Rebuilding the TA HUD

[fallen]

Team: I am well into the process of re-building the Templar Assault HUD. Primarily, it is a beautification process, but it is also the right time (and the last time for a while) to change the display, add or remove widgets, and change the organization. Some of the elements are becoming more compact so that new user interface bits can be added to support larger teams, etc.

Templar Assault is always played in landscape mode.
Where do you like to have the buttons and sliders?
What items are missing? What extra controls would you like? What stats would you like to see? What other types of notification do you need?

[wario]

Hello,

here are some of my thoughts:

- change weapon button in the "charater portrait"
- "out of range" should be displayed on the target and not at the bottom
- on the rigt buttom there could be a control pad so that you can move your templar with that. I could be "look" like this:

......[turn left]............[forward]............[turn right]
[move/strafe left] [change weapon] [move/strafe right]
..............................[backward]

- Comparing of gear/weapons
- Stacking Gear/weapons
- Old/obsolete Equipement should be placed to a basket

EDIT
Should be saing that my thoughts are based on a tablet HUD. I am using the Nexus 10 and everything is very small and sometimes hard to hit.

[slayernz]

Hey Andrew ... here are my thoughts. Some may drift a little into functional improvements rather than purely UI modification ...

Ready room UI:

• The "To Battle" (and for that matter "Back" and "New Level") buttons should actually look like buttons, not sunken in areas of the framing. When I came back to TA after a long absence, I couldn't find how to actually go kill things!
  
• Ability to change a name of a knight. Having personalized squad members would be great
  
• Ability to sell items that you no longer need (obviously for a lot less than you paid for) YES - this is coming in an update soon
  
• Ability to swap weapons without having to unequip first
  
• Ability to define the order of the knights before starting battle. So often, scouts are placed at the back of the start positions (because scouts are often lower in order). As such, they tend to be blocked by slower moving soldiers and their speed bonuses are negated.
  
  

Combat UI:

• I like the suggestion by wario of having some sort of controller that isn't over top of the knight. Useful when the knights are closer together
  
• Provide the ability to change weapons without having to target a xeno first.
  
• Update Fog of War per movement. I've found that sometimes you move, and the FOW doesn't really update and expose the xeno's when in reality it should
  
• HP, and AP are in graphical format, and AP is also a number, so the AP graphic is redundant. The graphical format for HP and AP are less useful, and I'd be okay with HP being a number
  
• Turn number somewhere on the main UI (maybe in bottom-right corner), along with kill count. This is in addition the knight combat info (hit percentages). Again, you don't need to show AP and AM in bottom right given you have that for each knight.
  
• Although some of the information is redundant, I would still like making a long press on a character icon open up more detail that would include
  
  • Health
    
  • Armor details
    
  • Movement Details
    
  • Weapon details (damage, range, crit hit chance percentages)
    
  • Weapon selection
    
  • Number of kills by the knight for the mission
    
  • Number of kills by the team for the mission
    
  • Turn number
    Actually, this thread captures what I was originally after ...
    startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tatalk&action=display&thread=1553
    
  
  
• Ability to toggle (in options) "display firing arcs and weapon ranges". Some weapons allow you to shoot on diagonals, however it's not very clear which weapons they are, and what range you have. Devastator guns are arc-capable, but the Devastator sword is not. Neither, for that matter, is the Neptune.
  
• Undo ... the ability to undo the most recent MOVEMENT action within a turn. shouldn't be able to undo every step - just the last. Should not be able to undo any combat action.
  
• Oh, auto-selection of the next available knight when your MP is 0. Should be logical order (1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4) ... sometimes it feels random. Maybe it's just me.
  
• When all your knights have run out of AP, it should automatically turn-complete. Sometimes it does that, but not always
  
• Toggle the ability to turn on/off Fog Of War in options. You can limit this function to the easiest couple of levels only (say Normal and below).
  
• Is it too late to ponder changing to an isometric view? <grin> ...
  

I think I might start a different thread for some additional ideas/feature requests ...

<modified cos I wanted to see what that "glow" tag does to text ... apparently nothing >

[wario]

Dec 17, 2012 16:56:35 GMT -5 slayernz said:

[/li][li] Ability to toggle (in options) "display firing arcs and weapon ranges". Some weapons allow you to shoot on diagonals, however it's not very clear which weapons they are, and what range you have. Devastator guns are arc-capable, but the Devastator sword is not. Neither, for that matter, is the Neptune.
[/quote]

It would be great to make visible the fields the weapon is able to hit. That would make possible some new tactics with weapons dealing damage to an area.

[fallen]

wario - thanks for the suggestion. Have you played CK? Painting the floor in red would suffice?

[slayernz]

If you stand your ground long enough, you can paint out the firing arc using xeno blood ...

[slayernz]

Oh oh ... got another one. If there was an objective that required you to go to a specific location, it would be great to get some sort of red marker-line that shows us where we have to go. You see it in lots of other games, and is very useful when you get objectives to go search places, and you can't readily tell from the map exactly what those places are.

If there are several objectives with places to go, maybe you have a choice of selecting the particular objective you want to follow for now.

[janek]

Another suggestion: add minimap in options menu (in the same place as "briefing") showing the same map as in briefing with highlighted templars positions.


and one eyecandy: change templars portraits during mission as they get hit in doom/wolf3d style

[slayernz]

Yeah ...

and when they shoot more than three times in any one turn, they get that cool grimace that you got firing the Gatling gun for long bursts

[overseer]

I like the old portraits they looked old school cylon! not diggin the newer portraits but the rest of new art is pretty sweet!

[overseer]

would it be possible to employ a different portrait (maybe color scheme) for scouts ? so the could be distinguished from soldiers. So i can tell them apart without knowing there names ? it gets rough out here in the @#%& sometimes and the turnover rate is high so sometimes squad members arent around long enough to get chummy with names !

[fallen]

overseer - great suggestion, I can work on making their portrait different.

[slayernz]

Maybe even just adding a letter to the bottom-left or bottom-right part of the icon
S = Scout
N = Neptune
H = Hydra
G = Grunt (Soldier)
C = Captain

[Cory Trese]

That would be a pretty good compromise that wouldn't take too long.

Let me talk to Andrew and see how we want to proceed -- maybe do the text one as a stop-gap.

[fallen]

My question - is the flame on the forehead of the Hydra cannon enough of a distinguishming feature that you can pick him easily?