Shiny! UI Overhaul and Graphics Mod v1.0

[dalolorn]

Pretty nice. Kinda reminds me of Final Frontier, a Garry's Mod gamemode trying to mimic FTL.

[Russian Rockman]

Pretty nice. Kinda reminds me of Final Frontier, a Garry's Mod gamemode trying to mimic FTL.

Yeah, the one that will never be finished ever. Sad... I was looking forward to that A LOT. So much potential. Although, I'm sure some game "someday" will achieve this sort of feel.

At least until some official pictures materialise, here are a few quick pictures I was able to take with the tools I have access to:
The Hangar.
The Stats page.
In-Game.

Thanks for the screenshots! Those are actually pretty good so I included them with the ones I took myself.

I made some GIFs to really show the comparison between vanilla and this mod. Sorry it took so long, I was just very busy with work and college, but I couldn't wait any longer to upload this. I needed other people's opinions.

[dalolorn]

Pretty nice. Kinda reminds me of Final Frontier, a Garry's Mod gamemode trying to mimic FTL.

Yeah, the one that will never be finished ever. Sad... I was looking forward to that A LOT. So much potential. Although, I'm sure some game "someday" will achieve this sort of feel.

At least until some official pictures materialise, here are a few quick pictures I was able to take with the tools I have access to:
The Hangar.
The Stats page.
In-Game.

Thanks for the screenshots! Those are actually pretty good so I included them with the ones I took myself.

I made some GIFs to really show the comparison between vanilla and this mod. Sorry it took so long, I was just very busy with work and college, but I couldn't wait any longer to upload this. I needed other people's opinions.

FF actually released rather recently. The servers running it only appear sporadically, though.

[Sleeper Service]

Nicely done. I especially love the transparent text window. I can imagine that this can be distracting when reading texts but it sure looks nice.

[Estel]

Thanks for screens and gifs comparison! BTW, RR, I'm still waiting for your complete hangar with cloaked slug saboteurs and other stuff like that I'm sure it would land in CE right away.

Now, some constructive critique:

- I like how the "floor plane" doesn't cover ships where not necessary, allowing us to see more of them all the time. This could land into CE right away, IMO.
- I don't like new doors etc. I don't really see a point of changing that thing - modifications are subtle, but make it look a little... Less detailed? May be subjective.
- I'm not a fan of new dark blue border (vs white one), font changes, border changes, etc.
- semi transparent text windows definitely look nice, but I wouldn't use them in practice, for the very reasons Sleepy mentioned.
- I don't see reason for removing hexa's in target window - they made impression of enemy ship being displayed in our ship's computer screen (Think target view in most space sims, like Freespace).

Not commenting on other changes, as they're purely cosmetical, and are just about personal taste. I like FTL look already, so it's probably not my cup of tea. But, kudos for the huge work, nevertheless!

/Estel

[Russian Rockman]

Nicely done. I especially love the transparent text window. I can imagine that this can be distracting when reading texts but it sure looks nice.

Thanks Sleeper!!! I like that too! I came up with that all by myself. It kind of feels like all the screens are some futuristic tablet of hologram.

From my experience it isn't at all distracting to read text with the transparent window. I tried several different levels of transparency and it should actually be pretty subtle. The transparent window can actually serve a practical purpose sometime too, I like that you can see your ship at all times.

Thanks for screens and gifs comparison! BTW, RR, I'm still waiting for your complete hangar with cloaked slug saboteurs and other stuff like that I'm sure it would land in CE right away.

Now, some constructive critique:

Thank you for the critique Estel. All of those are good points.
As for the hangar screen animations... I still want to do this, but the problem I ran into when doing this is that all the animations have to be "terminal" animations. In other words they go through frames randomly rather than in an order. So you can't have an animation of somebody walking or they would look like they're teleporting. This caused me to put that on hold and then I started working in this. But I do believe I have figured out how to have some more people to the hangar, their actions will just have to be more "limited" and "stationary" than I would have liked. I was hoping someone like Gencool or somebody better with animations could help me with this...

If you or anyone has any ideas for things that could be animated with frames being randomized then please give me your ideas. Some examples of things that would work are repairing, talking, target practice might work, and there's an unused clipboard animation in the game files actually.

- I like how the "floor plane" doesn't cover ships where not necessary, allowing us to see more of them all the time. This could land into CE right away, IMO.

That is from slowriderxcorps' sMPK mod actually, so thank him for that. I very much prefer these floor images so we can see more of the ships. Another good floor replacer is LordTrilobite's Ship Greeble mod replaces the floors with engines and technical stuff so it looks truly like a cross section of a ship. He's still working on mist of the ships though and the floors are to detailed for my taste, but his work is pretty sweet nonetheless.

- I don't like new doors etc. I don't really see a point of changing that thing - modifications are subtle, but make it look a little... Less detailed? May be subjective.

