/tg/Station 13

Hi guys! I have some skill with some graphics programs (we don't care what programs right?) So...

I very like the game-graphics, but UI of game objects (in.simple: pop-up windows of objects), like PDA, machines, terminals, and other stuff it's too much simple compared to the work behind spriting/mapping.
I watch some code on GitHub page, and UI of things are mixed, like some HTML, CSS, DM IDE (GUI DESIGN WINDOW) and maybe there is other methods to create the currently UI in the game.

If you are happy to have a new UI for ALL the currently in-game things i have much spare time to make this happen!
But, i have 0 knowledge of coding, so if anyone are interested (coder) we can make a little team to rework UI of in-game things. (Any extra coder/graphic designer are well accepted, critics too!).

I leave a poll to understand what is on your mind, and if anyone interested in this little work feel free to reply on this post.

Thanks for reading! Cheers!

Join #coderbus on irc.rizon.net to talk about it with coders.

We actually DO have a better UI than most white windows, called nano UI. It's what you see when operating the chem dispenser, cryo tubes, APCs and a bunch of others. Unfortunately it's apparently very difficult to apply it to anything and requires a lot of experimenting to actually learn how to use it. If you want to get into coding, go to #coderbus on rizon in IRC.

The UI is quite a mess; Aside from the inventory UI, it's mixed up between hardcoded BYOND list windows that we can't change, the generic ugly white html windows used in most places and the very fancy NanoUI which works and looks great but hardly anyone understands let alone is able to continue implementing it.

We have:

White Byond UIs we cant change
White HTML UIs
Black Template UIs that are used in most cases over the White HTML ones
Black/Grey NanoUI Javascript UIs

And the order of quality is simply that list reversed:
NanoUI > Black Templates > White HTML > Pure Byond

I would absolutely love to improve the game UI but 90% of the people in coderbus lack either the skills or the will to do any improvements for popup browser windows like that. Simple improvements and tweaks here and there aren't too hard and can provide big dividends, but the real challenge is whatever poor coder has to unify everything to the black template or nano ui's. I'm not sure what ideas you had in mind, but I'd love to hear them.

It's mostly HTML and a simple stylesheet. The Nano UI's like the APC use some a javascript library of some sort that very few of us understand. A guy named nullquery had an alternative system but we didn't use it and integrating it would be hard without him. Frankly I'm not really happy with the code but I don't know how to improve it.

We also have a bunch of cases where there are controls in both the form of windows and in game elements, as well as where things have shifted from one to the other. Things like jetpacks and air tanks having release pressures in their own white window but are activatable via the internals button and action buttons. We also had the case where cyborg modules used to be done in a white window but this was absolute suffering, since keeping it open constantly refreshed it and changed your focus back to it, stopping your movement. This was then changed to something akin to a backpack with its module storage (where this sort of button storage is used NOWHERE ELSE).

Basically we have a hideous case of UI inconsistency issues, in visuals, gameplay controls, and coding difficulty.

OH, ALSO, don't forget PDAs, which is their own entire style!

That kind of in-game screen system is also an option. It's simpler to do (ie more people could do it), looks better imo, but keep in mind that unlike the browser popups, that kind of ingame system is purely server-side. So like when you click something, you have to wait for the server to send a message back to respond to the click whereas with the browser windows, when you click a link it at least turns purple instantly. It's a small thing but it's a big deal to make the UI more responsive.

Dunno if that tradeoff is worth it to everyone else which is why I've not really done anything on that front.

There is even documentation on nanoui on bay's wiki

I must remember to put it on ours and adjust it slightly for our stuff

The problem isn't with Nano specifically, it's with most of us being scrublords who don't know javascript.

Nano's complexity isn't helping, mind you, but still.

So i understand there is a LOT of code rework behind this idea, and the problem is the complexity of code for most coders, because they should change some core-code of the game and it's not very easy...
Anyway this a preview of my early personal-vision of PDA, it's PNG @ 32 colors so it can be lightweight (around 140 kb) for request>response on client and server (maybe it can be cached on client side)...
(it's a preview, and icons/pda image/text font/arrangment it's only for preview purpose).

i would like pda's to only be reworked from their piss yellow to a more natural pea green a la gameboy
also dont let coders tell you about how cool nanoui is, it's absolutely shit.

Would be neat except you ripped the PDA itself from Google.

Well, stalker apparently.

Jeb wrote:Would be neat except you ripped the PDA itself from Google.

Well, stalker apparently.

Yes! And because it's TAKEN from Google Images only for a fast preview of what can be made! If this project (ui rework) can be made, i don't think is funny to steal google images on web, instead i have mid-knowledge on 3d-modelling, 2d-3d texturing, animation (gif)... so all stuf is built from scratch!

Generally if you plan on showing people what your ideas are and what you're capable of you don't rip images.

Jeb wrote:Generally if you plan on showing people what your ideas are and what you're capable of you don't rip images.

Sorry my fault man! But investing lot of time of modeling, texturing etc, and the response is: Nice, but can't be useful, can be very frustating... so i only ripped the pda image, and reworked to show to you what's can be made, and if it can be implemented on the game, or it is too hard implementig a image (like this pda) on game UI...