside of the player info box) in the launch UI remains available. I honestly would like to keep all UI elements in the middle of the screen completely intact, especially the name/class-below-the-portrait.

 

If this is in the options available already, great. If not, I'd love to see it come back.

[Sirsri]

after playing with it a bit, I think I have a better solution the my rather secondary gripe about colour choice, which is simply: turn everything on by default. It's much easier to see when you've turned things off.

 

And the "large tooltip" element doesn't seem to sensibly connect with how it actually works. It's easy enough to figure out, but there's no reason to not do it properly in the designer.

[Aurojiin]

This looks like a great update, I just hope it includes the ability to hotkey the bottom and side action bar buttons as well though.

Uh, you can already do that.

 

I'm not even sure how you'd play the game well without doing it.

[Necrosia]

I like what I see, gonna probably use retro

[Tahana]

Right, as he explicitly states in the video they're using colour to convey information about the window. So you can search through all the windows to know which is which, because they're too lazy to put thought into colour choices. Because their development staff didn't think about this sort of thing in advance. It's amateurish. Lots of other major releases have colour blind modes (the CiV games, modern warfare 3, League of legends is adding one etc.). It's the sort of thing that you'd think with 400 people on staff they'd know. Some of them have to be colourblind almost certainly, it's common enough.

 

Building a game this big is in part anticipating problems, and solving them before they become actual problems. Knowing what the customer base will want, and minimizing the amount of work to get there. If they do it properly now they won't need to do a colour blind mode later, for example.

 

Sounds like you are just finding a reason to complain. They aren't trying to offend color blind people, there is an alternate way for people to tell what the windows does.

 

So by your definition because they have a re-sizable UI now they are trying to offend blind people.

[OrshabaalLord]

Sounds like you are just finding a reason to complain. They aren't trying to offend color blind people, there is an alternate way for people to tell what the windows does.

 

So by your definition because they have a re-sizable UI now they are trying to offend blind people.

 

+1

 

/5char

[AlandriaNix]

anybody that doesn't like this is an idiot

[VulcanLogic]

Nice to see more will be added, because on live and the PTS, there are no options for doing anything with those tiny little debuff icons you see on the boss' target frame. What's more, there is no way at all to distinguish between your debuffs and those of the same AC (or shared tree of the opposite AC). Something really needs to be done here. If you're balancing class DPS around optimal play, and you really should, then DoT classes need to be able to track their debuffs better. Certain classes with procs would also prefer to have the UI do a better job of indicating when these procs are up (lightning sorcs and balance shadows in particular).

 

One way to do this is by doing something with the name plates. In another popular MMO, a 3rd party addon called Tidy Plates turns each nameplate into a personal debuff tracker, complete with text timers. Additionally it makes for a much better targeting system than that game's default, and would be a huge improvement over TOR's somewhat subpar targeting system. Another way would be to separate the debuff bar entirely from the target frame, allowing players to resize and move their debuffs around for better tracking. Something like Powerauras would help with the procs, but better audio cues would be a good start as well.

 

I like my UI layout on the PTS; very similar to the SpartanUI I used in another MMO. Give the UI the power to better relay DoT and Proc information to the players, and there wouldn't be much more I could ask for.

Edited April 5, 2012 by VulcanLogic

[Sverrir]

can we copy key bindings between characters, I seriously hate to make all my keybindings again ^^ (maybe have a load system on that too)

[Blue_Leader]

This is definitely sounding promising. Though I do have one question: can we change the color of the UI? That was something not mentioned in the video. Edited April 5, 2012 by Blue_Leader

[SentinelDranoel]

It is already on that pts as you know, and I am already in love without it. My set up is a combo of city of heroes and champions online.

[Alexael]

Looks like a good start to the customisation system. Two things I would like to see which are not mentioned:

 

• Key bindings as part of the layout xml
  
• Extra button bars which are resizable (in terms of the number of buttons).
  

 

The latter is because I like to have a small button bar floating just below my character for "emergency" buttons so my fingers don't have to search for a rarely used key bind.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Alexael
I fail at making lists

[Suttree]

Not the best of demonstrations...too short and not enough playing around with the interface. I did not see him show that I can re-orient my Hotbars. I don't want two vertical Hotbars and two horizontal Hotbars. I want the ability to have any combination of vertical and horizontal Hotbars I desire. If I want three horizontal and one vertical, then I should be able to change the orientation of one of the vertical Hotbars from vertical to horizontal.