It depends on what your minimum expectations are for video card and monitor resolution. As a first pass, I'd say "no" because it's easier to guarantee that things will be readable on minimal hardware if they haven't been through 3D transforms.

On the other hand, it's worth exploring.

A specific critique I have for you on your demo there Izzy is that if you do wind up doing this, I'd want the "slide" motion in 3D to cover less distance than what you were using. This was perfectly fine as part of a proof of concept demonstration, because it was large enough to be obvious and visible, but I'd want the real UI elements to have have slightly less movement (-20%?) than what you were doing here.

Lothic wrote:

I could see something like this as an option if it doesn't take up too much Dev-time to get it working. But I think "standard" non-titled UIs should be the default.

I agree with this. I think that if you're going the route of 3D UI, the player needs to be able to select if they want 2D or 3D. For menus and the like, 3D is fine but in game UI needs to be switchable, just in case...

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

If you're making it selectable between 2D or 3D, that means the devs have to implement, test, and support both and any feature that only works in one mode is likely to be left out.

That's true. That's why I'd prefer the K.I.S.S. principle for this - worry about getting everything working in the simpler "2D" version first as the default then worry about anything fancy and/or 3D as an optional mode later.

Honestly, while the UI is obviously important, as long as it has similar function and customizability to CoH, I'll be more than happy. Ooh-Aah factor in the UI is not even secondary for me. (What comes after tertiary?) Transluscency is cool, customizing colors is great, but if it intrudes too much on my screen real estate or takes me out of what's happening in game, I'd as soon do without. Keep it simple and easy to interpret at a glance, if you don't mind.

And what's all this talk about "swiping?" Are you assuming we're all playing on tablets? Or that we'll all have been forced to use Windows 8 by the time the game comes out and that we're using touchscreens with our Home PC? Myself, I use a 46" flat screen as my primary monitor and I sit 4 feet away from it. What do you mean by "swiping?"

This brings up another question for me...::sigh:: probably another thread. Should I start one on "Multiple screen support", and where should I put it?

WarBird wrote:

And what's all this talk about "swiping?" Are you assuming we're all playing on tablets? Or that we'll all have been forced to use Windows 8 by the time the game comes out and that we're using touchscreens with our Home PC? Myself, I use a 46" flat screen as my primary monitor and I sit 4 feet away from it. What do you mean by "swiping?"

I think people are talking about using things like the upcoming Costume Creator app on things like smartphones and tablets. Like you I doubt I'd have any intention of actually "playing" this game on anything that requires swiping.

Sheesh..you guys could'na thrown me a link?

[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/multi-monitor-support]Try this thread[/url], WarBird.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Of course, you could always go hardcore and dispense with both the 2D and 3D UIs. Just have two windows: one with the 3D view, and the other... telnet.

Welcome to Titan City!
(C) 2015 Missing Worlds Media
All rights reserved
build COT12.20160401b

Current borough: Phoenix Plaza
> run
> jump
> enter door
> talk to trainer
Welcome, ${HERO}! You have enough experience for level 2!
> select cls 2
You have selected classification power 2: "Boot to the head" Are you sure (y/n)? y
You have trained in "Boot to the Head"! To use, type "pow 2".
> pow 2
Ow! You booted me in the head!

etc.

Approach, Ed Gruberman, that you might learn.

Mendicant wrote:

Approach, Ed Gruberman, that you might learn.

Few novices experience so much of Tae Kwon Leep so soon.

It's definitely worth exploring if you can squeeze it in, but I'd highly recommend making an option to turn it off so players can choose to have more of a classic UI. It could also add a sense of immersion to the game, think about this, you could use it to get a hold of your contacts and check mail, just like coh, but with an immersive 3d looking call/menu system. Plus, how cool would it be to check out another players profile like this too.

I love this. Seriously LOVE this.. Looks AWESOME!

Not a final product but well on its way! Keep it up

Izzy, you're at the point where you've got to step back and think in terms of artistic design. Pick a few elements and use them consistently, instead of making every little thing unique.

For example, looking at that tray, the up/down arrows are oddly placed at the left, both being near the middle, and thus hard to click on and easy to click the wrong one. Please make them bigger and space them out, at the very least. Many games put the tray number in between the arrows as a bit of "safety" spacing to reduce mis-clicks.

