News: Preview of Upcoming Interface Changes

[Evey]

You are the one who is not using your brain if you cannot simply explain your own words. The new windows are terrible and their excuse is that it increases loading "from a few milliseconds 1/1000th of a millisecond" no one will notice this, it doesn't matter. I have had no FPS issue in this game ever especially from the UI so they are using excuses to change the game that don't even make sense.

I have, it's just like I said, your emotional bias cannot go through the wall, you're busy finding excuses and reasons for which you reject the change from the start. It's in the human nature, it's quite common.
I looked over your profile and I can draw a conclusion from there too, you have very little experience with busy areas, shared loot events or just events with hundreds of players on the radar, LG / PVP action... there's a huge lag that sometimes make the servers crash. If this change addresses the lag also, which i understand it does a bit, then it's a huge gain for us because we're very vocal for many years and LAG is a issue that drives players away. And yes, it would be reasonable to assume when you are alone on the radar killign cornundacaudas a month every 6 years you barely notice anything. But we will.

What has the amount of Information displayed in the profession windows to do with limbic systems or the prefrontal cortex?

Nothing. I didn't imply that, just that you're being 100% emotional and 0% rational about this and you hang on the insignificant things to explain yourself the rejection right from the start of the change. See above...


I also with they address the bugs and the issues in a different order but I understand I have no say in their priorities order, but I'm glad they address the biggest issue of all time in this game - the lag. Which again, is visible to active players, busy areas, events, LG and it's something the majority of the active players have been screaming for for many years, including myself, and just like few people here, that play the game far from busy areas, also devs on their testing environment cannot see and it seems fine for them. I hope there's an improvement in that regard.

One that that will never change is the whining going on every time the game evolves and changes and I really hope one day MA will release a version of the old PE for the really nostalgic people to retire to, with a monthly subscription ofc.

 

[Raffaele Meiers]

I also with they address the bugs and the issues in a different order but I understand I have no say in their priorities order, but I'm glad they address the biggest issue of all time in this game - the lag. Which again, is visible to active players, busy areas, events, LG and it's something the majority of the active players have been screaming for for many years, including myself, and just like few people here, that play the game far from busy areas, also devs on their testing environment cannot see and it seems fine for them. I hope there's an improvement in that regard.

No, I can't explain in a way your emotional bias would accept. You're obviously using the limbic system to handle this and not the prefrontal cortex - atm your brain can't make the difference between encountering a lion and MA changing the UI.

Ah you think this saving some clock cycles on the client side will reduce lag? The lag is not produced on client side as you can easily see if you look at the task manager when the lag occures.
Or if you really want to see that the HUD has nothing to do with that go to Argo Cave follow the way until you are close to the first cave and look at the wall with no weapon drawn, then draw a weapon and look what happens to your fps, open task-manager and see that cpu is not occupied a lot. So now you think saving some milliseconds on drawing the GUI helps? Then look what the difference is when you hide the HUD etc., nothing? Unequipe the weapon and look then how FPS go up again.
So the conclusion is that FPS was not impacted by the GUI but by some crappy algo how MA calculates their next target, their famous F key functionallity is the main culprit for this FPS drop and not the GUI.
But lets put all ressources in capping some milliseconds when we have a problem which costs one hundred of milliseconds or even more every FPS drawn.

And lets blame the ones who point the finger at it and not the ones who made the problem in the first place.
Best as you have no reasonable arguments play on the man and ridicule him instead of giving a meaningful replay.

 

[Evey]

I asked you a simple question


You replied that people were being emotional and not using their prefrontal cortex


You haven't said anything helpful just trying to derail this. Likely because you have so much invested. Or perhaps you are the one being emotional here? Also if we are too biased to accept why would you even post this dribble? Take your own advice, since we are so emotional and do not even post.

After 10 years of building UI, having to explain consistency in design is like having to explain why wheels are round and not squares.
You may be used to squared wheels on your vehicle, but that doesn't make it good enough for the people that will get introduced to the vehicle with squared wheels while they were used to round wheels.

