Henrik's Menu, UI and HUD concepts

[HenrikRyosa]

Not Graphics, structure-wise. I don't like the way you want the people to join games or interact with Unreal and what it is. I didn't want to be rude but that menu is so 90's, and the way people play games right now, social-wise, video/stream-wise, e-sports, like.. everything, that menu does nothing for today's world.

You based your idea from Unreal Tournament 3, and that menu was dated before it launched lol.

IMO, people who want to do a concept of the menu, should play at least 5-10 good games of esports and the way they interact with the user. How they communicate with you and how they capture the essence of the game and make it easy for you to compete. That's why I quit doing a menu, didn't have time

It's probably the hardest thing Epic will have to do, and I'm not so sure if we will be capable of doing it.

I'm tired of hearing these "today's world" arguments without, I'm sorry to say, much substance behind them. I am interested to know what 90's FPS game let people see featured matches and join/spec them straight from the first menu screen, or their favorites, or marketplace or tutorials. Also interested where you think you can find any of that on UT3's menu, or draw any parallel whatsoever in its layout.

Unreal Tournament I would say is less eSports than a game that incorporates eSports, and we have a long way to go to develop Unreal Tournament to a state where we can truly see what it needs and what it does not. I look at menus of these other games and struggle to find the advantages you claim exist. Literally 1/3 of the screen space of the League of Legends "portal" is eaten up talking about patch notes and promoting other games. The features you point to are sometimes layers deep compared to what I have done. The DOTA 2 menu has basically the same items I have included but less logically organized. I have organized the information in a manner that will be familiar to UT players of pretty much all generations, while adding elements desirable to those from outside the series.

There could be other things I can do with the space, but strongly believe at least that we should not clutter the screen with random videos with some vague association to the game or promoting other games. If there are some specific vital social or esports elements you think are missing, spell them out and spell out how they are actually vital to UT.

Thanks.

[HeisenbergTrip]

Yes, those other menus are refined. This concept is a very early draft. Why not work to see if we can really flesh it out instead of discarding it altogether? In one of the previous streams, I asked Epic about a UWindows variant making its way into this game and Joe and Steve both said UE4 actually uses something much like UWindows.

That is actually good news. Nice! It may be cool for some Social things like IRC and Friend lists. And who knows more. Easy to use for sure.

This concept is very early draft, I agree with you, but I think it didn't start well and thus there's not many community feedback for it. I just think we could help to give this a direction, but with comments like these: "The features you point to are sometimes layers deep compared to what I have done." and so on... Sounds too narcissistic for my taste, so I won't discuss this anymore.

/HeisenbergTrip has left the game.

[HenrikRyosa]

Well yes, I made it as a demo... what do you want me to say... "compared to what Crotale did"? You are being a little confusing with accusations of narcissism.

I think there is a good amount of feedback for it being barely a week old. Compare it with a thread like that Kazeohin's flak cannon, which is popular, but only on page 11 after over 3 weeks because of a lot of people iterating on it with paintovers etc. Page count vs time should not be some automatic interpreter of whether an idea is good or worth developing.

And compared to a weapon, not many people know how to improve on a menu in a meaningful and demonstratable way, which is why so few have risked posting menu concepts as you have mentioned yourself. You said you haven't bothered... but maybe it's because you aren't as sure of yourself as you have been projecting in your criticisms of my work.

[Paradox UT]

I like it. The menu up top reminds me of CS:GO, which I think is the style of main menu we should go for.

I think we could do without the instant action/favourites buttons and replace that area with a community chatroom/lobby/friends list.

[Avalanche._]

but with comments like these: "The features you point to are sometimes layers deep compared to what I have done." and so on... Sounds too narcissistic for my taste, so I won't discuss this anymore.

You shouldn't bother discussing anything on here if that's going to be your attitude.... All you basically did was come here on his thread, complain that his idea is ****, then go on and call him narcissistic for something so ridiculously neutral that indicated almost no narcissism at all... Way to go bro, no wonder people aren't frequenting the forums as often anymore.

And you manage to pull all that off with the scarcity of this subject, there really aren't all that many main menu posts... So why demotivate this guy like that?

I like it. The menu up top reminds me of CS:GO, which I think is the style of main menu we should go for.

I think we could do without the instant action/favourites buttons and replace that area with a community chatroom/lobby/friends list.

This is an interesting idea, would definitely be something of this day and time. It might help a lot with community building if the game gets some sort main chat room thing on the main menu.

[HenrikRyosa]

I think we could do without the instant action/favourites buttons and replace that area with a community chatroom/lobby/friends list.

There is specific feedback I can do something with. Thank you.

[Crotale]

Although I agree that placing of specific buttons helps to better refine a menu, I think a lot of folks are missing the overall concept of designing a user interface. Honing out which buttons go where can be accomplished in the actual build of the UI, that the concept should show us how the interface can work so that we can best determine of the overall concept is strong or weak. It also allows us to play with various ideas on what elements or tools the UI will/can include.

I also think most folks are not comprehending the idea of a personal user interface, which is what I see Henrik is trying to create, and yes, I am adding in my own interpretation of his concept. The PUI (personal user interface) includes but is not limited to the game menu, HUD, scoreboards and other menu-based or menu-connected controls or displays the user will personally access or use. In my mind, there should be a common thematic to all of these elements.

