Subset Games Forum

I would vote for 2. 3 is obviously a bit more robust, but I don't think it would be useful enough (and used enough) to justify the extra work.

The real question is how this would be implemented in the GUI?

Wouldn't this cause problems with larger ships? Like, you couldn't fit two mantis bombers on top of eachother on the right hand of the screen.

One could try a tabbed target menu, perhaps with 'q', 'w', 'e', etc., as hotkeys to switch between them.

DiEvAl wrote:How would you know that the ship in the other tab has repaired its weapons and is going to destroy your shields?

Haha, it certainly is inelegant, but I don't think the screen real estate exists to do multiple ships in any other way. Maybe a small summary of what other ships are doing located beneath the main target window.

What about one ship being thumbnail sized (with all the action, etc) and the other ship being big and a swap button.

so one big ally and one big enemy--usually the big ally would be you--but maybe you want to beam over to your ally to help them with some intruders.

That way users can get an overview of all the ships in a fight without detracting from the 'main focus' of their current target. Of course you could target weapons to 2 different ships

No clue if it would be possible, but why not take the display window for the final boss and divide it into three sections.

Have the top half be the ship you are fighting, then have the bottom half divided in half with the ship on the left your ally and the ship on the right the enemy's ally. Have your ally always target their opposing ship while you target yours and when one gets destroyed the other ship becomes the main target for both your ships.

Like I said, only an idea.

I think your mock up of what fighting two ships would look like is solid. Perhaps for fights against two larger ships you would need a compressed version of the sprites so that all the info could fit. Additionally, would it be possible in that scenario for the player to be fighting two ships without the assistance of another ship?

I'd vote for option 3, but that could be a lot of work for little reward.

Thanks for all your hard work. I'm really looking forward to Overdrive.

DiEvAl wrote:I tried sketching up a GUI (my photoshop skills suck):

Up to 2 ships per team. First team is you and the ship on the left. Second team is 2 ships on the right.

I don't quite like the left ship. Where is the better place to put it?

EDIT: Another solution would be to let mod choose positions and sizes of ships.

Well, you could compress the UI around the ship, placing the surplus crew (oh, right, REMOVE CREW CAP! ) to the right of the ones on your mock-up, and removing reactor bars to replace with a circle with power indicators.

Say, 5/5 (left is currently unused, right is maximum) or 5/5/5 (unused, max, amount removed by enviromental conditions, in which case you have to combine max and removed amount to get the true max).

Also, remove reactor cap too?

Edit: Oh, right, do the same for systems and subsystems! And hull! Modular UI ftw!

I think you should only display one ship at a time, then have little icons to click to display the ship fully.
Could be handy for targeting as well, target and enemy system then switch to view you're ally. Target a healing bomb at them while your lazers fire, doing damage that you currently can't see.

You'll keep the interface clean and personal without losing access to view all ships.
Maybe a health bar or coloured icon would represent shields/hull/crew hp etc.


Some considerations:
When you send an attack drone to a ship, then target a different one should the drone follow your gaze?
If not, when you lose power then reactivate the drone.. do you activate the drone already attacking an offscreen target, activate it but it flies to your new target, or do you spend a drone part and launch a new one. If so, what happens to the old one? Could it be activated for free if the newer drone gets destroyed?


..All questions and no answers. Enjoy

DiEvAl wrote:How would you know that the ship in the other tab has repaired its weapons and is going to destroy your shields?

Have both ship systems lists displayed (bottom row), but only show active tab ship crew/layout is how I'd do it.

Davesoft wrote:When you send an attack drone to a ship, then target a different one should the drone follow your gaze?
If not, when you lose power then reactivate the drone.. do you activate the drone already attacking an offscreen target, activate it but it flies to your new target, or do you spend a drone part and launch a new one. If so, what happens to the old one? Could it be activated for free if the newer drone gets destroyed?

Thats a good question...

dalolorn wrote:

DiEvAl wrote:I tried sketching up a GUI (my photoshop skills suck):

Up to 2 ships per team. First team is you and the ship on the left. Second team is 2 ships on the right.

I don't quite like the left ship. Where is the better place to put it?

EDIT: Another solution would be to let mod choose positions and sizes of ships.

Well, you could compress the UI around the ship, placing the surplus crew (oh, right, REMOVE CREW CAP! ) to the right of the ones on your mock-up, and removing reactor bars to replace with a circle with power indicators.

Say, 5/5 (left is currently unused, right is maximum) or 5/5/5 (unused, max, amount removed by enviromental conditions, in which case you have to combine max and removed amount to get the true max).

Also, remove reactor cap too?

Edit: Oh, right, do the same for systems and subsystems! And hull! Modular UI ftw!

A UI that could be written in XML by modders would be amazing.