Project Reality Forums

That is a good idea, I know exactly what you mean.

Though what I was thinking was showing a very post processed battle from the satellite POV. Helicopters flying around, explosions...that sort of thing. Keep it simple but cool. The kind of thing where people may leave the main screen for a bit just to see. "The bigger picture" sort of thing.

That "logo" was just something I had thrown in there. I think that PR has a good thing going with the dog-tag branding, though I think it could use a refresh.

dead.pixel wrote:That is a good idea, I know exactly what you mean.

Though what I was thinking was showing a very post processed battle from the satellite POV. Helicopters flying around, explosions...that sort of thing. Keep it simple but cool. The kind of thing where people may leave the main screen for a bit just to see. "The bigger picture" sort of thing.

That "logo" was just something I had thrown in there. I think that PR has a good thing going with the dog-tag branding, though I think it could use a refresh.

sounds cool! kind of like this video?

Sort of, though it would be top down and more realistic. As though "command" was watching a satellite feed tracking the battle.

So I ended up changing the typefaces in the design.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/516/ ... ervers.jpg
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/995/me ... geload.jpg

I did this for two reasons. One - the original main typeface, Agency, was too limited in the character selection. Two - both fonts where commercial (Agency and HelveticaNeue) meaning I don't have the right to distribute them. So I found two fonts that were free to use and share.

This may seem like a small issue but the typeface is really what carries a design this minimal. I want to make sure the UI has a certain look at feel while maintaining quality. There are very few free fonts that are created properly (curves, kerning, weight, etc.)

So what do you think? If you don't like one of the typefaces, please, I am open to suggestions!


.

I think the CRT banding post-processing on the main menu is a bit excessive. We're already viewing a digital image, it feels a bit redundant to view the image through a second source.

I like the minimalist design but if it's not possible to keep it at high resolution it will end up looking worse in the long run.

I hate it when the menu links are placed side ways, its a lot harder to navigate as you have to move your eye sight along with the mouse from one side to the other.

[Co-Operation][Deployment][Barracks][Options]____________________[Logout][Exit]

While if they're on top of each other you can see every link with one glance and they can be accessed with minimal mouse movement.

[Co-Operation]
[Deployment]
[Barracks]
[Options]

[Logout]
[Exit]

dead.pixel wrote:So I ended up changing the typefaces in the design.
...

So what do you think? If you don't like one of the typefaces, please, I am open to suggestions!

Wow, I'm so much in love with that new typeface!

It looks so much more clean and modern, especially compared to the old/vBF2 ones which is just really cluttered imo.

And yeah, any change that moves PR further away from vBF2 is a good change (not that vBF2 is bad, it's just...old)

I can see dead.pixel becoming a [R-CON] or even a [R-DEV] in the near future... Also I feel we will see on awsome stuff in the next big release....

You don't need 2mb big images for something what fits nicely into i.e. this. Either use thumbnails or post links.

Impressive work I must say. I like it a lot

Looks a lot like the Bad company 2 menu, which look really sleek and modern

I like it, it looks so clean.

Great ! I really liked, keep working on that.


It would be very interesting if you make a background movie wich consist of the PR maps slowly moving from one side to other with the same satelite image effect you did.

Is it also possible to use AS3 for such a menu?

Loving the overall style and feel of it, good job.

Would love if this can be implemented into the mod, it looks terrific.

A revolving .bik of the background map each time you log on would be great.

VapoMan wrote:Looks a lot like the Bad company 2 menu, which look really sleek and modern

I like it, it looks so clean.

Personally I think it looks a lot better than the BC2 interface. The interface for BC2 is obfuscated, each item is very big and bold so it is hard to quickly locate the setting you want. Your eye is drawn away from the important elements by the background which merges in with the menus. For example, in your picture, The tabs for 'settings','on foot','in vehicle' are not obvious because they are largely the same colour as the options in the settings tab. Also the background uses very few colours/tones, using black/white with some yellow, the same colours and contrast used in the menus.

