Navigation UI suggestions

[ltmauve]

So I've been bouncing around a bunch of ideas in my head about how to redo the UI, and I mainly have some ideas about the navigation part.

1, different types of entities would get different markers on the HUD (both on the ring and in front you)
2, you can tell if a structure is occupied or has an AI by the HUD icon.
3, the relationship of the entity to you determines the color. (Neutral/Friendly/Hostile/Allied) (Neutral sectors are grey. Neutral asteroids are brown)
4. You can filter by entity type and relationship. In the filter, you can set whether it shows up in front of you or to the side of you: never, always, when it has a player, when it has an AI. You can also override the filter immediately to never or always without opening that specific filter dialogue.
5. In the nav menu, stuff is shown as a tree in the list. You can fold stuff away. You can also filter the list separately
6. Your selected target always shows up with a white selector with a black outline.
7. Those two empty boxes on the side of the nav menu will have a purpose: that top one will store a list of saved waypoints (and the previous selected one, as well). The bottom one will either have something to do with the scanner or your selected target.

 

[TheOmega]

This is cool, you even counted a ship manned and unmanned. Although the markers could use a little more thought than that. That is my only complaint, please continue.

 

[ltmauve]

You mean the icons? Which ones?
For the player/ai, I wanted the AI to look empty because the AI doesn't have a brain. It matters less, so it has less visual weight.
For the ships, I wanted to keep the iconic diamond. For a docked ship, it's on a side-landed. Turrets are like docked ships, except they turn, so I added circles to the corners.

 

[TheOmega]

Just, less minimalism, more fancy. Or, you could have separate icons for all the different relationship statuses, speaking of which, what is the difference between friendly and alliance?

 

[ltmauve]

Friendly is your own faction, Alliance is other factions that you have an alliance with.

They should be simple, so that way they are easily recognizable. Also, I banged that out in about 10 minutes after letting it stew in my head for a few months, so they should be neater.

 

[TheOmega]

Ah. I forgot about you own faction for some reason, derp.

 

[Megacrafter127]

3, the relationship of the entity to you determines the color. (Neutral/Friendly/Hostile/Allied) (Neutral sectors are grey. Asteroids are always brown)

What if an admin decided to spawn in a pirate asteroid with some guns on it and active AI?
I say, unfactioned asteroids' markers should be colored like you proposed for ships, except neutral is brown and not blue.

 

[ltmauve]

What if an admin decided to spawn in a pirate asteroid with some guns on it and active AI?
I say, unfactioned asteroids' markers should be colored like you proposed for ships, except neutral is brown and not blue.

Valid point. changing the OP.

 

[Esarai]

Something that would be fun to consider is having the icons scale based on range to target, and having the selected target's hud blip be about 1.5x larger than everything else. Being able to tell how far it is to everything on the field would be a boon for a pilot's situational awareness. The current HUD attempted this by having the icon's transparency determined by range, but this means that objects outside of 500 m tend to become indistinct messes of overlapping, semi-visible triangles.

 

[NeonSturm]

Thought I expected teal=own, green=ally, when I come from zero-k as a newbie :p
Else I may expect blue being allied/own, green being own/allied and teal neutral because it is closer to white.

I don't like the markers all.
I agree on player and ship markers.

I'd like the arrow actually be just a symbol. The position on the screen should tell you the direction.
Else you could just put an 2-line arrow around the icon

 

[ltmauve]

Ally is a combination between neutral (#00000FF) and friendly (#00FF00)

Yeah, symbols for the stations and planets and whatnot need some work.
Having an arrow with the icon in it would make them pretty big.
I'm not sure about how to account for range. Scaling the icon means you just get a dot after a while, and you don't get any information from that. I think the transparency provides a good amount of information, though it could be tweaked a little.

 

[NeonSturm]

Ally is a combination between neutral (#00000FF) and friendly (#00FF00)

Have you ever considered enemy and friendly (a faction which is biased toward your faction's members?)

 

[jayman38]

2, you can tell if a structure is occupied or has an AI by the HUD icon.

If the game gets to a point where ships leave behind a derelict damaged structure when they are destroyed, I'd prefer if the HUD didn't identify an occupied ship. That way, pirates and tricky players could set up a derelict-looking, yet fully-functional ship for traps. Or maybe there would be an add-on block similar to a jammer that caused the ship to appear as something else on other players' radar. (Suddenly this occupied, hostile ship appears as a neutral, abandoned derelict/asteroid/etc.)