Evolving UI

[pyrobob262]

Well first off, the alpha ui is lacking, and I don't believe kara has someone to do anything about it, soooo, I might learn it.

If anyone knows anyting about the UI functionality for SC2, then please speak up. otherwise I will be learning from scratch and need ideas. the element counter is obvious, help center with towers and details is obvious, but hat of the scoreboard? Make one like the WC3 one with two expandability settings, none single and all, and maybe team if that ever comes about. have a separate UI element for current/next wave,and another ui element for your current elements, and perhaps as the element selector.

the topic title comes form my idea of modifying the bottom ui, to incorporate the elements you pick. IE nature would add some green growth, and if you went with fire it would have fire licked across it and burning it a little, and water after that puts out some fire, but all three are there, evolving as you choose elements. Next level of nature would add flower buds, then third would be flowers. All in all it would be ~ 200 variations not taking into account interest. Seems a lot of work, but I might get bored.

Where i would need help, besides learning it all, would be what to do for interest? Just throw gold coins around the ui? then bars or something for a second level? I dunno.

Is this even possible?

The alpha als ohas no wire frames nor unit portraits, and I do believe kara has little to no plan for those atm, so if someone has experience please step up, otherwise Ill be learning it over the weekend.

[BloodyOrange]

Like your idea to work with UI a little more. Efets for elements you pick (as you suggested) would look really cool, but im not sure if you can add some picteres too it during the game (unless you want to make one for every single combination, which is not a viable option im afraid). Someone more experienced in UI editing will have to check that out. If it isnt possible, we could atleast make the UI a little more elementalish =)

However, we could use the UI for some other things as well. For example we might move the tower query from the builder to the UI, which would allow us to make towerbuilding easier and faster by giving the builder only the tower menu (when you click him, you imediately have the tower list instead of the basic commands (which mostly have no use for the builder))

[Chiquihuite]

SC2 has an incredibly robust and largely untapped UI system. While animated flames etc is probably out of the question, it would be possible to capture the basic idea of HUD-based element setup display rather than relying on an element query.

The main reason it's so lackluster right now is because it was a lower priority in terms of getting the game playable, but you can be certain that it will improve before official release and continue to get better from there.

[BloodyOrange]

Actualy, if you think about it, is there really a need to have a builder? (except for hero mode of course) Theroreticaly, the whole tower building could be done from the UI! In fact, im quite surprised, nobody has used this method yet in TD...

[Moriquendu]

I very like the idea of having a UI for selecting towers and placing them from Menu instead of builder.

Maybe even placing basic Dual Element towers from some crafty menu, though it would probably be TOO comfortable with the -random rebuilding habit.

[pyrobob262]

WEll the double towers would still be built "from the ground up" if you did that.

and chiq, is there someone on the team that is in charge of it? I talked with Kara and it felt like there wasnt really.

[Chiquihuite]

As far as I know, the more involved parts of the UI/Interface are built by Progammer, so I guess he's the closest thing we have to a "guy in charge of UI".

I'm in support of getting a snazzy UI in place for the game, but it's up to Karawasa what UI elements he wants and how much of a priority they are.

[Karawasa]

As far as I know, the more involved parts of the UI/Interface are built by Progammer, so I guess he's the closest thing we have to a "guy in charge of UI".

He was, until he fell off the face of the earth.

[Chiquihuite]

Well in that case, I still think it's worth checking into. I'm pretty comfortable with UI programming and could work on it gradually, or we could look to bring on a dedicated UI developer.

[Karawasa]

If we can make it a reality it sounds good .