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Station Interface (big image links herein)

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Nov 08, 2005 Lord Q link
/me takes notes "desine phase BEFORE release. huh, i'd have never thought of that"
Nov 08, 2005 incarnate link
Hey Leber, I do think your ideas are pretty cool, and I have checked back to look at this thread a number of times during the design process, to see input. There's a lot of good points and discussion on this thread.

I did have most of the new station menu concept in my head.. well, for some years now. I don't know whether it'll prove to be the best choice or not, but it should at least be a lot better than what we have. And, hopefully, people will be able to make their own interfaces eventually (actual interfaces, beyond skins).

Anyway, I focused on just trying to make something relatively clean, easy to use and (hopefully) pretty visually intuitive. A lot of the barrier for new users of our game has historically been user-friendliness. So, I'm trying to achieve a decent level of interface consistency and easy-to-find context sensitive help and the like.

For existing users I think it'll be much.. much.. much better. God, every time I log into the game now (since working on the interface) I'm amazed at how long we managed to live with the old one. Ugh.

So anyway, yes, the basic concept of the interface is going to follow the top-root-tabs, side-category-tabs, and bottom-of-selected-tab-context-button idea. While I may not be about to ditch that in favor of a different root menu concept, I'm still very open to ideas on category-importance, first-login priority, usage organization and the million other things that go into an interface. And, for that matter, I'll continue to be open to ideas after we release the interface. Just like everything else in this game, it'll be a work in progress, and will be refined from user input. I'm just laying down the starting point.

So, don't think your ideas are going to waste, or being ignored. They may not bear immediate fruit, but I do pay attention. I really liked how you integrated the scrolling news ticker and stuff, very cool.
Nov 08, 2005 Person link
Leber, the main reason a flash demo of it would be cool, is that the new UI will not come out for another month at least, and at soonest, we will get screenies in 2 weeks. Please? :D
Nov 08, 2005 LeberMac link
Inc: I know we're all not wasting our efforts, looks like some of the concepts that we talked about on this thread are being implemented, from looking at the wiki... Which is kickass!

Calder: I'll make a special Flash demo just for you. With all of my spare time. Which will probably not resemble ANYTHING that the devs will actually IMPLEMENT. Plus it'll have Itani stuff everywhere.
Nov 08, 2005 Person link
OMG NOOOOOO! You're making it for me, and then putting Calder repellent Itani propaganda all over it? NOOOOOO! How typically evil of you Mr. Nemisis... :D

/me runs off to commit Hari Kari

Seriously, thank you SOOOOO much, even if it does have blue, (agh, I'm having spasms just saying it,) all over it!
Jan 29, 2006 LostCommander link
*Bump* Because I do not want to lose it. ;)
Aug 08, 2008 LeberMac link
It's actually kind of cool, I went to update the links in this thread cause I linked to it somewhere else, and most of these general ideas for the user interface have been implemented. (Not the graphics, the concepts. Concepts are what is important.)

See? PROGRESS!!!
Aug 09, 2008 ryan reign link
actually...I kinda dig the general look of it. it just seems to really fit grey space.