The Ultimate Vehicle Customization Menu (Concept Pictures Included)

Building a Vehicle

When you open the vehicle menu, you see this screen.



You choose your chassis by clicking on the chassis name on the left side of the screen. You can then choose a preset of that chassis below. Finally, you build the vehicle by clicking the "Build" button.

Simple as that, just three clicks, and you have a vehicle built.

Customizing Vehicles

The vehicle customization menu uses radial menus for the majority of tasks.

Adding a Weapon

To add a weapon, click on the weapon hardpoint on the chassis diagram.



This opens up the radial menu for that hardpoint.



To add a weapon, simply drag the weapon icon onto the slot.



To set the fire button, click on the weapon number on the right side of the screen. This opens the fire selector menu for that weapon.



In the radial menu, left clicking on a number sets it to primary fire, right clicking on a number sets it to secondary fire.

Changing Armor Layers

To add an armor layer on a side of a vehicle, click on the dotted line.



This adds an armor layer to that side.



To reduce armor layers on a side, click on a solid line.





You can also click a distance away from the side to add multiple layers at once.



There you have it.

Design Considerations

There were two design points in mind when creating this menu.

1. The interface must be fast to use.
2. The interface must be easy to use.
3. The interface must retain all functionality of the current vehicle menu.

The basis of this vehicle customization screen was to use radial menus. These have the advantage of requiring less mouse movement to use them. Instead of dragging the weapon icons across the screen, you simply drag them a short distance to the weapon socket.

In order to make this vehicle menu easy to use, there is only one page in the entire vehicle creation process. The player is shown, visually, the entire vehicle at a glance. This makes it easier to understand the process of customization.

All the features in the current vehicle menu are included in this vehicle menu as well.

Additional Notes

• The equipment panel on the right side gives an overview of all the weapons, and armor and engine of the vehicle. Weapon selections are not changed from the equipment panel, only fire groups are.
• Radial menus are closed by clicking anywhere outside of it.
• Socket functionality is the same as the current vehicle menu.
• An information box appears at the bottom of the screen when equipment icons are selected.

+ Vehicle Customization Menu Revamp

Pros:​

• - Faster to use than the current vehicle menu.
• - Easier to use than the current vehicle menu.
• - Retains functionality from the current vehicle menu.

Cons:​

• - Some vehicle equipment icons look the same (e.g. armor, engines).

 

I love it. Very fast...

 

Lovin it! Sounds like the devs have something in mind for the redesign, I can only hope it will be something as quick and easy to use and understand as this.

 

I liked the tidyness of your drawing and the idea.

I don't like the "clicking on a random spot and hoping it gives you the right amount of armor though". I hate those programs where you wanted 2 lines but it gave you 4 instead because you couldn't guesstimate. I like the old armor fractional number but otherwise the rest looks sexy

 

There is already some stuff that is somewhat similar to that. But changing GUI is 500x harder than what it seems Kylegar is working on it now.

 

A thousand times, YES!

 

It looks pretty good. How hard is it to implement?

 

Looks very nice. However it is very fast knowing how to use it, but i noticed two things new players might have troubles with.

1) To make it more obvious where people can find everything, have the vehicle start with all buttons empty:

- The weapon buttons should be big enough to display

"Add"
"weapon"

untill one gets selected.

- In the right panel the title "Equipment" should also mention something like "Click on a weapon to set controls"

- And i'm afraid many wouldn't know right clicking would work as well. They could be using 1 button/weapon for years.
Maybe have the menu not list 1 - 6 in a ciricle, but 1 - 5 on the left side of the circle and 1 - 5 on the right side?

2) Armor plate selection takes too long. I really need a button/arrow to click (that doesn't move so i don't have to move my mouse to the new dotted line but can just go *click*click*click*), AND a number or i'll be going "Do i have 4 or 5 plates?"

Apart from that, looks very nice.

And i know the dev's have one in mind, but i'm mentioning this anyway cause they might have made the same mistakes ... who knows.

 

I really want the game to automatically add armor plates to use up any remaining weight allowance once you have finished selecting equipment. It's a chore. Obviously it would have to be smart enough to favour the front and sides or something, but that's not so hard.

 

Pretty much entire vehicle customization code would need to get redone from what I understand. Duke has done up some sexy gui things but don't worry new system will be a lot nicer and easier to change its just going to take a while.

 

Definitly a great idea, armor automaticly being adjusted depending on the amount of weight left, during customizing.

There is however a problem with it, you don't want the game to favour certain sides over the others, all sides should be considered as equals and presented as that to the player, if you favour sides, players might copy this bluntly and take it for granted that front and back are the best sides, the game itself says so afterall.

You want to have tank customizations be unpredictable with every tank on the playing field, it makes the game more challenging and allows for those small differences in player experience, as in, the 1/10 tanks with it's armor set up like a complete noob (1 plate on the back, all on the front) that makes it more rewarding to actually have armor detection. The last thing you want is players assuming most tanks that are built have their weight automaticly applied, and have predictable results. It lowers peoples guard and makes outcomes more predictable.

Of course I'm going a bit too far into this, but I do believe that if you want to automaticly apply armor, it should never favour, instead apply equal plates to all sides and leave the remaining amount of plates for the player to pick. In the end you'd rather want players to do these things by themselves, but as the customization just takes too much time, automaticly applying plates (or even weapons) would be a good thing.

 

The GUI will look exactly the same unless we have a good reason to make it look different.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s

Plz upgrade to track serial killers IPs in realtime.

 

best suggestion ive seen in idk how long

 

there's a massive reason to make it look different. the current one sucks. it takes far far too long to make every dicision on the way, from needless tabs for armour/engine/weapons which could be on one page, to the endless dropdown menus. The drag and drop system, requiring you to first remove the current weapon and then drag the new weapon to the box is very slow and time consuming, but it also currently leaves players unsure of what weapons are actually fitted until they stick their mouse over the icon, further slowing it all down.

to make it "favour" the front and sides, just have it so it firsts adds a plate to the front, then the left/right, then the back. now all sides have a plate it does the process again, so that depending on your weight you'll either have even armour all around or you might have one extra plate which will first get added to the front.

it's an excellent idea to have it added automatically. being forced to spam the little buttons with clicks to add plates, feels more like a mouse control game than a helpful menu

keep the depth: allow people to customise the armour
lose the complexity: allow the computer to automatically add armour, so people that just want to enjoy riding a tank or do as most people do want even coverage over all sides can enjoy that.

 

Ok, Sandbag you tried to say that you had wanted AUTOARMOR button that would add as many plates as possible?

 

How is this simpler than the current layout? The current layout is easy to use; you just drag the things you want and place them onto the picture of a tank. The only problem I see with the current layout is the tabs to change weapons, armour and engine; the player should press 'Next' at each stage and it should take the player to those menus instead of the player needing to know that he/she needs to press those tabs.

 

You have to actually drag and drop items off to remove them....they should be replaced automatically. Armor and engines have only one slot anyway...so you should be able to equip them with one click..there is no need for drop and drop when there is no choice of slots.

 

um, yeah. . i think it would be super useful for doing a job that usually has to be done by hand.

 

all plates are equal, taking a plate off that was automaticly added, then re adding it to the side you want it on instead, takes more clicks than starting off without the weight applied to armor.