Hello, I'm looking for feedback on design styles. I'm unsure about which of these two styles develop. I'm designing GUI for myself for when the HTML stuff is done and I have trouble deciding what is the better looking style. I designed the healthbar plain simple, with a subtle scanline and no texture. It has transparency and it's supposed to look sleek and small. It's basically the same concept as the current GUI, with cut corners and all. The Vehicle Customization window is supposed to look like one of those modern shooters (BF3). Large text size, scanlines, glow everywhere and a cut corner style. So which one looks better?
I'm a personal fan of simple and sleek with minimal fluff. Function over form and all that. Also, the middle one almost looks like it has glow/blur on the edges, which gives me a royal headache. Keep in mind, of course, that the simpler the GUI is, the easier it will be to render (generally speaking) and the lower frame rendering times will be.
I like the big all caps text, but I'm not a fan of the glow. Between the transparency v. scanline thing, I'm indifferent.
I prefer the current UI design over the planetside-ey vehicle creation window you've got going there.
Are you talking about aesthetics or the actual way it functions? As for me, I'm not particularly good at judging this kid of thing. Like Candles said, just consider how it'll affect render times, as that's probably one of the more important aspects.
The Vehicle Customization window looks great. Gives it a new game look. It would be good for new players. But why one or the other? Why not just have an option to pick the nice looking one or the lame but saves 2 fps.
I don't see why you can't just have multiple GUI versions and have it selectable from main menu instead of perf. settings. Have each one a zip file that you can toss into a Emp_GUI folder and empires will unzip it when it starts and you can choose a list from the main menu.
Well I like the one you left up here, but I would probably tune down the glow a bit. Also I would suggest to make the stamina bar continuous, as the breaks in it suggest a game mechanic that isn't there.
also light blue is a bad contrast to sky and water ... ... but i think its hard to judge on just a single piece of gui. the whole might appear differnt completely.
The analogy I am thinking of is... I could txt the guy next to me but, its simpler to just talk to him. The phone can do more but, in this instance its less convenient. Sure a vpk is included but, its more work for the person to create it then a 7zip would be. Also... can anyone make their own VPK and place it in the folder and empires would have no problem with it?
"IF" candles did it right then yes. Should be :folder\emp\custom\ Put your materials, models and the lot in there.then drop folder on vpk.exe what even you name folder will be the vpk name. Even valve stated that even custom content should be packed into vpk. It is like a zip but can be read by source. Vpks are like gcfs. But anyone can make them. They are the first place source looks.
