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Dev blog: Stay on Target!

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James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#141 - 2012-10-10 21:35:05 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Callic Veratar wrote:
Vincent Athena wrote:
Hmm, I note that module timers go around clockwise, but start at the 6 o'clock location. The damage circle also goes around clockwise, but starts at the 12 o'clock position.

Everything goes clockwise, nice and consistent. But they start at inconsistent locations.

Edit: Except the HUD. It goes counterclockwise with damage.


Counterclockwise is bad. Things must never go counterclockwise.

See the issue?

The HUD goes clockwise with health.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Ugleb
Jotunn Risi
#142 - 2012-10-10 21:35:10 UTC
A thought; does this replace the current text damage notifications or will we still see those in addition to this new stuff?

I don't know if I just want just the one or both types of notification tbh.

http://uglebsjournal.wordpress.com/

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CCP Goliath
C C P
C C P Alliance
#143 - 2012-10-10 21:35:39 UTC
Pretty badass guys. Keep up the good work!

CCP Goliath | QA Director | EVE Illuminati | @CCP_Goliath
Titos Polo
Senseless Violence.
#144 - 2012-10-10 21:35:56 UTC
Alx Warlord wrote:
CCP Karkur,

There are some information that we just don't need, Like the Square in the middle of the screen saying " X blablabla bblaba alba 150 damgage uabauabu" we just read the numbers, we just need the numbers.... Remove it completly. and Place only the damage value over the shotting ship Bracket (hitting icon), with the same color transparency as the blink (of the hitting icon). And also The damage that we do, the yellow one, Place it Above ower weapon icon!!! that is it!!! And if you want to do some thing for the logistics too it will be awesome!!!!

Anyway... if you want a more detailed damage info... look at the log...



thx

o7


^^^^^^^^^^^^
omg this!!!
now that what would fix tactical awareness not some faded blinking circles.

my whole life in eve i was so desperate of not fully aware if im doing the amount of dmg i should be making to the target ship
or how much my piloting actions effecting the dmg avoidance from the hostile.

the notification box is just as the guys said " X blablabla bblaba alba 150 damgage uabauabu" VERY HARD TO READ
Saede Riordan
Alexylva Paradox
#145 - 2012-10-10 21:36:12 UTC
Trebor Daehdoow wrote:
First of all, this is a big step forward. The only question is how big of a step can it be.

I agree with Two step (and others) that disambiguation is the route to improvement. But I would go further.

I would suggest that you consider making the s/a/h arcs cover the top hemisphere, just as they do in the current HUD. This would free up the bottom hemisphere for traffic light status icons.

These would be red octagon, yellow triangle, green circle (so you have both color and shape to help out the color-blind players) and could tell you things like:

* You (can / are close to being able to / cannot) target this guy.

* You can go (faster / about as fast / not nearly as fast) as this guy.

* Your (last activated on / being hovered over) weapon can (shoot for full damage / is in falloff / can't hit for crap).

* Your (last activated on / being hovered over) weapon can (fully track / sort of track / they're too fast for our turbolasers).

* And so on

Hovering over a targeted ship might give you a popup that gives more detailed information than the traffic lights.

You could also save space on the top arcs by dynamically changing their thickness, making the arc that has been taking damage recently but has the highest # of hp remaining thicker, and the other two thinner.

So, no damage would be thin (s) thin (a) thin (h)

Starting to take shield damage means thick / thin / thin

Into armor means thin / thick / thin

But if he gets shield reps, it might go back to thick / thin / thin

The point is, things should be as intuitively obvious as possible -- building on people's current familiarity and real-world intuition ("damage penetrates from outside to inside", "red is bad"). I shouldn't have to remember that shields are at the top, armor from 2 to 6-oclock, etc.

Or, if you really want to wow everyone, give us several alternatives, including the gee-wiz sci-fi movie mode, and let people choose which to use.


I really like this. I had made a small mockup of how it would look in colour, and added a small bar to indicate speed, but I think I like the ideas you have here better.

Fear and Loathing in Internet Spaceships
Highauger's animated corpse
Jove Observation And Neutrality Negotiations Act
#146 - 2012-10-10 21:36:27 UTC
Loving the focus on the UI we have been seeing recently. Thanks to all involved.

Alien attack is no laughing matter. Most governments have really been focusing on stiffing their populations and each other, and have been really far too busy to focus on planetary defense development. Possibly this is due to the fact that most clever people know aliens aren't real, and if they were, they don't know where we are, and it's far and that. But when the bugs come, or stormtroopers whatever, we will all be glad that somewhere in all this crazy crazy madness, someone had been working on a UI capable of delivering real survival based information about multiple targets in a rolling 3d environment in a way that is immediate. Thanks CCP from our warring future selves. The Mars target callers of the next 10 millenia thank you. Earth thanks you.

