playtests new ra ui

Norman_ · Post by **Norman_** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:43 am

now there is only 1 queue and only 1 icon for airplanes/helis and sub/ship queue is merged too. before, airplanes and helis / subs and ships, each had their own icon. now u want to build a heli, you click on a airplane, you want to build a sub, u click on a ugly "grappling hook" instead of the nice looking sub icon. this is no good. why getting helis/airplanes, subs/ships together in one queue? its not necessary and its not looking good, its ugly and cheap. this is no improvement..

$:\$

Post by **Scott_NZ** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 5:02 am

The grouping of helicopters with planes and ships with subs into shared tabs on the build palette is because they share production queues. The rule of thumb is one tab per queue.

This isn't really any different to how vehicle, infantry and structure production already work. Both Soviet and Allied barracks structures produce out of the same queue and tab for example, and yet everyone has been fine with that.

That "grappling hook" is an anchor btw, and represents naval units in general instead of ships in particular.

Norman_ · Post by **Norman_** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 6:20 am

helicopter / airplanes, subs and ships are different unit types. sure helis and yaks/migs are both airunits, subs and ships are naval units, but still they are different and theres no reason mixing them in one production queue. everyone has been fine with the way it was before, with helicopter and airplane queue, with sub and with ship icons. so why changing it?
unable to imagine that anyone playing this game often, told the developer "please change it, make it look ugly".
it is a better idea to ask the people who play this awesome game what they want or expect from openra instead of just changing something what was good. the ui itself is a good thing it seems but the icons... *_*
they deserve their own queues with own icons. old design was way better.
anchor for both naval units makes "a bit more" sense than this airplane icon for allies (they have no airplanes), but still looks ugly, and the old icons are more specific and better looking. thats a good reason not to share the same production queue.

AoAGeneral · Post by **AoAGeneral** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 7:09 am

Actualy, I would prefer things that share a queue to be on the same tab rather then split tabs. Dont want to hit the submarine tab and cant build it because the ship tab is producing something. That creates to much clicking. Grouping them on the same screen is efficient.

If that is, they do actualy share the same queue.

Norman_ · Post by **Norman_** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 5:59 pm

since its possible to engy other faction buildings to get the units, sharing one queue makes sense, but that almost never happens. in private newbie lets try this game the first time games, that might boost their efficiency but they dont really need this. it is one key to press to get to the other queue if you are the proud owner of other factions technology.
i like the "old" design and think openra should also look good, even with less potential "efficiency".

JOo · Post by **JOo** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 8:32 am

norman norman norman ...

first of all , its good to see you raising your voice about something you dont like in openra ... so did i , more then one time
the sad truth is , you will have a hard time when you keep doing that ... most of the decisions/pull requests/changes in openra get merged into a release because theres people behind it , who are capable of doing so ... so they have basicly the might to change everything to their desire ... not to yours ... (theres just not enough time for that ...)

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA isnt for people who spend alot of time "playing" openra ... its for the "Devs" who spent alot of time "creating" openra ...

so theres our 3-5 man strong main Dev-team ... and then there is their Dev-henchmens , agreeing to everything what this 5 man contributing , most of the time ...

in chase you didnt notice , the "whole" UI is "ALL" about efficiency ... with a litte bit of more color to please the unbelievers ... and to make them believe ... its a "improvement"

1. Timer , skrinked down to 1/5 of its original size , switched from "centered" to "right-adjusted"

2. Energy Bar , gone ... switched to a number output ... (or whatever you wanna call that) ... this is just so wrong , because the energy bar is a main "UI" element in rts games , specially cnc

3. Buttons (sell,rep,etc... ) all srinked down to fit in the "new and awesome" UI
also the graphics are not used anymore ... and unfortunately ... they couldnt find a genius to finally separate "SELL" and "ENERGY DOWN" ... with atleast one button in-between

4. Finally , all Hotkeys switched to F-Keys ...because ? because all rts games do it that way , and if you want to change it ... you can do so ...
but dont expect the people who are creating this game to think about this ... its just easier to put them all to F ... its a comfortable DEV-Hotkey layout ...
nobody cares if you feel like a piano-player

and norman ... watch out ... you might get confused by this :

most of the Devs dont play OpenRA ... except for testing purposes ... and the approval for their Ideas/Pull Requests and changes comes from the Henchmens who admire them ... saying "yes i like" and "amen"

they dont want/need your ideas or complaints , they want your bug/crash reports ... and thats it

oh ... and norman .. i dont expect you to agree with me by my complaints ...

i just want to explain to you that it is a "waste of a time" to do so ... to complain

Norman_ · Post by **Norman_** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:51 am

the sad truth...sure this wont change anything. all i dont like is the design of the new merged queue icons and i want YOU to know it. they just make it look bad. a new ui is a good thing. not sure if you need a calculator without energy bar, it needs some games until you know when its time for a new power plant. i also think waiting in lobby for a game while im writing this is no wasted time. its efficient usage of unnecessary waiting time, even nothing will be changed. i like to complain and complaing is all i can to do in this case. at least you heard my raised voice. for me this icon looks bad issue is something like a bug, you can send the report and waste your time.

Post by **Sleipnir** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:17 am

We *do* appreciate feedback when it is reasonable and in good faith. It is true that we are not likely to change something based on one person's complaints (unless they provide sound logic for why their complaint is valid), but if 5 or 10 people complain then we will take that as a strong sign that something may need to be changed. This is why we have already said that we will be reintroducing a power bar into a future revision of the sidebar, despite it offering no real benefit over the numerical display.

@Microbit: I have already explained the reason for the F-key production hotkeys. The previous hotkey setup (where each unit had its own key) prevented players from customizing their key bindings because almost all of the good keys were reserved by the production palette. For technical and UI reasons it was not feasible to make every individual actor hotkey configurable, and so we instead chose to follow the UI conventions set by other RTS games by assigning hotkeys to the slots.

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:34 am

JOo wrote: ↑so theres our 3-5 man strong main Dev-team ... and then there is their Dev-henchmens , agreeing to everything what this 5 man contributing , most of the time ...

Actually it is pretty hard to get changes into OpenRA especially UI related stuff is often a controversial discussion that can be frustrating. Working on the GUI is time intensive and difficult which is why few people do it. Feel free to send your own improvements as patches, but you need to be prepared for criticism.

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/5972 was accepted because it fixed a lot of long-standing problems in the program logic not solely because of the visual redesign.