I think it's because there are occasional loading issues, so you can exit the game without forcing it to quit.

It's for occasionaly loading issues, just incase your system begins to crash you can quit without forcing it to.

Also with the news- line things up and perhaps bring down the white some, maybe alittle less hurtful on the eyes lol.

I'd prefer it if items you can't quite get where grayed out instead of red. The red doesn't look that good.

Or a duller red at least. The current red is rather glaring. :S

Since the plan is to (at least eventually) have the graphics in the UI be very customizable, I'd like to also suggest that the new UI give some more control to the players over the background music, like Celkan suggested some time back: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8531

make the UI windows and stuff have the same texture as an xith roid =)

First, and by far most important, I'll echo tumblemonster's comment: workflow is essential. (I realize that this is a criticism without any suggested fix. I feal guilty that this isn't very constructive. I'll think about it.)

On a more constructive note, here's some suggestions:
1) When you log out, your password isn't remembered like in the old (official) client. In some cases (bugs and othe cases), this was handy for relogging in.

2) Under Commerce, the tab "Sell Items" is an action, while the other tabs are objects ("Large Addons"). (First reaction: "Where's the 'Buy Items' tab?")

3) I agree with terribleCabbage on the use of a variable width font in the news listing looks tacky. Two columns would be better.

4) And since I'm reading terribleCabbage's post, I'll throw in a "me too" regarding the imitation of a Windows Explorer folder icon.

5) All of the tabs that show ship models use a different size window for the 3D model. The screens don't flow well when flipping between tabs (and half are 3D, half are 2D).

6) I often would like an easy way to just get an overview of my ship (type, weapons, ammo, battery, cargo, weapon groups). The is expecially useful when first logging in. At least for ship type and weapons, many screens have the information, but I haven't found it easy to glean all the info at a glance. (Perhaps I'm just not used to the inteface enough yet.)

7) I find it frustrating trying to look at the inventories of nearby stations in the Universe Inventory. I have a lot of stuff. The order of systems doesn't bother me (I still remember when the systems were numbered, so I know the order), but I've heard others complain. Someone suggested alphabetical. But I digress: scrolling through that list sucks when you have a lot of crap. Personally, I wouldn't mind just having the "Local Inventory" not listed at the top, but with the other stations in that system (and the scroll bar set to show the current station). But I could see problems with that. "Collapse All" and "Expand All" buttons is a common solution to the problem. Plaintext search would be cool ("Vult", "Sedina", "MkIV").

8) I liked the old HUD, where the speed and battery numbers moved up and down with the top of the meter bar. It's easier to quickly identify your general speed / battery level just by seeing the number's physical location. (The meter doesn't have a high enough contrast to properly read it with perhiperal vision.)

9) Make the targeting reticle easier to see when facing a star or ice roid. Maybe just use two colors instead of one. The second color doesn't need to be very obvious when looking at a dark background, just some highlights so you can find it when facing an ice roid. (There would need to be two highlight colors: one for "in range" and one for not.) Hmm, looking again, is the reticle partially transparent? If so, make it opaque and skip the two color suggestion. Make it bigger like the old HUD while you're at it.

[Edit]
10) Show the chat screen when jumping.

11) The HUD rounds your speed down, so you can't ever hit your ships maxium listed speed. (I'm guessing the old HUD rounded up?) I think I've seen other places in the new client where numbers are now being rounded down, but I don't remember where.

Its actually very difficult to suggest GUI interface without actually being present in person to make drawings, show examples, and have the GUI right in front of you for reference...

I'm really going to try to make some GUI mock-ups with a few examples of things that I _think_ might work better... but I have to find the time for it as well.

--You know what? Why don't I just fly out there to WI and show you guys there? I'll be coming next weekend.

Yay. I'll come over to HQ with Doukutsu and point out some things as well. Like this stuff:
http://www.coalitionofitan.org/itan_images/interface_rough_draft_01.jpg

o_O Woah.

I love the idea of the chat text being different colours depending on where it's being sent (100, Guild, Sector, Message, etc).

