DCS: Black Shark GUI Update - 20 Sept 2008

[Axion]

Very fresh looking, I like it! :thumbup:

[Boberro]

Nice, looks like the GUI is finally pretty and finished up :)

[Mip...]

Looks GREAT

Btw. Part 2 first screen( Main Menu) in the upper right Corner: Version 1.0

Does that mean that it is allready as good as finished? :music_whistling::joystick:

I am waiting for the manual release next week :book::D

 

€: One question left: Will the Ecyclopedia contain only the general characteristics without some text about the history etc? ._.

Edited September 21, 2008 by Mip...

[Groove]

Awesome.

 

One question, will the GUI feature keyboard shortcuts throughout, only in the mission designer or other?

 

The Mission Editor has a certain ammounts of key shortcuts to help the designer with placing, editing and deleting of units without the need to klick icons all the time.

[xhaos]

What is the difference between Editor and Campaign Builder?

[Boberro]

I forgot ask how it is with speed of new GUI (LO GUI is IMO little slow?) and easiness use of it?

[Yellonet]

Looks very good! :)

 

A couple of comments:

 

There seemed to be an abundance of brown in the ME, it could be difficult to distinguish the different rings.

 

On the page 'Gameplay' perhaps the options for adding "help" shoouldn't say "Difficulties" but rather "Assistance options" or something like that. Also having tool tips explaining what they do for these options would be great for those new players who doesn't necessarily know what the different options do.

[Shaman]

Looking good. Can we get skin-preview button/section in payload editor though?

[VMFA117_Poko]

Looks nice overall. Good idea with notepad layout. But can I be honest? Stupid question - I will. I don't like DCS logotype. It looks little broken :/, not well designed, sorry. It should be lifted somewhere in future. Also every logo, logotype, trademark, etc. should occupy its own space. Always maintain a generous "safe" area equal to half or sometimes one third the height of the logo on all sides around. Yours DCS in top left side of the screen is transparent and placed on noisy background bar without even allowing the safe area. Besides why did you use noisy background? Less adornments please. There should go simple full grey apla like on main menu top left bar (the colour I mean - not the shape). All menus would be more tiddly and specially Mission Editor page upper menu would be better readable. There are little more very small mistakes about which I won't even write.

All in all it's a pure simulation and menus should be clear as they are now. Good I didn't find any glowy, glass buttons like in Vista. (EDIT: oh, sorry! I've found them! haha!) It's kitschy and not trendy anymore.

 

The best game menus I've seen are in Colin McRea 4.0 IIRC - but no wonder 'cuz it was made by one of the top world graphic studios. It doesn't fit to DCS style but I would like to show the idea and top execution without braking any graphic designing rules.

Edited September 21, 2008 by Poko24

[451 Беркут]

Cool! It look realy very nice! :thumbup:

[Boberro]

Looks nice overall. Good idea with notepad layout. But can I be honest? Stupid question - I will. I don't like DCS logotype. It looks little broken :/, not well designed, sorry. It should be lifted somewhere in future. Also every logo, logotype, trademark, etc. should occupy its own space. Always maintain a generous "safe" area equal to half or sometimes one third the height of the logo on all sides around. Yours DCS in top left side of the screen is transparent and placed on noisy background bar without even allowing the safe area. Besides why did you use noisy background? Less adornments please. There should go simple full grey apla like on main menu top left bar (the colour I mean - not the shape). All menus would be more tiddly and specially Mission Editor page upper menu would be better readable. There are little more very small mistakes about which I won't even write.

All in all it's a pure simulation and menus should be clear as they are now. Good I didn't find any glowy, glass buttons like in Vista. It's kitschy and not trendy anymore.

 

The best game menus I've seen are in Colin McRea 4.0 IIRC - but no wonder 'cuz it was made by one of the top world graphic studios. It doesn't fit to DCS style but I would like to show the idea and top execution without braking any graphic designing rules.

 

@Poko what happened to you ;]

 

 

Partially i agree, DCS logo is little kitschy, IMO if it would be the trademark of new line products, it needs corrections. Other menus are fine for me, maybe aren't good for everyone but notice - it is really huge look like progress since Lock on line, LO menus are totally crappy and these bitmaps slow down it, at last LO menus are strange.

 

Anyway menu is good, needs little corrections but compared to terrible previous LO menus present is very well made.

[-Skipper-]

I guess with the editor you create single missions and with the campaign builder you integrate those missions into a campaign.

 

Considering the new campaign-structure, with missions depending on the outcome of previous missions, I guess the campaign uses a lot more features to connect certain contents between each other. So the singlemission-editor is probably much simpler in this regard than the campaign-editor.

[Ratgnagna]

Sorry, but what is GUI?

[Ulrich]

Sorry, but what is GUI?

 

Graphical User Interface.

[Ratgnagna]

Thanks a lot Ulrich. :)

[swepain]

Thx Wags & co

Looks nice and u managed to answer one of my questions too.. :thumbup:

Only one thing left now.. . . ..

 

this is little bit like this though http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=6q72YFf71RI

[CAT_101st]

I found a few ansers just buy looking at the option menu.:smilewink: Tool tips can be turnd on and off in the gameplay tab, under difficulties. and the F10 view option you can have "My plane, allies units, enemies units" all slected sepretly.

[G3]

in controls the ability to see all axis and key mappings at one time,:thumbup: device names across the top, good thinking.

 

and who wants to bet it doesn't jump back to the top of the list when you clear one.:megalol:

i see it now has a "clear category" button:smartass:

 

looking really good, thanks for the update.

[BTTW-DratsaB]

wow, looks slick. Love the loadout editior and the contemporary reference in the campaign

[Vekkinho]

Thanks for the update Wags,

 

I'm not a graphic designer so I'll make no comments or suggestions of a GUI (buttons, background images and such) but I'm the man of the action so here's a small practical advice that might come handy during mission planning and execution. Well that's what this sim is about, isn't it?!

 

One thing that might bother the sensitive (IMO) are orange detection/threat circles in ME! Hardy visible against orange GPS map patches that present populated areas! And slightly overcluttered!

 

I already suggested red circles as threat ranges and yellow as detection and I still stand by it but how 'bout fully customizable circle colors so each player may select a detection/threat color to his liking?! It helps decluttering ME!

 

Thanks!

Edited September 21, 2008 by Vekkinho

[Verdungo]

Can those menus be accessed when in game? It is a shame if the graphics options cannot be accessed while still playing a mission.

[Valery Blazhnov]

IMHO BS has new vector map now so every map object looking may be tuned in the map classifier (Lua) file.

[Boberro]

Can those menus be accessed when in game? It is a shame if the graphics options cannot be accessed while still playing a mission.

 

Not every game (even don't know if most) supports options like this. Some things need to restart mission\game, bah you rather don't change options while playing mission ;))

[Verdungo]

Not every game (even don't know if most) supports options like this. Some things need to restart mission\game, bah you rather don't change options while playing mission ;))

 

True, but just because all games do not support this, it doesn't mean that they or any other future game shouldn't. It's not that big a deal when changing graphics settngs, but it can get pretty annoying when setting up controller settings and experimenting with them.

[-Skipper-]

True, but just because all games do not support this, it doesn't mean that they or any other future game shouldn't. It's not that big a deal when changing graphics settngs, but it can get pretty annoying when setting up controller settings and experimenting with them.

 

True, too, but the thing is, the most hardware-demanding games usually don't have the option to change settings ingame - or you won't see all changes until at least the mission is restarted.