None of this explains how the old menu style is confusing. At most it just seems like perhaps a different artist designed them, its not confusing at all.

If this is the question you are reffering to, I'll try to explain it hoping your bias could go past the wall and see the arguments.
Consistency in UI design eliminates confusion. Consistency is one of the most fragile but important principles in UI design and it's making sure the elements of the interface are uniform, look and behave the same. A user should not have to learn new representations for each window and the UI should aim to help prove the user's assumption about the UI, creating familiarity...
User interfaces that aren’t consistent often result in confused and frustrated users and can drive even the most promising products to failure.
Being consistent is to replicate the same action or element multiple times, and still be able to support the user with achieving the task.
Consistency also saves money and time because every time MA added a ne window, instead of reusing the same UI had to spend extra designer and dev time for the nee type of window.

There are standards, principles and guidelines in UI design and abiding by these do not make you generic, but make you considerate and professional. You have to do these common things right before getting to your key features, you don't have to reinvent the wheel in this stage. I believe the camera update and the UI update are a big step forward and with some extra polishing we will have a much better UI and this deserves a all hands on deck type of project, even if in Argo Cave is not noticeable. This type of a controversial change in this game happened in the past and having the courage to push the buttons is probably one of the reasons for which this game is alive and kicking after so many years despite the small community.

If this wasn't meaningful reply enough about consistency, you can go and read some of the thousands articles written about the importance of this concept.

 

[Deleted member 55358]

Ah you think this saving some clock cycles on the client side will reduce lag? The lag is not produced on client side as you can easily see if you look at the task manager when the lag occures.

You cant really possibly know that.. it can equally be a lag on client side NOT requesting data smoothly thus causing bursts of requests that are delayed and forcefed into the client after.. I suspect this is the bigger issue and might be related to the chat lags even! Any help here is appreciated

 

[Raffaele Meiers]

You cant really possibly know that.. it can equally be a lag on client side NOT requesting data smoothly thus causing bursts of requests that are delayed and forcefed into the client after.. I suspect this is the bigger issue and might be related to the chat lags even! Any help here is appreciated

So how can this be related to a drawn weapon? Could you elaborate how this can be impacted by having a weapon drawn or no weapon in hand?

After 10 years of building UI, having to explain consistency in design is like having to explain why wheels are round and not squares.
You may be used to squared wheels on your vehicle, but that doesn't make it good enough for the people that will get introduced to the vehicle with squared wheels while they were used to round wheels.

If they would do this to cars we all would have joysticks to drive them and not a wheel and pedals but it seams somehow that because every buyer would have a choice to buy still a car from another manufacturer with a steering wheel and pedals the joystick controlled cars where not produced by the UI builders/desingers.

But with only one EU there is no choice of another manufacturer so best is to show them that they spend the ressources for the wrong projects and instead of the reduction of some milliseconds, how can this even be accurate as the reduction would be measured in instructions saved and certainly not in milliseconds as this heavily depends on the calculation speed of the CPU, better go for the real culprit the recalculation of the possible targets and the test if they can be targets and should be in the F-Key list. This calculation is the problem for the FPS as it stops the rendering until it has finished its calculation and restarts after every fram drawn and therfore indroduces heavy lag even with nothing on the screen except a wall in front of your nose.

 

[Evey]

So how can this be related to a drawn weapon? Could you elaborate how this can be impacted by having a weapon drawn or no weapon in hand?

I have no clue nor I said I have an idea about this particular issue, why the fuck do you ask me to elaborate this? This is noticeable, however, on weapons that have enhancers on them and you have the information window open, switching from and to this item creates a visible delay. I have no idea why or if it's connected in any way with the UI. I'm hoping this will be fixed tho.

best is to show them that they spend the ressources for the wrong projects

People have various opinions here, all over the place, each player probably has a different order of priorities. And also MA has their own and it's usually different than ours. But on this, like I said, full speed ahead from my perspective.

