46

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st February] Engineering Design Updates

« on: February 26, 2017, 03:45:11 AM »

Hey goatwarrior,

Welcome to the forum.

This will be a longer and more detailed answer than you probably wanted. 😁

Honestly I do not know, yet, when the game will be released. There is still a lot to do and currently I am the only person working on the game.

The issue is I need funding, to be able to work full time, to hire another developer, and to pay for art assets.

Last year I got the game to a state where I felt I could approach publishers for funding. I could show some gameplay, along with functioning multiplayer, and designs for the completed UIs.

Everyone I contacted responded that the game looked very good, but they all said that they do not see a market for space sims at the moment. To quote my most recent contact, "This does look extremely impressive, but TBH I think we are a bit
oversaturated with space games at the moment."

That leaves me with going to Kickstarter. For that I need to be able to show a "vertical slice" of the game, a whole section of gameplay which shows what the game is about. I have chosen Engineering to be that vertical slice, and I am currently building it towards that end.

The Engineering vertical slice needs to be amazing, including all of the Technician interactions and UI animations, so it will take time.


Thanks. 😊

 

47

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st February] Engineering Design Updates

« on: February 24, 2017, 11:14:19 PM »

Hey Laslon,

Ah no bother at all, thanks for checking in.

48

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st February] Engineering Design Updates

« on: February 21, 2017, 01:05:44 PM »

Thanks for the feedback.

49

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st February] Engineering Design Updates

« on: February 21, 2017, 10:21:23 AM »

Mark, I'm not really sure if the little triangles serve any purpose, other than to signify what the user can click on.

One of the issues with having a detailed UI which is vector based and using flat shading (no gradients) is expressing which elements are interactive/click-able. The triangle helps to reinforce what elements can be clicked by the player, it's part of the "language" of the design.

I also like the change from "perf." to "damage", next to the graph. Makes it much clearer what the performance means. I've been wondering if it's the rate of fire or damage per hit.

This is how it is meant to be, "Perf." is a generic placeholder until I program the correct language for each system type into the game.

P.S. I think it would be interesting to create a gif or video of the engineering wheel's transformation from it's earliest days to the current version (and onwards).

Yeah I'd love to do this at some stage.

50

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 21st February] Engineering Design Updates

« on: February 21, 2017, 05:35:44 AM »

Hey all,

My work on the Engineering UI, specifically Technicians at the moment, continues. That work is not ready to show in action, yet. However as I have been working on the UI I have also had some ideas on how to improve it, not just visually but also as a user experience.

Part of that work was recoloring the UI (as shown in my previous post), making click-able/interactive elements brighter and more pronounced with consistent colors.

I have built on to that by adding a small detail to each button in the UI. I think this detail, a small cut out triangle on the top right of each button, helps to highlight the buttons on the UI. And I hope it looks nice too. 😊

I also updated the power nodes on the power wheel to be consistent with the other interactive elements.

As always your feedback is appreciated.




Thanks for reading!

Mark

51

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 17, 2017, 04:05:05 PM »

That could be really cool. Maybe even enemies' radar would struggle to pick you up, like stealth mode. Or you simple conserve more power that way, which is useful for travelling across vast regions of space where you don't need to constantly accelerate.

Well detection is based on the simulation rules, where heat and energy emissions combine to create an "energy signature", with a stronger signature making you easier to detect.

The Silent Running mode would just be a preset which allowed you to quickly and easily reduce your energy signature, but you could do the same thing manually.

52

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 17, 2017, 03:29:55 PM »

My thinking behind making the performance graph green is that on the graph more is good. The higher up the graph you go, the better performance you get.

Having it switch colours would be confusing I think, because there is no "bad" performance on the graph, there is only the current performance out(put) at the current power in(put) level. Lower power gets you less performance, but that is not really "bad", it might be what you want.

If it really is too confusing though then switching back to the original blue colour would be the best solution.

I really like the concept of the UI visually changing when in low power. I will have to think about what triggers a low power status though! Maybe one of the Power Presets is specifically for a low power configuration (we could call it "Silent Running" ), and it has it's own low power colour scheme which gets applied to all of the station UIs on the ship (as a way to signal to everyone that the ship is in "silent running"/low power mode).

53

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 16, 2017, 03:20:14 PM »

Yeah these are just incremental changes. I like the green performance graph too. 😊

54

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 15, 2017, 01:20:06 PM »

Hey all,

I've tweaked the colours a bit more, specifically making the clickable items (buttons) brighter again and making the "Power to Performance" graph green instead of white.

The current selected system on the wheel is not highlighted with the white border, and I added the "System Status" title to the system status panel to make what it is a bit clearer.

