ESOC new UI?

[thebritish]

do you plan to create custom UI's or i should give up on giving suggestions?

[momuuu]

As an optiom Id really like it. Ekantas UI is good but it has an incredible amount of little features (idle miltary, market trade, find idle wagon and what have you) that give an unfair advantage and annoy the crap out of me. Also, the production queue really is awkwardly placed. But overall the UI is just much prettier with the transparancy thing.

[Garja]

The transparency thing is another facilitation that gives unfair advantage.
Honestly the standard minimized UI is just perfect. The only thing I miss from the custom UI that I was using is the HP bar under the unit image.

[Dolan]

The transparency thing is another facilitation that gives unfair advantage.
Honestly the standard minimized UI is just perfect. The only thing I miss from the custom UI that I was using is the HP bar under the unit image.

The proposition was to create a new standard UI, if you read the OP. It wasn't about which UI has which features or whether or not they give unfair advantages.

I really don't think the standard UI, not even the minimised one, is perfect, far from that. If you played any recent games, you should have noticed how antique the AOE3 UI is. Both in functionality and in how it looks like. It's not like you can make a timeless UI, the way people interact with an interface evolves in time, and in 10 years, this has evolved a lot in gaming.

Game UIs today tend to be more modular, to include options to toggle on or off parts of the UI or to scale it down or up. Or to make the UI more or less transparent. Overall, games allow players to customise their standard UI more, just check out LoL if you're curious what was Riot's take on a more modern UI.

This can definitely be done without a lot of work, especially since it's only about changing how the UI looks like, where buttons are placed, etc. It's not about adding much new functionality to it, except maybe speed stats and HP bar indicator in the unit stats panel.

[Garja]

And I'm not talking about the OP, I'm replying to Jerom's last comment.
A new UI, though provided to everyone, would not be good in my opinion. I like the old UI, plain and simple.

[musketeer925]

My opinion on this is just creating a new UI and including it by default with the patch would be silly, as no one will ever agree on what UI should look like.

[Mimsy for President]

What you guys think of this one ? I slightly edited jammainen's UI because it had nilla aspect.

TOP : normal UI

BOTTOM : custom UI
24 = LOS
29 = Training time
Resists and Speed should be on the right but I didn't spend too much of my time on this.

uiunitselectionmin.xml

(8.15 KiB) Downloaded 23 times

It only works with TAD and messes up nilla's UI.

[Garja]

That's erssentially the UI that I was using before the EP (anticheat seems, to me atleast, to cause minifreezes with custom UIs).
That's the best UI possible in my opinion.

[Mimsy for President]

Here is another drawback but personally I prefer the names of the unit and the player in the top emplacements even if a selection of several units can hide them.

[Garja]

The one that I was using didn't have any glitch.

[Mimsy for President]

The one that I was using didn't have any glitch.

Because I purposely moved the names to the top. It wasn't like that originally.

[momuuu]

My opinion on this is just creating a new UI and including it by default with the patch would be silly, as no one will ever agree on what UI should look like.

although giving two or three as an option would be sweet. It makes the product more attractive to those that don't care about balance.

How do you get that UI "you have to play on the EP". How do I rotate my buildings like that "you can do so by downloading the EP".

[thebritish]

What you guys think of this one ? I slightly edited jammainen's UI because it had nilla aspect.

TOP : normal UI

BOTTOM : custom UI
24 = LOS
29 = Training time
Resists and Speed should be on the right but I didn't spend too much of my time on this.

uiunitselectionmin.xml

It only works with TAD and messes up nilla's UI.

That seems perfect, but i dont think that the "LOS" thing is really good because almost nobody gains benefit from it and cant use it in any way.

Btw, you deserve praise for the nicknames used in the images

[medinos]

Yes but make it like an ON and OFF switch...
Because not everyone wants to use it..

[Dolan]

A new UI, though provided to everyone, would not be good in my opinion. I like the old UI, plain and simple.

=/
You're like the bible belt of AOE3.

[iNcog]

My opinion on this is just creating a new UI and including it by default with the patch would be silly, as no one will ever agree on what UI should look like.

although giving two or three as an option would be sweet. It makes the product more attractive to those that don't care about balance.

How do you get that UI "you have to play on the EP". How do I rotate my buildings like that "you can do so by downloading the EP".

To be quite frank jerom, I quite agree with your views on some of the content which the EP should feature. I also agree with the content of this post.

Whereas I understand your point garja, I don't agree entirely with it. No one has the same preferences when it comes to UI and stuff, as you can see by people who download ekanta or qaz. If offering a new and improved ESOC UI can get a few more people on the ESOC patch, it'd be cool. We have modders who are ready to give it a go to; tbh I believe it would be a shame not to give it a shot.

At very least however I believe that aiz's UI should very well be included in the launcher though. that and obs maps! players wouldn't even have to go download and install manually.

it's all about quality of life stuff which can be added to the excellent launcher we already have. that sort of stuff is also an incentive for people to use the patch, it's not 100% balance

[momuuu]

Somewhere at the launch of EP, I discussed with some people why they didn't want to switch over. One told me he'd only switch over if it had something like new civs or something. While that's probably not really something we want, I think you can truly expand the userbase by adding options, adding content to it.

[Garja]

Btw I completely agree that none has the same preferences, hence can't make a UI for everyone.

[iNcog]

yeh i guess the idea is to offer options to people but honestly this entire idea isn't top priority i believe. it doesn't seem like the most popular idea either, but still i'll throw it out there.

[musketeer925]

I like the idea of including more UI options, but as of now the community (or the admins?) seems kind of opposed to custom UIs in general. Are they not currently disallowed in tournaments?

[thebritish]

I like the idea of including more UI options, but as of now the community (or the admins?) seems kind of opposed to custom UIs in general. Are they not currently disallowed in tournaments?

they are not disallowed. everybody uses UI's in tournament.

[momuuu]

I just wanted to throw out that an UI modification that doesnt add any functionality is as much cheating as buying a proper mouse and or keyboard in that it gives a minor advantage over someone that didnt put in the effort/money.

[Garja]

Only reason why some UIs are not banned in tourneys is because it simply not possible to enforce it.
It would actually be possible to just ban any UI mod in the patch but needless to say it would be a very unpopular move.

[Dolan]

I just wanted to throw out that an UI modification that doesnt add any functionality is as much cheating as buying a proper mouse and or keyboard in that it gives a minor advantage over someone that didnt put in the effort/money.

+1

Those who use software to tweak their mouse DPI can also be considered to be cheating, because they have an unfair advantage compared to those who don't even know about such software. Did I also mention mechanical keyboards which usually are more expensive than your stock rubber dome keyboards?

An optimised UI at best lets you see more map in one screen, which btw can also be achieved with a monitor with a special aspect ratio (say 21:9 compared to 4:3).

[Garja]

The thing with a better gear is that it is not related to the game. It normally doesn't modify the game as it is (unless you also use macros which can be considered a cheat). On the other hand a custom UI modifies what it is provided by the game.
16:9 is the default aspect ratio for the game so it is more the 4:3 being a handicap than the opposite.