Hi,



I have made a search for interface topics, read through some of them and see that while alot of people seem to find the UI a bit simple and un-entertainimg, there does not seem to be a thread dedicated to this. If yes, sorry for spam



First of all: I am constantly looking for the games of old, with the technology of today.

Space Empires, Star Ruler, Sword of the Stars etc. even if I didnt play em much, I bought em.





While the games offer the gameplay and the possibilities expected, the "feeling", "immersion", the "atmoshpere" of actually being a ruler suffered in all of them, and after thinking about it for a while, why I actually switch back to MOO1 / MOO2 I realized it was as simple as the missing artwork for the interface.



Not to my surprise I have seen quite some similar comments on this, for titles like Jagged Alliance: Back in Action or Space Empires, Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic (Master of Magic inspired) and yet I rather play the original Jagged Alliance, or the original Master of Magic.



The only game so far, that did a good job here was Galactic Civilizations 2.





What I feel, makes the difference:

The feeling of actually having something solid, something you can touch, that inspires you to feel the change of locations.

That you are really there at the science lab, at the star map. Seeing monitors that show stats (MoO2 right side bar) and having solid frames that have a surface which suggest depth.





I asked myself why is it not possible? A number of reasons I can imagine could be:

• It's expensive and you need artists. You rather save time/money on the UI than on the main game.
  
  ->Thus the UI is slim and focussed on it's assumed and alleged main purpose: To interact with the software. The game is reduced to abstractions of controlling an "application" rather than simulating a control center or control room of political and logistical power.
  
  
  
  
• Back in the old days, you had 800x600 and 1024x768 pixel. Today you have a dozen combination of 4:3, 16:9, 16:10, 5:4 etc. resolutions, where the UI needs to fit.
  
  -> Thus the solution is probably alot of work: Rescaling dynamically, with pixel errors, lost ratios, loss in quality etc. or redrwaring the same GUI elements over and over for all those different resolutions. The artists could be doing ships or textures instead.
  
  
  
  
• The developers lost a feel for it, as they see games to closely, are out of touch with the initial experience. Underestimating the impact of it, seeing it as eye candy.
  
  -> Thus the focus for this area is low, when its only seen as a "nice to have" while for the naive player it might turn their LCD TFT screen at their desk in front of them into a real console, making them enter "flow" mode upon starting the game, not just after playing it for 30 turns.
  
  

As a result, I viewed the whole issue as :"Never going to happen". Indies will never make a good 4x with great art, and the big guys (EA, Ubi etc.) might make an art intense game, but with the loss of the love these games need to get to the nerve.





As a last thought I was thinking: Now what if a game, such as Endless Space, could introduce a framework for the community to participate? Where all the UI elements and frames could actually be skinned and imported, so that the workload would not be on the dev team yet the game would continuously improve in presentation by dedicated artists that share the love and do stuff like this in their free time?

If there are so many people out their, participating in crowd funding, building art with minecraft and creating awesome mods and skins for free for a lot of software, why not for Endless Space?







TL;DR:

GUI skinning by the community to create the feeling of old, when playing this jewel of a 4x game.

Dreepa wrote:
Hi,As a last thought I was thinking: Now what if a game, such as Endless Space, could introduce a framework for the community to participate? Where all the UI elements and frames could actually be skinned and imported, so that the workload would not be on the dev team yet the game would continuously improve in presentation by dedicated artists that share the love and do stuff like this in their free time?

If there are so many people out their, participating in crowd funding, building art with minecraft and creating awesome mods and skins for free for a lot of software, why not for Endless Space?







TL;DR:

GUI skinning by the community to create the feeling of old, when playing this jewel of a 4x game.

Great suggestion!



It is possible the dev have already plan a "polish" step during the beta, or something like that, but anyway it could be great if we - the community, could help for giving some immersive art for UI popup, icones, etc... (for example, personnaly speaking, the icone of the military tech are particularly "immersion breaker", I hope they are just temporary)



Immersion is a key parameter for a 4X game

While I tend to personally lean to Clear clean UI's, I do have a soft spot of those Games in regards to making it feel like I've walked into a Science Lab or Diplomatic meeting, It Would Really Awesome to see something along those lines in Endless space, but not at the cost of Useability ofc