There are some massive no-nos in the BC2 menu too. They insist on using Upper case letters for all of the items in the menu despite lower-case letters being much easier to read at a glance. (Garc?a Media | Lowercase letters for the road!), they also put 'friends' and 'servers' in grey boxes on the edge of the screen with writing at 90 degrees. They're very hard to find if you're searching for them, and they're very hard to read because the letters are all caps and are at 90 degrees to the viewer.


Anyway, as for the new UI design. The new font definately works well, I like that it's a simple font, keeps it easy to read. I've annotated a couple of images for my crits/view on the interface.

Picture are quite big, 1920x1080 and 600kb
http://i56.tinypic.com/rubsr5.jpg
http://i55.tinypic.com/16jet0z.jpg

Thanks everyone. I am sifting through the action script and messing with the fonts at the moment. Still need to mock up several screens before I delve into the actual coding.


@kevlarorc - I don't think there is any real clash. scanlines and distortion shouldn't already be visible on your monitor. Plus the concept is accounting for an animated background with those effects being dynamic.

@Raic - While I understand what you are saying, it is proven that horizontal nav works better than vertical. Especially for a main nav where you want more separation be. Though for subnav the vertical tends to work better. This also helps to establish a hierarchy.



Whether it is conditioning or what horizontal nav is better for usability.

@DankE - Yeah, just being lazy.

@VapoMan - The BC2 menu was definately some of the inspiration, though I chose to go a more serious route. The BC2 menu looks kind of "fun". Looks like Frostbite is still using flash for the menu and much better at it. So at the very least I am sure that this menu could be realized for BF3.

@DenvH - I think that BF2 only handles Flash 7

@dtacs - I am assuming you mean the game randomly loads a movie from a handful of .bik files. That would be cool. Something to look into in the future.

@AquaticPenguin - Thanks for the in-depth feedback! I would like to address your comments if you don't mind:

The background
I agree, it looks a bit too grungy ATM. But I am trying to give the look of screen/signal distortion in a still frame. When I move to after effects I will be able to properly address the level of distortion.

The back button
The level of separation here is intentional. Currently it is in proximity to the other cancel commands (login and exit). This is something I will play more with once I get an interactive prototype so I can actually feel if it works well. Though eyes don't tend to scan horizontally at all, they move in a counter-clockwise motion over the entire space starting at the top left.

So the way that the screen would be taken-in, theoretically, is; news, servers, server actions, active account, main nav actions, cancel actions, back, total servers.

Version text
Not too concerned with the white. It is designed to look like the text displayed on top of satellite imagery, which is usually white.

Loading bar
I see what you mean about the '/' especially so close to '%'

Description area
Hmmm. maybe I need to make a different way to divide up the left side. Currently I am using negative space and "connecting to"/"server message" to indicate a new section.

Intel
This is meant to look different. I am trying to create a visual separation between the dynamic, important information and the "decoration" information. Maybe I should separate all the information in to different dialog boxes.




.

Not so much a design choice but a general Idea about the map screen: How about adding a "Time" Info to the intelpart of the screen? Like: Silent Eagle: 1100 local time etc.
No important change, but If you are redesigning the UI you might as well just add something like that.

I have noticed the current menu is difficult for some of my friends when they try PR for the first time.

I have to actually guide them through it to change settings and connect to a server. Otherwise they just stare at the background video not noticing they're in a sub menu and wait for me to tell them what to do. They're used to menus that are relatively centered on the screen have more obvious sub menu progression.

I think it'd also be better if the server browser updated automatically, instead of having to click 'update list' first.

When I was planning out all of the menus to do I got an idea!

We all know that PR has a pretty big learning curve. Even if you have been playing for a while you may not remember everything. And while the new manual is great, you don't need to know something until you are in-game forcing you to either alt+tab and open the pdf (sometimes needing to go back and forth even) or be lazy and try to remember to look up later. Well what if we actually have the manual in-game and accessible via the main menu?

Quick concept:


Thoughts and suggestions?