Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 3:44 pm
Hey everyone,
One of the first things a new player sees is the hangar screen. These days it's a 800x600 bitmap somewhere in the center of his or her screen, with text and a minimap way off to the sides in the black bars surrounding the screen. Same goes for the loadout screen. It looks like a broken game right out of the gate. I feel we should strive to preserve the illusion for a tad longer
Also, the hangar screen serves no purpose. You can't do anything there. It is comparable to those websites in the early 2000's where you got a shiny but useless spash screen before you could do or read anything useful or fun there. It's bad, outdated design.
I propose that we not only update the hangar screen and the loadout screen to be more high res friendly, but completely overhaul them and, more to the point, integrate them.
In the hangar/base screen I think you should be able to:
1. select ship and loadout
2. select base to launch from/ open turrets on e.g. bombers
3. receive selected information from the Ctrl-G menu and the Teampane (e.g. teambalance, docked miners)
and then also be able to open the windows you can now open.
f3, f5, f6.
How:
I think doing this could be feasable in only MDL, but i may be wrong. Prelimanary testing made Alleg angry (I simply copy pasted the contents of loadoutpane.mdl to see what happened). It crashed and it redownloaded hangar.mdl in a bit of a huff.
So things may be not as straightforward as I was hoping ...
Then again if it can be done in only mdl that does not make it straightforward in any sense of the word because working with mdl is a like trying to catch a terrified pitbull-terrier suffering from a violent bout of diarrhea. In a @#(!storm. Wearing a wedding dress.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions.
You like?
Feasable?
Advisable?
One of the first things a new player sees is the hangar screen. These days it's a 800x600 bitmap somewhere in the center of his or her screen, with text and a minimap way off to the sides in the black bars surrounding the screen. Same goes for the loadout screen. It looks like a broken game right out of the gate. I feel we should strive to preserve the illusion for a tad longer
Also, the hangar screen serves no purpose. You can't do anything there. It is comparable to those websites in the early 2000's where you got a shiny but useless spash screen before you could do or read anything useful or fun there. It's bad, outdated design.
I propose that we not only update the hangar screen and the loadout screen to be more high res friendly, but completely overhaul them and, more to the point, integrate them.
In the hangar/base screen I think you should be able to:
1. select ship and loadout
2. select base to launch from/ open turrets on e.g. bombers
3. receive selected information from the Ctrl-G menu and the Teampane (e.g. teambalance, docked miners)
and then also be able to open the windows you can now open.
f3, f5, f6.
How:
I think doing this could be feasable in only MDL, but i may be wrong. Prelimanary testing made Alleg angry (I simply copy pasted the contents of loadoutpane.mdl to see what happened). It crashed and it redownloaded hangar.mdl in a bit of a huff.
So things may be not as straightforward as I was hoping ...
Then again if it can be done in only mdl that does not make it straightforward in any sense of the word because working with mdl is a like trying to catch a terrified pitbull-terrier suffering from a violent bout of diarrhea. In a @#(!storm. Wearing a wedding dress.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions.
You like?
Feasable?
Advisable?