What I foresee as the eventual UT PUI will be a culmination of many individual tools. The tools, all blended together in the game, will be sewn together using the overhead menu functionality. A generous portion of this will be the graphics, of which Henrik and I both have suggested can and should be skinnable. I also have gone further than that by saying the layout should be customizable, similar to Photoshop, Max or many other applications. I believe UE4 already offers up such flexibility, so this isn't a stretch of the imagination at all.

Adding in new features as a whole should be made fairly straightforward. Unlike some of the other counterparts I mentioned above, I believe UE4 allows us to mod in a whole new feature set into the menu as a modular plug-in without affecting the remainder of the menu itself. As an example, you can add your mod menu either to the "Mods" tab or let the newly added mod have its own tab. This decision would be user-defined but could still be left up to the system or the mod creator to determine the default arrangement. HUD type elements (or other "in-the-game" elements) can be handled in a similar manner. The user decides overall how these items are displayed and used. Sure, there will need to be some form of layout "lockdown" to prevent forms of cheating, but this can be addressed later (I addressed this in another thread but this isn't the place).

Additional items for discussion and consideration should be how to handle custom skinning. I have some solid ideas on this and may create a new thread on this concept, as I think it is up to Henrik if he wants to add this to the discussion here.

[GreatEmerald]

I disagree, and could do without the snarkiness as well. I am a graphic artist. I like to put graphical ideas out there, even if they aren't necessarily the final product. Did I intend that people say "oh gawd that's the hottest menu evar, put that in game nao!"? No. Did I hope there might be things here and there people might latch onto and want to see develop? Yes, and many here understood that and gave me feedback I could use thankfully.

If you want to give people useful feedback in the future, less "ugh"es and "you knows" and get to your point in a respectful manner please.

My point is that you're doing one thing and saying another. You claim that it's "just a layout prototype" and that we shouldn't pay attention to the graphics... But then you completely ignore my (serious!) suggestion of iterating only on the layout first, so we could actually give feedback purely on that, without being distracted by all the graphics. As evidenced by level design, layout and graphics are two entirely separate things, with layout (thus usability) coming first and the graphics (eye-candy) made to fit the layout afterwards. Having pure layouts also results in others being able to do paintovers easier (since you don't have to concern yourself with gradients getting mismatched and whatnot). And if you want to work on the graphics, once again that's good, but focus on that (but in that case don't tell people not to pay attention to it).

I understand that you put a lot of effort into making it, and I appreciate it, but you really shouldn't be so defensive about it, or read into something as being an attack where there was never such a thing. It makes people not want to give you useful feedback at all. HeisenbergTrip is just case in point...

[HenrikRyosa]

Fair enough, but I'm not used to doing that and it's not really what I do. I personally don't see what's wrong with providing some ideas on both fronts simultaneously, as long as I'm clear about that intent. I wasn't attempting to be defensive, and was genuinely surprised that I hadn't put that particular disclaimer in my original post, but I've rectified that now.

I have no problem with critical feedback that is based on something valid and something I have control over. What I do not have control over is random perceptions of what is "90's" (and he was speaking about layout) or a ripoff of UT3, or other statements that come out of some internal bias I cannot relate to. Stating a person must play 5-10 esports games before being qualified to design a menu is also a bit absurd. Anyone can look these menus up in five minutes and see exactly how they function and whether there are ideas worth using. But I'm trying to make a menu for UT, not DOTA, LOL, Quake, CS, COD or any other game, so I need to think of aspects of our community and how WE interact first, not how some other community playing a completely different type of game does it.

I also have to think about a balance. What's actually in the game thusfar, what I know is likely to be in the game, and what might not make it in. Maybe someone else thinks it's the most vital thing ever to have a social feature where players can look at in-game selfies, for example and share them to social sites. Well, sorry but that is not even remotely decided as a feature yet - which might be subject to change, but I'm working with what I have here and cannot base a design around something like that.

A lobby type interface seems more reasonable, as it's actually been discussed internally at Epic and I know they'd be keen on incorporating in some way. So ybb brought up something specific and helpful which I had overlooked, he kept the baseless rhetoric out of the picture, thus there is no need for dwelling on attacks, imagined or otherwise and I can focus on making my ideas better. Really simple isn't it? I think so.

[ShoK]

I think it looks nice, but I do agree; it could go through a few tweaks to the overall design. The floating Favorites and Instant Action buttons also seem a bit out of place for me; I think it'd be better if it was added into one of the dropdown menus.

[_Lynx]

It looks great, but you might want to look into revising the dropdown menu width, as some menu items will very likely be long. I'm not sure about the current look of favorites and instant action buttons, but I feel that new interface will need some area, where people can "pin" the shortcuts to menus that they access the most - be it server browser, instant action or friends list.

[Crotale]

A "novel" idea I would like to see implemented is to minimize toggle between a shortcut (favorites?) bar and the menu. This could be left in a default situation or last state. When the men is minimized to the bar, the favorites would be displayed in the normal space where the menu would be shown, but look and function a lot like a desktop. You can drag and drop shortcuts such as favorite servers, webpages, mods, etc. The community tab (art showcase, whatever that function is at the moment) could be left up or minimized.

There are several ways to incorporate this, actually. The favorites could be another page to be displayed in the community tab area. Or, the "desktop" would be the background where the user can choose an image to be displayed (or set of rotating images) that reside underneath the menu when it is opened up or expanded.

What do you guys think of this idea?

[GreatEmerald]

I don't really understand what you mean. Care to make a mockup?

[Crotale]

I will if I can get a Photoshop install on this old laptop.

[iLikeTheUDK]

Made some sounds: https://forums.unrealtournament.com/...499#post113499