55

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 14, 2017, 03:20:57 PM »

Thanks Grey.

I am particularly happy that the green is much a much better indicator for the "health" of things.

Yeah I have some skill in UI design, but I am no artist. I definitely plan to have someone create some really great portraits at a later stage.

56

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 14th February] Engineering Recolor

« on: February 14, 2017, 01:39:14 PM »

Hey all,

I've been working, and making great progress, on the Technicians.

However the more I worked with the UI the more I wanted some more vibrancy in the colours.

I went back to the colour palette and did a few things:
I changed the red to match better.
I re-introduced green (which is complementary to the red).
I added more blues (removed the grays) to the UI, brightening things fairly significantly.
Tweaked what colours some elements use, especially the ship armor status (green to red now).

Here it is, I would love to hear what you think (click to view in full size):


Some elements of the UI are still a work in progress, and so are blank in this pic.

Thanks for reading!

- Mark

57

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 10th February] Technician Portraits

« on: February 10, 2017, 03:04:01 PM »

These portrait icons are a very small part of the UI, only 32px wide (half of what is shown in the picture above).

I realise they aren't amazing, but UoN has no funds beyond my savings, and getting an artist to design these would cost me €40+ each (as well as all of the time it takes to find and deal with an artist). I am not against paying for something which will make a big difference to the game overall, but these icons are not that in my opinion.

When UoN gets funding I do plan on getting an artist to do an entire pass on the UI, including these icons. I just need the graphics to be good enough until then.

58

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 10th February] Technician Portraits

« on: February 10, 2017, 01:32:59 PM »

Hey all,

First off I'd like a share a little news, Universe or Nothing will be showcased by two separate companies at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The two companies are Xenko, the 3D engine we use, and Noesis, our GUI framework. Both are very impressed by how UoN is shaping up.

I've been doing some polishing to the UIs and such for that showcase, but I've also been working on the Technicians system and UI. Part of that means getting rid of the old Technician portraits, which were just placeholders.

Here are the first four portraits:

They are modelled and rendered in 3D, and then converted to vectors for use in the UI.

Let me know what you think.

You will be able to replace portraits, and/or create your own Technicians, using the mod system.

I hope to have some footage of the basic Technician system fairly soon.


Thanks for reading!

Mark

59

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 06th February] Engineering UI (With Video)

« on: February 06, 2017, 10:46:48 PM »

Love it. I actually have been most interested in the engineering part of the game so seeing this progress on it is really cool. I like the addition of the visual confirmation for a preset being selected, but it seems a little in your face with the big red background and all, which is fine but it may be a bit of a nuisance when things are really hectic. I have a few questions but it looks like Blaze asked most of them already lol, good timing there. One thing I do want to ask is if the pulsing of each connection has any meaning or if its just flair, it doesn't seem like a real problem but it did make the diagram a little disorienting for the first few seconds, but that may just be because I wasn't in full screen.

all in all looking forward to getting the chance to overload my ship's engines. Can't wait to hop in game when it's ready!

Thanks man.

The pulsing of the connections is just flair, to make the UI look less static. I will tone it down though, it's probably a bit over done.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 06th February] Engineering UI (With Video)

« on: February 06, 2017, 10:42:54 PM »

First impression: too many blinking lights.
Second impression, after making the video full-screen: there are not too many blinking lights.

I like it.

Thanks. You really do have to see the UI full screen, it is too detailed for a small window.
As Dusk mentioned too, the pulsing on the power wheel connections might be a little over-done (it is just for flair, to make the UI a little more dynamic looking).

The basic info is on the nodes themselves, while detailed info is in the info pane on the left. You only need to look at info on left if you need strict details.

Exactly, I will also make be making it clearer which system is currently selected by highlighting it's node on the power wheel.

A few questions:
1. Does the red blinking of the nodes mean they are being damaged? The yellow blinking of node's icons mean that they are being used?

Yeah, exactly. Again these are early and crude animations, I intend to improve them significantly.

2. Operation says Online even if the node is not. Shouldn't it say Offline, then?

I haven't hooked this into the game logic yet (though the colour of the icon is). Well spotted.

3. Operation in yellow means that it's at max energy input?

Yeah, and brown is below minimum power.

4. Changing preset displays a big red message. Can you try changing it to a colder color, so it doesn't seem so alarming? Maybe you can use such brief red messages to display other like a node being destroyed.

Absolutely, the red is a little alarming. I will change it.

5. Can you decrease the input of energy into nodes by right-clicking on the lines, like you increase it with left-clicking?

Yeah, that's how it works currently. The mouse wheel will work later on as well.