 

[Deleted member 55358]

So how can this be related to a drawn weapon? Could you elaborate how this can be impacted by having a weapon drawn or no weapon in hand?

Im not exactly sure what your question is but if its related to lags simple... it boils down to hown the client handles requests and goes all the way down to the IRQ level so even your mouse freezes when they happen.. Ive had similar arguments with people over QOS on theyre routers.. everyone thinks netflix needs to be top priority and dns etc requests lower!! This will cause a similar effect on your home network if done that way!

Just by feel im guessing thats the issue here.. "someone" at some point was trying to reduce lag by over priortizing data loading for textures or something so all other processs stop completly while its doing it instead of just doing it smoothly in the background while things like the chat window and mouse etc run smoothly at higher priority.

 

[atomicstorm]

This is like saying we reduced the weight of your water bottle from 400 gramms to 360 gramms in the backpack which is 20 kg of weight.

You must have never done any game development or software programming where you must interface with the GUI. Those milliseconds add up especially with all your commodore 64s.

[Moderated: Removed reply to deleted (off topic)]

 

[Mega]

1) Can those who love to talk go somewhere else, this is an important change, and players want answers not fights and ego's. Thank you.

2) Will the 5 icons below the radar work as before, and where will I find latency, will it be removed? Although you have said it is a W.I.P. the above is definitely better than what you have shown in the first post. It worries me, and will worry others too.

3) Start addressing or answering direct questions or we will fear the worst. We have reasons to. We use this interface a lot more than you.

 

[Deleted member 55358]

1) Can those are love to talk go somewhere else, this is an important change, and players want answers not fights and ego's. Thank you.

2) Will the 5 icons below the radar work as before, and where will I find latency, will it be removed? Although you have said it is a W.I.P. the above is definitely better than what you have shown in the first post. It worries me, and will worry others too.

3) Start addressing or answering direct questions or we will fear the worst. We have reasons to. We use this interface a lot more than you.

ive asked about the pvp/lootable icons as well im curious.,.. as far as latency its part of the bottom bar with the time now which is kewl i think

 

[Dennis|MindArk]

Or if you really want to see that the HUD has nothing to do with that go to Argo Cave follow the way until you are close to the first cave and look at the wall with no weapon drawn, then draw a weapon and look what happens to your fps

We have recently identified the problem for why this is happeing and currently testing a fix. This is an issue in locations where there are a lot of targets in range, but not visible (hidden behind walls, caves etc) and the client is trying to find a valid target that can be used to lock on to. If all works out, it will be in the next patch.


Although the above issue isn't related to the UI, the UI update will give a FPS boost to everyone non the less.

 

[Deleted member 55358]

We have recently identified the problem for why this is happeing and currently testing a fix. This is an issue in locations where there are a lot of targets in range, but not visible (hidden behind walls, caves etc) and the client is trying to find a valid target that can be used to lock on to. If all works out, it will be in the next patch.


Although the above issue isn't related to the UI, the UI update will give a FPS boost to everyone non the less.

thank you... will there be some kind of indicator for pvp lootable no vehicles etc?

 

[Dennis|MindArk]

thank you... will there be some kind of indicator for pvp lootable no vehicles etc?

Yes. Currently they are hidden as long as they are "green" but show up "orange" next to the radar when aproaching and switching to "red" inside the zone. This might change if we find it necessary.

 

[GeorgeSkywalker]

2) Will the 5 icons below the radar work as before, and where will I find latency, will it be removed? Although you have said it is a W.I.P. the above is definitely better than what you have shown in the first post. It worries me, and will worry others too.

Well going by the pics they supplied those 5 icons will be gone. Edit not gone see Dennis reply above.

Also worryingly the North East West South direction indicators will also be removed from the radar. How they hell are we going to tell directions?

