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No, don’t stop. That was great. 😀
It’s fantastic to hear feedback from a seasoned player.
All of the empty space will be filled, I just wanted to get feedback on the radar and contacts list here.
The radar and contacts list have the same functionality effectively, the contacts list allows you to find and target ships/stations/other if they are not easily identifiable on the radar (like when contacts are bunched too close together).
Available turrets will be listed on the left hand side. When you hover over a turret it’s firing arc and range will be displayed. I’m not showing them all of the time because it would be even worse than Artemis, UNION ships multiple turrets located around the hull of the ship.
Scanning range will be the same as Science, but the weapon range will depend on the type of each turret. You will be able to lock targets which are outside of your weapons range. You will be able to set the radar’s range, to have it view a smaller area.
We will provide lots of feedback on what is hit, with blips on the radar, sounds, and a combat log (which can be toggled on and off). The combat log will have a history of who has hit what in your scanning range. Furthermore all ships will leave wreckage, and these will be displayed on the radar (debris contacts can also be toggled off to avoid clutter).
The bottom left will be a picture in picture display, which can be set to any of the ship’s external cameras (one for each side of the ship, and one on each turret so you can see exactly what it is tracking and firing at). At present we are not planning on having any floating cameras, as we think having them attached to the ship’s hull adds to the feeling of realism. This picture in picture display will be on all of the role UIs, to keep everyone in and aware of the action. We may also add the ability to display other things there, like a ship status overview (structural integrity and such).
I do like the idea of screen shake, we will experiment with that at some stage.
The UI is being designed for both mouse and touch screen use (there is a good deal of space between buttons to allow for touch). There will also be customisable keyboard shortcuts for as many actions as possible.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Oh, I missed one. The distance to each target is listed under contacts (the contacts list is sorted by distance by default).
The bearing is more complicated, since it is in three dimensions, rather than one. I’m not if, or how, I would display it.
you would have to give 2 bearings for a 3d environment the first bearing for left and right then a second for up and down. 000 mark 000 for dead ahead, 090 mark 090 for turning right and up 90 degrees etc, would be quite complex at first but cant see how else you could give accurate bearings other wise
I am not sure how useful bearings will be in UNION. Movement is a lot more dynamic than Artemis, with acceleration and momentum, bearings will change very fast. I will experiment with adding them though.
Suggestions for now:
1. Separate sorting for the ships list and the radar-view.
2. Highlights on weapon systems that are in range of current target.1) By sorting do you mean the filtering contacts?
2) Our targetting works very differently to Artemis targeting. I will cover the details later, but turrets will be highlighted when in range of one or more targets (it is a multiple target system).
we will need bearing for long distance travel a few degrees error can magnify quite quickly over range Im not sure its particularly important to the Tactical officer other then possibly to distinguish between unknowns or groups of enemy. I recorded a video of me looking at the image for the first time and verbiliseing the thoughts I was haveing as best I could. I’ve uploaded it here I should also add that you have answered a few of my thoughts already. I deliberately went in blind.
Thanks Fish, that is extremely useful to me. Even just hearing how you perceive different elements is great.
Some answers:
The Tactical radar plane is set to the ship’s plane, so as the shup rotates in space Tactical will see the contacts rotate around the ship. The ships rotation speed is fairly slow, so you won’t have a situation where contacts are spinning at high velocity.
I may add the ability to rotate the radar, I’ll experiment with that.
You will be able to adjust the radar display range.
You were spot on in regards to the contact shapes being filled, that gives an indication of the scan strength on that contact. The scan strength is determined by the contact’s energy signature (which is mostly comprised of heat) and your ship’s sensor strength. Science can use a combination of active scans and probes to increase the sensor strength for an individual contact, or in an area.
The higher the scan strength on a contact the more data you can get on it, and the more accurate your weapon locks are.
If the scan strength is low enough then the contact shows up as unknown. If it is lower still the contact doesn’t show at all.
Energy signatures are mostly heat, but the other large contributors are shields and long range sensors. Long range sensors are like periscopes, they give you vital information but you want to use them in short bursts to avoid detection.
I have been working on targeting since. I feel I may be causing some confusion by posting pics of the UI too early, so I will wait for a more complete version before posting one again.
Thanks so much for the video.
And just for people who would like to know the development process behind these UIs.
I draw them as static versions first, as you see in the progress picture. Then I add animations for each element which requires it. Once that is done each element is packed into a texture atlas, and I rebuild the UI in-engine with code. They end up looking pretty much exactly as they are in the mockup.
Thanks for all of your feedback,
Mark
Thank you Mark for shearing this stuff with us, I will be happy to go through the process again in the future if it has value to you. its good to see things at an early stage and to learn a bit about how theses things are made, I’m currently teaching my self Java and BASH shell. so learning how you get from “I want this” to “oh look I have this” is interesting (to me at least).
UNION is looking pretty sleak from where I am sitting at the moment.
If bearings are no good will a captain’s map be able to drop waypoints that helm can navigate to ? And/or nominate targets for attacking or scanning
We have been considering adding input to the Captain’s screen, but haven’t settled on an answer yet.
Either way we will be providing plenty of information to the Captain so that he/she can direct the crew. We will experiment with bearing too, I’m just not sure how useful they will be (yet).
1) By sorting do you mean the filtering contacts?
Yes I meant filtering, sorry for late reply.
A nice feature would be if you enabled changing keyboard settings in-game. Artemis’ text based config-file in game folder is cumbersome and confusing.
Ah ok.
I think filtering the radar and contacts list separately is an advanced feature which I don’t expect many people to use. That’s not to say I won’t implement it, I just have to think about how I can do it without confusing beginners… One way I could potentially do it is a toggle. There would be one list of filters, but you could choose to filter Radar, List, or Both.
Control/keyboard config will definitely be in-game. There will also be control profiles, so you can have a number of different configurations.
Thanks!
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