I'm curious as to how much we'll be able to customise the interface, and how (Lua hooks?). I'm under no illusion that it'll be infinitely customisable (like some are seeming to suggest), I'd be really interested to see how it's implemented, while preventing exploits.

(PS: I love the filler chat text, Leber. :P )

Incarnate, Ilove the work your did for the new UI
but THIS is what we want:
http://www.coalitionofitan.org/itan_images/interface_rough_draft_01.jpg
this Intrface is just AWESOME you got it in one look

Great Job leber ! YAY

EDIT : all the UI is blueish
srecos and UITs should have it Redish and Goldish… just to put some difference

but... but... what about wc!?

yes, CP's idea for the ship/equipment interface flow sounds much better.

1) Can we PLEASE be able to type in chat/use binds/aliases while in transition between sectors? I never really noticed it until I tried the new client, but that's the only time when I really have time to type in chat anyway! You take that away, and it's hard to keep up a conversation in space.

The other thing about this, is that it makes the loading times seem much LONGER than usual - it could be that it renders slower, but I suspect it's entirely due to the fact that you have nothing to do or look at while waiting for the sector to load - get that chat back in there and let us use it!

2) is there a third-person view and I'm missing it?

3) exactly what CP said way back there - the process of buying and equipping a ship is too long and difficult - it needs to be all accessible on one main tab, and on as few subtabs as possible (in the sort of order that CP suggested)

4) LeberMac: Awesome! Yes, that is excellent!
the only thing though, is how much space does that leave in the top section of the sceen for the various functions of the station menu tabs? would the chat be displaced like it is now on some tabs?

5) Oh, and the scrollbars in the station UI are unintuitive... I'm so used to the *dark* section of the bar indicating the current view area that I'm constantly manipulating them wrong...

See this thread, especially where I make the new player selection diagram.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12755

Also, you might want to add a button to "Create new account" somewhere on the in game login screen. Clicking it should launch the VO website's new account page with the systems default browser.

This would allow players to burn VO onto CDs and not have to worry with pointing people at the website first. It really does make a difference, people can be lazy.

On the player selection screen, display the current ship each character is in, as well as their license levels.

yes dave, that'd be nice.

I think I've said this before.

1) make the standered texture be like a xitherite roid.
2) less windows XP-ish look
3) /instawarp commands
4) a /givedev "cookie" command

and, a
5) /ban "zamzx zik" command-for convinence.

Leber, that is... wow... Good job!

Remember, kids. HTML tags need to be opened AND closed...

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Leber has the kind of design I'd like to see.

It's open, lots of movement. The News Ticker is awesome. The External View actually feels like you're looking ONTO something, rather than being submerged in the mesh.

Its purdy

An option (for those who have requested it) to have a "realistic" audio option. Where the only sounds are the missile alerts, contact beeps, and UI noises.

Also, now seems like a good time to implement the long requested proximity alarms, aka "Ice Yo!". Give some audio and visual feedback if enabled, if a player, npc, or object were within range. It would be nice to see the actual poximity limit somewhat user customizable though, (between 0 and 250 maybe?) but with a hard limit to preven exploitation as an way-to-early warning system.

Also, another vote for LeberMac's UI layout, but with the caveat to *NOT* include external RSS support. Also, to deal with the color options, just make map the textures and let the players select thier prefered tint.

LeberMac, you're a genius! Sometimes when you see something (usually these are killer products), you think "YES, that's it! Why didn't I think of that?!" I had this experience when I saw your UI proposal, it's awesome!

There are several things I love about it:
* you have basically unrolled a lot of workflow onto a single surface
* it concentrates the main buttons in the upper-left part, which makes for a lot less mousing around (I hate mousing around).
* the consistent use of colors for chat/messaging is both intuitive and tasteful

External RSS/Atom support would be awesome for guild news and such. That'd be a killer community feature! Being able to use lua snippets to inject my own alerts into this ticker would rock too.

The only disadvantage I see to such a "flat" UI is that you may run out of button space. An easy way to fix that is to have an "expand/roll-out" button at the end of each button panel to make them all visible, and to let you configure which buttons you want to have visible by default (or just hide the ones you don't use automatically).

Let's start pooling money on PayPal to ship Leber to WI ;-)