 

[Deleted member 55358]

Yes. Currently they are hidden as long as they are "green" but show up "orange" next to the radar when aproaching and switching to "red" inside the zone. This might change if we find it necessary.

thats perfect actually.. was thinking myself they are a waste of space sitting there green all the time! thank-you

 

[Ferial]

This is the biggest face palm quote I think I will ever see on these forums from the developers

This is one of the best explanations of reasoning i've ever read on this forum from developers. People seem to scuff at how small this A FEW MILLISECONDS seems..
Most of these people have likely never worked on anything time critical real time.

It's real simple mathematics:

Let's say you average 60FPS now. That means you are rendering a frame 60 times per second. 1/60 = 0,0166666...7 ≈ 16,67ms to render a frame.
Now let's make assumptions again A few is not many, but a few is more than a couple and a couple is two. So for the sake of simplicity, lets assume a few is somewhere between 3 and 5. Let's go with 4.
So it takes 16.67 ms to render a frame of which 4 ms is to render the HUD.
So 12.67ms to render everything else, and 4ms to render the HUD

Reduce the time it takes to render the HUD to 1/1000 of a millisecond:
12.67ms to render everything else, 0,001ms to render HUD
Total new frametime: 12,671
Congratulations, your new average FPS is now 78.9

All from something that saved a few milliseconds

EDIT: Fixed formatting, spelling and typos

 

[Mega]

Yes. Currently they are hidden as long as they are "green" but show up "orange" next to the radar when aproaching and switching to "red" inside the zone. This might change if we find it necessary.

You know what, if it isn't broken - dont fix it Dennis.

 

[Evey]

We have recently identified the problem for why this is happeing and currently testing a fix. This is an issue in locations where there are a lot of targets in range, but not visible (hidden behind walls, caves etc) and the client is trying to find a valid target that can be used to lock on to. If all works out, it will be in the next patch.


Although the above issue isn't related to the UI, the UI update will give a FPS boost to everyone non the less.

A-HA! This explains the lag in Cyclops as you pass the entrance to the 3 rooms of Thorifoids, Shamans and Berserkers.. probably the same goes for The Hive cave! Oh I'm looking forward to this fix. I always blamed the fires... If fires still have something to do too, we'd prefer some light bulbs please!

 

[Deleted member 55358]

A-HA! This explains the lag in Cyclops as you pass the entrance to the 3 rooms of Thorifoids, Shamans and Berserkers.. probably the same goes for The Hive cave! Oh I'm looking forward to this fix. I always blamed the fires... If fires still have something to do too, we'd prefer some light bulbs please!

omg ikr! i notice lags there too... and its just the client trying to find valid visible targets.. that actually makes sense.. clients prolly cycling thru them all like mad till it finds one causing massive lag and burning unness cpu cycles!! this fix might actually make quite a difference in some places!

 

[Evey]

Yes. Currently they are hidden as long as they are "green" but show up "orange" next to the radar when aproaching and switching to "red" inside the zone. This might change if we find it necessary.

I like this a lot! Don't show it unless you need it! Makes sense, hope it stays as an option at least.

 

[Sub-Zero]

Also worryingly the North East West South direction indicators will also be removed from the radar. How they hell are we going to tell directions?

This. @Dennis|MindArk, its important to have the N-E-W-S letters in radar and satnav function so we can tell which way we're going without having to open the map. I hope this gets added again in the new UI. Also thanks for taking the time to answer some questions its rather late in sweden 23:00, on a saturday no less.

 

[Sub-Zero]

For buffs placement I think placing them on the infobar panel positioned below the health bar would be ideal. After a certain amount of buffs the buff icons already get small but still viewable when you hover your mouse on them, I think this size is perfect. See below.

You have a lot of space for buffs on that infobar panel so I think it would work nicely. Easy fast access and can see the moment your buffs run out. Most people keep an eye on their hp bar most of the time after all.

 

[Deleted member 58836]

For buffs placement I think placing them on the infobar panel positioned below the health bar would be ideal. After a certain amount of buffs the buff icons already get small but still viewable when you hover your mouse on them, I think this size is perfect. See below.

