This is the one I am talking about. Absolutely loved it. I know this is temporary but I hope a small UI like this for options could remain in game.
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It is absolutely great to have different sliders for music, sound fx, environment and UI!
But the current visual style of the UI is a mess. The part on the upper right (end turn, next soldier, …, options) has a completely different style than the lower part. It is clearly from an early version of the game:
And the flashy animation when opening the options menu is completely unnecessary. The time could be better spend making the overall UI better and primarily: less cluttered. The environmental design of PPs levels is so great but it is buried under this obtrusive UI.
As often as possible I hit “F2” to hide the UI and to appreciate and enjoy the great creature and environmental design!
The only difference I can see is the size and a slight colour change from light orange to a more red orange. Also, animations for menus might not be necessary but at the endgame they make a game feel more refined. The UI isn’t even that cluttered. I mean, you’ve got, what, four options for your guy, your ammo and weapon indicator, your soldier’s portrait, mission objective and then finally the options in the top right. The only part that might look cluttered is if you have a lot of aiming lines on the screen, but at the same time they’re a massive quality of life improvement and I’m sure most people would hate to see them go.
What might be an idea is adding a UI scale slider. I know that playing on high resolutions some games end up with a tiny UI, while other players like you probably prefer them being as small as possible. So it would be nice to be able to change that to whatever we like.
I don’t have much knowledge about UI design but I don’g feel that it is out of place with the rest. It also looks closer to what they now have than then.
Yes, I’m voting for the sizable UI (or large font+icons option) too. Some time ago I made a thread about this aspect with more reasons and game examples, but it got nuked along with the old forum.
Also, having in mind that some backers earlier mentioned the colour blindness issue, perhaps the “target preview” lines could be made thick solid red (without flashing) for available target and thin/dotted grey for unavailable target for easy recognition? Just a suggestion.
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Settings icon and mini-screen is nice addition to the pre-alpha builds but I think it shouldn’t clutter battlefield screen in final version: this is what ESC is for, in the end.
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Hmm, thinking about it some more, perhaps the option for some hud opacity would be good. That way people that don’t like the hud can make them almost invisible, so they can still see what’s going on while still being able to make out the numbers and icons they need to play.
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Exactly, things like audio and graphics options should be in an ESC options menu. And options for graphics or audio should not have any kind of “industrial design” like the one in the Backer Build.
“Industrial design” should be used for in-game devices, like the medikit or motion sensor in the original X-Com (for immersion and atmosphere):
I don’t understand it: The developers did so much right with the original X-Com and almost all the current “sequels” fail to see those great design choices they made in X-Com…
Yes, and another great thing about “opacity” would be that people with OLED screens (like me) would not have the problem of potentional HUD “burn-in”…
BTW.: The best solution for almost all HUD and UI problems would be detailed options to enable/disable certain things: HP info; body part info box; body part highlighting etc.