...not so sure about the round damage rings though. I like round things mostly, but with bars you can tell everything from the corner of your eye. One eyeflick. like a badass ninja.

Arrgh and no colour coding! CCP UI battle grey IS the new alert red

And no I'm not just being lazy. And yes, I'll have a scotch.

Dersen Lowery
The Scope
#147 - 2012-10-10 21:36:50 UTC
Imigo Montoya wrote:
I'm a big fan of the concept of UIs being "immediately apparent", and the changes fail one test here. With the hit points of the shield/armour/structure it is not immediately apparent which one is which.


Just FYI, I've had to explain to new players which one is which, with the existing system. Shield/armor/hull is a bit more elaborate than "hit points." The stacking only becomes obvious once you learn that hierarchy. Wrapping the three around a circle is essentially putting them in a straight line, which is also obvious once you learn the way defenses work, because nothing affects hull without punching through armor first, and nothing affects armor without punching through shields first[1].

[1] Not necessarily all the way through, of course.

Proud founder and member of the Belligerent Desirables.

I voted in CSM X!
Ten Bulls
Sons of Olsagard
#148 - 2012-10-10 21:37:37 UTC
When there are important changes like, its also important that capsuleers have something to complain about.

In future it would be appreciated if you would clarify what that will be ahead of time, so we can co-ordinate our rage.

random
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#149 - 2012-10-10 21:37:37 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Many of you are worried that you will not know which bar is which.
I personally think that people will just know once the they start playing with it, and I look forward to seeing how you feel about it when you have tested it yourself.
Once you start seeing damage, yes, it'll be fairly self-evident what's going on, but when there's nothing there to provide that kind of distinction, the whole “at a glance” effect is a bit lost since there is nothing to separate the different parts.

…hence the idea of a larger gap to denote the beginning and end: something that's always there regardless of how much (if any) damage has been applied.

And of course, the dream scenario would be if the segments were proportional to the amount of hitpoints (EHP depending on current ammo would be even neater, but since it could be a very mixed bag of weapons and damage combinations, I'd venture to guess that it becomes cumbersome and/or ultimately inaccurate… so just plain HP would still do nicely).
CCP karkur
C C P
C C P Alliance
#150 - 2012-10-10 21:37:52 UTC
Isbariya wrote:

another thing is, how does that flashy thing affect large fleet fights ? I guess these will put some stress to some computers out there when a few hundret players start attacking you. We can switch off effects, but can we switch this one off ?.
Yes, that's the plan.

CCP karkur | Programmer | Team Five 0 | @CCP_karkur
CCP Sisyphus
C C P
C C P Alliance
#151 - 2012-10-10 21:38:25 UTC
Ugleb wrote:
A thought; does this replace the current text damage notifications or will we still see those in addition to this new stuff?

I don't know if I just want just the one or both types of notification tbh.


This is all "in addition". The text damage notifications are next on the list to be improved.

CCP Sisyphus | Team TriLambda | Team Klang | @CCP_Sisyphus
mkint
#152 - 2012-10-10 21:38:34 UTC  |  Edited by: mkint
CCP karkur wrote:
Dersen Lowery wrote:
I'm not sure I understand why color-coding the bars is so important. Shield is the one that turns red first; armor is the one that turns red second; hull is the one that turns red last. The important summary is "how red is the circle?

This is what I think... you will need to see it once in action and then you'll just know.
I'm looking forward to seeing how people actually experience it on the test server... if people will be confused or just understand it right away.

Can be figured out with enough work =/= good ui design.

Maxim 6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Callic Veratar
#153 - 2012-10-10 21:39:27 UTC
Ideally, what would come out of this is a customisable interface where you can select the size, shape, position, orientation, and colour of the meters. With that I could set three vertical bars that empty or just one. Or you could use current horizontal bars the old fashion stacked bars, or the proposed circle bars.