This is something I "half-borrowed" from Remastered. If you think these doors are detailed, you should see those doors. I tried my best actually to make them not too detailed. Level 1 is still just orange and 2 is just grey. Level 3 and 4 are the really detailed ones and in my opinion the pattern on them is less distracting than in vanilla, but I understand why you might like the vanilla doors better. I'm really a purist too. Would taking out the white in the middle work for you?

Some other things that I changed about the doors was I made them longer, so that it looks like my fellow Rockman could actually fit through them. I also added walls back into the images so that the doors look more like they are a part of the wall rather than hanging off it, especially on enemy ships (you may not understand what I mean, it's kind of hard to explain). And finally I like that the level 4 doors really look like "super" blast doors.

- I'm not a fan of new dark blue border (vs white one), font changes, border changes, etc.

Yeah I like the FTL font, but I just wanted it to feel more futuristic rather than 1980's so I made a whole new type font. However, I tried to stay close to the vanilla font, it should just look like a higher res version of that. That is another thing I completely changed from Remastered. That type font was too different from vanilla in my opinion. Also in Remastered the selection color was even light blue, but I changed if all to yellow because I can't imagine FTL without those yellow buttons.

As far as the blue border, I tried a lot of different colors actually but I ended up finding that the Remastered dark blue looked best. For me, the white from vanilla was also little to hard on the eyes and with the brighter backgrounds of BPAB sometimes you couldn't even see some parts of the UI. That was one of the main things I tried to fix.

If you have an idea for a color scheme that would be better, I'd love to hear it.

- semi transparent text windows definitely look nice, but I wouldn't use them in practice, for the very reasons Sleepy mentioned.

Got that one covered up der somewhere in response to Sleepy.

- I don't see reason for removing hexa's in target window - they made impression of enemy ship being displayed in our ship's computer screen (Think target view in most space sims, like Freespace).

I actually agree with you here! I didn't remove the grid that's just how it was in Remastered. It's hard to make the hex grid actually, but after working on the beacon map I think I've got it down so that might very well be something I add back in.


Thanks again for the detailed critique.
You know even if there is something that is just your personal taste you can still tell me. I actually would like to hear what everyone else's taste is on even teeny tiny details, maybe you'll persuade me to change something.

[Sleeper Service]

From my experience it isn't at all distracting to read text with the transparent window. I tried several different levels of transparency and it should actually be pretty subtle. The transparent window can actually serve a practical purpose sometime too, I like that you can see your ship at all times.

Yeah, till now the text window was really pulling you out of the ship, but now the player can be very much aware that the ship is still there (and on fire!). I gotta try how that feels ingame.

I actually agree with you here! I didn't remove the grid that's just how it was in Remastered. It's hard to make the hex grid actually, but after working on the beacon map I think I've got it down so that might very well be something I add back in.

Gimps filters/distorts/mosaic can create hexes with a very broad range of options (thats how I hexified the spacewhale flips ) Might be something to look into if you ever need to do hexes again (and not already know this anyway.)

[Estel]

Thank you for the critique Estel. All of those are good points.
(...)
Thanks again for the detailed critique.
You know even if there is something that is just your personal taste you can still tell me. I actually would like to hear what everyone else's taste is on even teeny tiny details, maybe you'll persuade me to change something.
(...)
As for the hangar screen animations... I still want to do this, but the problem I ran into when doing this is that all the animations have to be "terminal" animations. In other words they go through frames randomly rather than in an order. So you can't have an animation of somebody walking or they would look like they're teleporting. This caused me to put that on hold and then I started working in this. But I do believe I have figured out how to have some more people to the hangar, their actions will just have to be more "limited" and "stationary" than I would have liked. I was hoping someone like Gencool or somebody better with animations could help me with this...

I'm glad you didn't took it wrong way As for animations - hey, how the walking rockman with crate is made, then? Is he part of the background, or what? Maybe the way to go is to add animations to background, then? Or his animations is random and "hardcoded" to traverse through screen?

Even if there is no way around it, many things would work even with random animating. Slug saboteur can be stationary, messing with something under cloak in dark corner of the ship, sparks flying from time to time, randomly. Target practice - just as you've said. And so goes on. I think they key here is to make animations not too-over-detailed, so randomization doesn't get in the way. If you look at the girl fixing ship in vanilla, her animations are very simple few frames, but we don't have any problems with determining what she is doing.

What is "clipboard animation" that is unused there, BTW?

That is from slowriderxcorps' sMPK mod actually, so thank him for that. I very much prefer these floor images so we can see more of the ships. Another good floor replacer is LordTrilobite's Ship Greeble mod replaces the floors with engines and technical stuff so it looks truly like a cross section of a ship. He's still working on mist of the ships though and the floors are to detailed for my taste, but his work is pretty sweet nonetheless.

Thanks for the pointer, I actually missed the Ship Greeble mod, and I think it's great! I was on the edge if I would prefer to see more of ship hull or the Greeble, but I think I'm leaning toward the Greeble now. Especially, if it would be a little adjusted, to make some things match their visible-in-room counterparts (for example, when we see that circle jet-like part of engine's component in engine's room, greeble could show rest of that part, or part of rest... You know what I mean ).