Further, the whole shape of the left edge seems quite arbitrary, and completely out of sync with the right edge. As Redlynne pointed out, City of Heroes used the lozenge shape (and by extension the rounded-corner rectangle) as its overarching design element. (Another reason the lozenge shape worked so well was that it lines up very nicely with rows and columns of circular elements, i.e. power buttons.) In Star Trek Online, the Federation uses this same lozenge shaping, Klingons use a more hexagonal approach, and Romulans use trapeziods.

The hexes don't bother me as much if the hexes themselves are only subtly brighter than the background. Speaking of which, remember that the buttons overlaid onto the tray will have colors of their own, which could "bleed into" the background if the two aren't sufficiently distinct. Normally, this problem is mitigated by making the background out of muted, desaturated, or otherwise "de-emphasized" colors with respect to the buttons.

And all that really depends on what the art and powers people want to do with those buttons. In CoH, every power set had its own color combination which helped "theme" that power set. So the backgrounds were actually very dark, nearly black. Further, they used an orbiting comet kind of "power is active" indicator, and space had to be made for that. That same space was used (with a different color) to indicate the next powers in chain attacks, and auto-fire powers. The colors for all those things need to be distinct from the background. All these things led to their choice of a dark background, and while your red-to-blue transition is a neat effect and would be workable for other things (e.g. as a background for a text box with bold white text), it's probably going to clash with about 10-20% of the powersets. Assuming CoT uses a similar color scheming system for the power buttons, of course.

One big problem with significant amounts of translucency is that the amount of contrast you have between things in the tray and things behind it will be random, and on average lower contrast, than if the elements were opaque. IIRC, things get messy when alphas fall below about 80%. That said, lots of translucency is nice when you want unimportant elements to mostly "fade out" of the way.

Finally, don't pick too may thematic elements. Two or three will suffice. Two or three colors, two or three window shapes.

Well, first he has to make an underlying structure that Works. This is a UI, not a art-piece.

Be Well!
Fireheart

While I like the look of the 3D interface, unless the powers that are in them are mutually exclusive based on some state in the game, please do not use that interface for power trays. The ability to add additional power trays in CoH was one of the best quality-of-life improvements they ever put in. A level 50 character that was actively working on Incarnate content, along with day jobs, temp powers from mission arcs, etc, could easily have 6 trays worth of powers available to them at any given time. Being able to instantly click on any of them was a great benefit, having to scroll through them would be painful, especially with the scroll model you seem to be seeing there, where not only would it change focus, it would actually move the tray in the process.

Pretty, yes, functional, not so much.

Izzy wrote:

My design goal is to find a happy medium that will be pleasing to Most Players and still appeal to Artsy MAC users (think Dock tray for the OSX and how people dont complain how wastefull it is to do all that 3D stuff).

The dock tray in OS X is something that is (on my Mac) used rather infrequently, spends something like 99% of its time being hidden, and is only a single row of icons, rather than multiple rows stacked behind each other. In [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screwdriver]screwdriver[/url] terms, that's the difference between a flathead, a phillips and an robertson ... different tools for different needs, even though they all serve the same purpose.

For something that is rarely used, or for context-specific reasons is inaccessible, having them rotated back somehow is just fine. For a UI for a game like this, anything that is usable should be in the foreground at all times, ready to be clicked on immediately, with zero lag to be brought forward, including time looking at the screen trying to figure out where your button is.

Major thumbs down to any sort of layered interface like this for power trays.

It could work very nicely in the character creator and areas like that where being able to immediately click on something isn't a big deal. It would be an incredibly bad design for a power tray.

Izzy wrote:

I hear ya.. but i'm starting to like the layered look, just need to move the Middle and Top rows up a bit, so they dont overlay as much. (1 to 2 pixels perhaps)

Again, it's pretty, but that takes away from functionality. In the primary UI for a game, functionality MUST have top billing.

Just as long as the mechanics of the tray is not like DC, the use of the mouse for attacks is unique but it prohibits you from using the mouse to click on the tray. Their chat system is wonky and having to use the F keys , just seems like there is too many things to remember. COH was nice,simple,and usable.

Function over form in this instance. Keep it clean, simple and easy to read and interact with. I see very high opportunity for mis-clicking with that kind of button setup for the point and click peeps. I would like to see a nice clean low texture tray with icons that are easy to distinguish. Remember, just because something can be done does not mean it is better or that it is really necessary. I'd really like to see some flat designs too with little to no 3-d effect and less texture in the background.