Even better you could chose which direction they empty, clockwise, counterclockwise, or both (from each end).
Ugleb
Jotunn Risi
#154 - 2012-10-10 21:39:51 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Many of you are worried that you will not know which bar is which.
I personally think that people will just know once the they start playing with it, and I look forward to seeing how you feel about it when you have tested it yourself.
We are going to be looking into what we can do to make it clearer, especially if we find out that people just don't get it.
That being said, we are still so deep in development of this that it might completely change, who knows :P


People will get used to it after awhile, but it looks to be initially confusing. Unless the 'fix' turns out to be worse than the issue, I'd suggest that EVE needs to be made less initially confusing, not more! ;)

http://uglebsjournal.wordpress.com/

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PinkKnife
The Cuddlefish
Ethereal Dawn
#155 - 2012-10-10 21:41:38 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Many of you are worried that you will not know which bar is which.
I personally think that people will just know once the they start playing with it, and I look forward to seeing how you feel about it when you have tested it yourself.
We are going to be looking into what we can do to make it clearer, especially if we find out that people just don't get it.
That being said, we are still so deep in development of this that it might completely change, who knows :P


QFT

Just keep in mind change is scary and people are resistant to it.

The three bar things isn't intuitive, it is just what people know, A brand new player has no indication that shield is on top anymore than they do that structure is on bottom.

People need to stop confusing intuition with familiarity. Just because YOU know top is shields, doesn’t mean it is intuitive.
Anja Talis
Sal's Waste Management and Pod Disposal
#156 - 2012-10-10 21:42:10 UTC
My first reaction was that shield was top left, armour top right, hull beneath. This appears to be wrong! I suspect I'll be getting confused.

The changing target stuff seems interesting. Need to play test it to see how it works.
Midnight Hope
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#157 - 2012-10-10 21:42:13 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Many of you are worried that you will not know which bar is which.
I personally think that people will just know once the they start playing with it, and I look forward to seeing how you feel about it when you have tested it yourself.
We are going to be looking into what we can do to make it clearer, especially if we find out that people just don't get it.
That being said, we are still so deep in development of this that it might completely change, who knows :P



I agree. I can already picture this working and after a couple of weeks it will be second nature....as long as the shield is top left, armor is top right and hull is bottom. Twisted
Hakaru Ishiwara
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#158 - 2012-10-10 21:43:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Hakaru Ishiwara
Unclear if the demo images were of poor quality or it is simply the new graphical assets, but everything looked way too fuzzy or anti-aliased. For me, that made the circular targeting graphics less obvious and required a double-glance rather than the currently squared off and crisp targeting graphics.

A double glance might mean life or death in PvP.

Please ensure that the graphics are as crystal clear / bright / obvious as possible before releasing on TQ. We had the Inventory UI debacle earlier this year. We do not need an arbitrary change to targeting graphical assets ****-up to wrap up 2012.

Thanks.

Edit: it is also not clear why these changes are being implemented. If this is busy-work intended to keep personnel around for other, future projects, then please find more useful tasks such as defect investigation and testing. While that comment may be brusk / rude, your paying customers are getting tired of change for the sake of change in your entertainment service.

+++++++ I have never shed a tear for a fellow EVE player until now. Mark “Seleene” Heard's Blog Honoring Sean "Vile Rat" Smith.
Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#159 - 2012-10-10 21:44:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Alx Warlord
CCP Sisyphus wrote:
Ugleb wrote:
A thought; does this replace the current text damage notifications or will we still see those in addition to this new stuff?

I don't know if I just want just the one or both types of notification tbh.


This is all "in addition". The text damage notifications are next on the list to be improved.


Quote:

There are some information that we just don't need, Like the Square in the middle of the screen saying " X blablabla bblaba alba 150 damgage uabauabu" we just read the numbers, we just need the numbers.... Remove it completly. and Place only the damage value over the shotting ship Bracket (hitting icon), with the same color transparency as the blink (of the hitting icon). And also The damage that we do, the yellow one, Place it Above ower weapon icon!!! that is it!!! And if you want to do some thing for the logistics too it will be awesome!!!!

Anyway... if a player want a more detailed damage info... can look at the log...


o7

Please read these!

New POS system New SOV system
Imigo Montoya
BreadFleet
Triglavian Outlaws and Sobornost Troika
#160 - 2012-10-10 21:44:42 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Many of you are worried that you will not know which bar is which.
I personally think that people will just know once the they start playing with it, and I look forward to seeing how you feel about it when you have tested it yourself.
We are going to be looking into what we can do to make it clearer, especially if we find out that people just don't get it.
That being said, we are still so deep in development of this that it might completely change, who knows :P


(Highlighted the bit I am addressing)

This is precisely not immediately apparent.

As Dersen said, even the current system has to be explained to new players, but it's pretty easy to get if you understand the simplest concept of the hull/armour/shield trinity.

As Tippia said, the new system fails the "at a glance" test.

I foresee this being the source of significant confusion. While confusion has a vital role to play in the battlefield, it's place most certainly is not in the UI.