Overall, I'm surprised, that those Greebles aren't in CE, yet (hint, hint: Sleepy, looking at you). Great concept! //Edit Probably because the Greeble mod isn't finished yet

I'm really a purist too. Would taking out the white in the middle work for you?
Some other things that I changed about the doors was I made them longer, so that it looks like my fellow Rockman could actually fit through them. I also added walls back into the images so that the doors look more like they are a part of the wall rather than hanging off it, especially on enemy ships (you may not understand what I mean, it's kind of hard to explain). And finally I like that the level 4 doors really look like "super" blast doors.

Yes, I think that without this white part it would look better. Anyway, the problem I have with those new doors, is that they look more.. plaqstic-like? I can't explain it properly, I think. Although, your points about making it big enough for rocks/crystals to go through it without ghost-like transition is good. Funny enough, I never noticed that... I guess the fact that game leaves much to imagination, without focusing us on ideal graphic all the time have its charm too, OTOH.

If you have an idea for a color scheme that would be better, I'd love to hear it.

Yea, I think coming up with good idea is the problem The question here is - why to change them, if they're looking good enough in vanilla? Sometimes, less is better.

I actually agree with you here! I didn't remove the grid that's just how it was in Remastered. It's hard to make the hex grid actually, but after working on the beacon map I think I've got it down so that might very well be something I add back in.

Hm, again, question here - why recreating hexes from scratch, if the ones existing already could be re-used?

/Estel

[slowriderxcorps]

Hm, again, question here - why recreating hexes from scratch, if the ones existing already could be re-used?

If you take a good solid look at most of the GUI elements that use the hex pattern, you should easily notice that the consistency and quality of it is pretty terrible: there are several places within the pattern where they just suddenly start overlapping with each other and the end result just looks really strange.

[Russian Rockman]

I'm glad you didn't took it wrong way As for animations - hey, how the walking rockman with crate is made, then? Is he part of the background, or what? Maybe the way to go is to add animations to background, then? Or his animations is random and "hardcoded" to traverse through screen?
(...)
What is "clipboard animation" that is unused there, BTW?

Yep, "hardcoded" there is no way to add new animations to the hangar. The way I figured out how to add animations was by taking an existing animation (terminal dude in top left corner) and expand the size of it to cover basically the whole screen.

Yep, the animations should be simple and match the vanilla ones. I just might need some help from another animator since that's not my forte, but I can try my best.

There is an unused animation for a guy holding a clipboard, or rather a tablet I think, in the games files, it's very basic.

Thanks for the pointer, I actually missed the Ship Greeble mod, and I think it's great! I was on the edge if I would prefer to see more of ship hull or the Greeble, but I think I'm leaning toward the Greeble now. Especially, if it would be a little adjusted, to make some things match their visible-in-room counterparts (for example, when we see that circle jet-like part of engine's component in engine's room, greeble could show rest of that part, or part of rest... You know what I mean ).

Overall, I'm surprised, that those Greebles aren't in CE, yet (hint, hint: Sleepy, looking at you). Great concept!

I believe the reason the Greebles aren't in CE is because only a few ships have been finished. So if only the existing ones were added then the others would then look out of place. I might use that mod if it were complete, but even then I prefer to look at the hull rather than the inside. That's just my preference.

Yes, I think that without this white part it would look better. Anyway, the problem I have with those new doors, is that they look more.. plaqstic-like? I can't explain it properly, I think. Although, your points about making it big enough for rocks/crystals to go through it without ghost-like transition is good. Funny enough, I never noticed that... I guess the fact that game leaves much to imagination, without focusing us on ideal graphic all the time have its charm too, OTOH.

Perhaps the reason fi the "plastic" look is because I made them a bit lighter than in vanilla. I don't really remember the reason actually... I think I didn't like the bright bright orange color of the doors. I've never seen a ship with orange doors before... Maybe I'll try making them darker again, and I'll try it again without the white.

The bigger doors look nicer to me as well so that's why I kept them like that. You're just not as OCD so you didn't notice the Rocks before. Lucky you.

Yea, I think coming up with good idea is the problem The question here is - why to change them, if they're looking good enough in vanilla? Sometimes, less is better.

Well, to me, again probably because of my OCD. I thought the vanilla ones looked "good enough," but could be made better.

I was going to point you to some other UI colors I experimented with one day. I was never seriously considering any of these, by but it was fun to retry these different colors. I was thinking it would be cool if the UI changed depending on what ship you were using. http://m.imgur.com/a/Ve3ds?gallery

I actually agree with you here! I didn't remove the grid that's just how it was in Remastered. It's hard to make the hex grid actually, but after working on the beacon map I think I've got it down so that might very well be something I add back in.

What slowy said, and also the Target window for this is bigger than the vanilla one. It's okay though I used kartoflane's hexes from his expanded window mod since they're better anyway.