New User-Interface for CnC

[JOo]

if someone wants to help ...



(note : some logos/buttons r just placeholder )

please , let me know if you like some specific frames/buttons/logos/colors/styles

3d-ish-ui is from xanax , the first two (original + new one) is from pchote , and the last 6 is my work so far

feel free to work with those pictures ...


basicly we agree with the GDI-frame-style , nod-spikes are probably a "no-go" (batman in my head?) so i changed it ...

i guess we agree with the colors for nod ... but not for gdi (pchote wants a silver-blue contrast , i dont like the blue but i agree that the black background has to be changed , something like a bright yellow/brown would be my suggestion , same for the gdi-frame

the green tiberium buttons looks ugly ( i thought it will give a slight oldschool look) ... so we go for the "light-version" or in blue (depends on the background-color)

[secret]

I'm not a big fan of your work, everything looks pretty darn pixelated.

The logos ought to look clean, and sharp, but not pixelated, really...

[JOo]

darn , youre right ... all this darn pixelated UIs ...

good to know youre not a fan of my work , so whats with the other stuff ? xanax`s 3d-frame/buttons ... pchotes basic ui with canged colors ... ?

how about helping us secret? ... you could make some new logos , of course "no-pixelated-logos" ...

[Dan9550]

My opinions for the new interface:

* Keep the silos and power bars
* they should have a gdi/nod logo which is from the tiberian dawn era (3rd set of images), the second set of images show a gdi logo that is in the tiberium wars style.
* if i had to pick what i think are the best looking ones so far its the 2nd image, and the set which is the most classic looking with original logos etc.

I'm sure whatever happens the final product will look pretty damn awesome. also i think that blue shouldnt be associated with gdi, it reminds me of cnc3 again it will ruin the timeline for me if we make cnc like cnc3

[JOo]

uhm , i guess "we" *cough* dont wanna go for the classic style ...

so we better make "new" logos ... or use pchotes (loading screen logos)
i totally agree with the "no-blue-for-gdi" , ... theres always a problem with nod / soviet (cnc/ra) ... theyre just both "red" ... but we can make a difference by makn the GDI - lightend up yellow/brown , the eagle from the original shows us that it works (even in tiberium sun)

the problem is , openras "cnc" is different from the original , and our own UI would show all people , that we are not ashamed of it ... ^^

its an easy thing to copy-paste that whole dos-ui (the greyish) from cnc to openra ... a bit yaml stuff ... but theres always some people that will agree , and some that "dont" agree with that ... so we have to find something "for all" (thats why i started the thread btw)

would be great , if someone can shoot us some more prototypes (maybe different from the currently existing )

dont worry about the yaml stuff , pchote will do that job (once we have a UI)

[xan2622]

I tend to think that these UIs need much more work (even mine).
Creating a shape (even if it's a good one) doesn't make a UI complete.

Do OpenRA interfaces (at least, the CnC one) need to reflect the styles of old CnC games ?

Or can we create really modern UIs that we could find in current games ? (high quality, many colors, gradiants, effects...)

[JOo]

Do OpenRA interfaces (at least, the CnC one) need to reflect the styles of old CnC games ?

Or can we create really modern UIs that we could find in current games ? (high quality, many colors, gradiants, effects...)

thats a good question !

[Matt]

I like the blue one without the metallic border. It makes a good GDI counterpart for the existing red one. Please don't add the power and silo percentages. Keep them in the popup only. Games should hide that they are only about numbers at much as possible.

[-Jes-]

The top second one from right has some SERIOUSLY amazing shading work. It's also pleasantly simple, which is a must for any UI.

The one to the left of it is acceptable as well.

[Dan9550]

also if we are going to redesign the interface we should find somewhere to put an objectives panel button or whatever. So scripted cnc maps can have the objectives window like ra.

[Sleipnir]

also if we are going to redesign the interface we should find somewhere to put an objectives panel button or whatever. So scripted cnc maps can have the objectives window like ra.

It already does (the objectives panel was originally written for C&C, long before RA used it).
The panel in the ingame menu shows the mission objectives; the statistics panel is just the default that will be shown if you don't define your own (assuming that nobody broke it when porting the logic to RA).

[xan2622]

I am just wondering..
Can't we use this interface ? I like it a lot.




It wouldn't be a hard to make it compatible (modifying it) with the current OpenRA build palette (the 3 columns).

See you.

[Matt]

That was Sleipnirs plan anyway. The original PCX/SHP parts to build the UI may be high res enough.

[xan2622]

Here is a quick mockup of a TS interface, with a 3 columns build palette :

(of course, the 6 tabs wouldn't necessary have these yellowish flashy small icons..)
(made from the real game, no compression loss here, everything available as PSD and PNG)






And here is another mockup for the two columns UI:

[Sleipnir]

Those mockups look really great. I think we'll go with something very similar to the 2-column mockup when we get around to wiring up the TS mod interface.