You have a lot of space for buffs on that infobar panel so I think it would work nicely. Easy fast access and can see the moment your buffs run out. Most people keep an eye on their hp bar most of the time after all.

Good idea! I'd go a step further and make it an option for those who don't want them showing, especially for the ones that show up over a player's name when you hover mouse on them

 

[Uncle Mo]

I'm sure it's been mentioned, but we'd be grateful if the buff icons would be a bit larger and color coded for easy recognition.

It should be much easier to recognize if I'm missing a skill pill, or a reload, crit buff.

^^^^ These are a bit tough to decipher at a glance.

 

[jetsina]

Thanks for the various MA involvement over the last page or so. Many things have been specifically answered, some seem not to have been so far.
Mixing a bit new thoughts and possibly unanswered stuff:

We can have 5 sets of 10 icons as bars visible at the same time on screen, correct? Can they be vertical if we want (but still 5 groups of 10)? It would help when taking screenies for us to look at in detail to have as much variety as possible, e.g. multiple bars if that is what we can do and also more than just weaps if that is what we can do.
I've not understood how we "can have up to 150 current actions on your action bars. ( not only actions from the action library ) ". Maybe we select keyboard map 1-5 that can have 30 actions each (but only 10 visible for each)? Is that it?

Did I miss answers about font and icon sizes, and sizing of the bars themselves?

The transparency answer hasn't made me very confident when you say you will check various day/night visuals etc. Quite a few of us have said quite clearly that we would like an opaque option. I hope that if you are against this because you don't want 3rd party tools to be able to read stuff or whatever, that you can be "transparent" about that instead of being slippery. Or just give us opaque as an option pls.

It is not only me who has mentioned keeping certain buff visuals close to our health bar if we want to pls. One statement says we can move anything except the bottom 'bar', another says buffs have been put at the top right (as in screenie). Do we have a choice here or not pls?

I've also not noticed any answer about the solid nature of the health bars (maybe also of MS section health). Please give us visible resolution the way we already have it!

Finally I'd like to say ty again for your continued answers to some of the points raised. Hopefully you can include in the video a section of 1 sec still images maybe that show a broader although less detailed set of examples of the new visuals...

 

[Robin]

I don't understand why everything has to be constantly changing. I'm not even used to the UI we have now. I'm so OCD that I have a hard time with change. It just doesn't seem necessary really. I liked the way things were in 2006 .

 

[Granny Rowan]

It may be me but it looks as though these icons will be smaller than those we have at present. Size really is everything, can we please have a slider for icon bar size, as many players don't have the luxury of playing on a large screen, others do not have 20/20 vision. Please make the game as 'inclusive' as possible

 

[MsPudding]

It may be me but it looks as though these icons will be smaller than those we have at present. Size really is everything, can we please have a slider for icon bar size, as many players don't have the luxury of playing on a large screen, others do not have 20/20 vision. Please make the game as 'inclusive' as possible

I agree with that Granny. If its possible to implement size and scaling options, please do!

 

[NevadaJake]

Thank you MindArk for reading and responding to our feedback. It cannot be an easy task. I came up with the following UI Wishlist:

• Radar Compass with North South East West indicators
• Move the Buff Icons closer to the health bar.
• Vertical and Horizontal Action Bars
• Ability to hide or show unused Action Bar slots
• Any key (or combination) bound to any Action Bar slot and any tool/weapon/item to any key (or combination)
• Two-button Mouse EasyNavigation
• Scalable UI (especially text and icons)
• Pop-out windows for Private Messages
• Also need: Create Item Set: Equipped function to make clickable/assignable sets of armor, clothes, rings, etc.

 

[Edward-James]

I didnt get those action bar keys thingies yet......i play mostly with icons on screen,i hardly use keys...hope i can do that in future too and yes scaling(make icons bigger or smaller and position them anywhere you want etc ,fonts in chat window ,rescaling other things) would be awesome....not every1 is 20 yrs old and has eyes and reflexes of an eagle