The main feature of the game is your character and what they are doing, not the action bars and menus. A good interface is integral, but when you get too fancy it becomes distracting as well as frustrating if the interface is hard to read or interact with.

We don't yet know how many casting slots we will have but I'm hoping we see 8 slots and a build swapping tool (controller gamer only here..)

I'd hate to have to scroll through my action bar like i did in CoH

You KNOW the CoT fanbase is rabid when they obsess over the slightest details in their game's development. XD

My very first thought... that would be so much fun inside the game itself, like your character runs up to a computer panel and needs to hack it by solving a puzzle, that moves like that in 3D, by raising or lowering a pattern of pieces which is actually the code. ( I may hate myself later for suggesting this because I'm so bad at puzzles)

Then you could also just nestle the correct password behind multiple blankets of false headers, for effect maybe or to give programmers a feeling of hacking without actually. Put a timer on it so that you only get so many seconds - based on hacking skill or perhaps you can slow the clock by powering up your super speed, or great intelligence - before the anti-hack program detects you and shuts you out.

You can make this harder in other quests by:
requiring that users type in different words learned from talking to different people to search the database records.
Require that the hero actually have the correct conversation with the correct NPC's before allowing the hero to use said words to gain access. Meaning that your heroes charisma and helpful behavior could influence how much intel they get. Not saying a hero has to be helpful, you could have an adventure where the hero has to infiltrate a gang and thereby do all kinds of bad deeds and tear up the town a bit to earn a spot.
The NPC uses open-ended answers meaning that the player has to search between the lines for the meaning and the correct hacking password.

I stole some of these hacking ideas from the Fallout universe, which I play quite often, all of my responses are suggestions if you can make it even cooler, or more awesome please do so.

2) If you had anything like a helicopter that you had to fly or something really cool and super-techy that heroes could utelize to defend the city or complete a special ops, I could see that.

Okay, a third idea Make it an option to have the groovy UI with floating panels or just regular non-float ones. Maybe when you start the game up and later buried in the control panel options as a check/uncheck box. Different colors and styles might be interesting too, I prefer display purples but that's just me. Some folks might like grays or golds or blues or reds. It just depends on preference, but after playing with 2 solid years of the same UI it DOES get boring, oooh it might be interesting if the UI was randomly selected each time you made a new character and bound specifically to that character, but you could change it up for each one you make. Maybe make it customizable so players could custom it up with their own files? I am looking forward to seeing a chrome and pink crystal one with diamond shaped gems in a diadem, or maybe black gothic with dangling ruby teardrops gems to symbolize blood drops or maybe the fancy panels could unlock after a year of play time. But then I know I'd have to make a super-frilly all white lace panel with little tears and disharmony pulls and runs in it and wrap little bird bones up in it for halloween. But maybe I just have too much imagination :)

More ideas for UI... floating holographic chess boards that players can sit down to and challenge each other in the park? The players would see the full screen view and a minature would appear within the game with players animated to picking up their hands and moving the pieces per move. or perhaps as an emote like /chess to set up a board anywhere? Then others could /watch and be given a list of local chess games Match 1 Hero name vs. Hero name, Match 2 Hero name vs. Hero name. I wonder if you would program checkers and a hero-styled risk in there too. Maybe I'm stretching the boundaries of what UI can do and can't do on that one.

In my opinion, tilted panels are nifty - but might be time spent that could be spent doing something else that would bring the game further along a little bit faster. That being said, since it's basically a volunteer crew, I look at it like I do an impromptu dinner at my house. You'll eat what I cook, and if you don't like it, you don't have to eat it.

The programmer may find tilted panels particularly fun to do, or more interesting - and if that's the case, he/she should feel free to do so. However, it would be nice to have the UI consistent - that is, the same look and feel on every option screen.

Didn't read this whole thread but something came to mind after seeing those in game 3d interface examples.

Modern games have increasing slopes to their learning curves, plus there are always people that need a little extra help navigating the administration aspect of their characters. Seeing thecway that interface seemed to appear as an in game structure got me to thinking that it might be useful to be able to display your interface like that to others in game (limitted of coarse, to friends, party, or invite to view).

If you're helping a friend out you could litterally have your character walk up to their menu, tap their button, and tell them to push it.