Change the class change from a drop-down menu to tabs on the top. _____________________________________ | /Engineer\ /Grenadier\ /Rifleman\ /Scout\ | The main goal of this is to increase speed when changing classes in a Rax, Armory, or near a flag. Also do the same to the skills menu: _______________ __________________ |_/General Skills\ /Class-Specific Skills\ | :D
recruit someone to do some easy to do minor changes like this which in fact make the game much easier?
Brutos wanted to overhaul the GUI some day. But I think the last what I heard was that the GUI is a big block of many 1000 lines of code. And it is a lot of work to understand and change this. Maybe the problem is also that everybody wants to do a complete overhaul. Small changes like in the vehicle customization menu (red customize button, grouped weapons) are also a big help.
If we could recruit more capable coders, we would. But regardless, at the moment, it's not a high priority. When people hear "GUI OVERHAUL" in a release, it doesn't really bring new players. The game having a more intuitive GUI is nice, and it's good for new players if they happen to try it, but it doesn't bring new ones. We're working full steam ahead on aircraft at the moment. If all goes well with that, then it buys us some time to overhaul the GUI. Playercount in empires isn't good at the moment, we have to make sure we do everything right.
. . . All the more reason to think very hard about how the GUI should be re-implemented before working on it, I suppose.
forgot the weapons Empires has a minimum supported resolution of 1024x768. I am sure that we can fit all the class selection, skills, class skills, and weapons into a 1024x768 square. For a quick idea: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3910011/Empires/new-gui-layout-1028x768.jpg if the attached is broken All the possible options are on 1 page, with selected weapons shown under the list of possible. With a bit better spacing, selected skills can have a big selected sticker put over them, and for reference, the big gray box is 1024x768.
If I had to hazard a guess... Commander Vote Menu Class Selection Menu Vehicle Selection Menu Team Selection Menu Squad Selection Menu Minimap/Spawn Selection Menu Player HUD Squad HUD Commander HUD Vehicle HUD Minimap HUD HUD Orders/Commands (I was hoping to make this list stupidly long just to make the GUI look scary. I failed.)
It's usually copy-pasted which makes it a bitch to introduce new stuff, so it needs to be refactored to use functions to reduce the copy-paste spam but it's a fuckload of work, especially because once you refactor it, you see 10 ways to make it even more simple and logical, and after that, even more, etc, until you've spent 2 hours just rewriting code. When my exams are done I might dig around in the Alien Swarm SDK code to see what VGUI stuff they use, I heard it was nice
