Star Citizen: CitizenCon 2949 - Me, Myself, And UI

Follow the entire process of turning a written design into a playable feature in Star Citizen with Zane Bien and David Gill.

------------------------------------------

Roberts Space Industries is a spacecraft manufacturer within the persistent-world game "Star Citizen" and its companion single-player spaceflight sim, "Squadron 42." RSI is also your portal for information, updates, and purchases of your very own spacecraft with which to trade, plunder, and protect the citizens of Star Citizen.

Be sure to visit Roberts Space Industries here and on your favorite social platform:

[PbPomper]

It was a nice talk and extremely important for SC! I had the pleasure of talking to Todd Pappy (such a great down to earth guy!) on the airport in Manchester and he said the new UI tools are extremely helpful because up until now the relatively small UI team has been putting out one fire after the other.
I was a bit surprised to hear this decoupling of interface is not standard practice in game development. In industrial automation and web development this is standard practice.
Still, these guys did an awesome job! And this is also why dev tools and tech are everything. Better focus on that instead of quick short term fixes.

[ramim.j]

Big thumbs up to david and zane for this cool presentation

[Kelmorcellus]

Just wanted to say thank you to all the UI staff and designers. You guys make a critical part of the game world alive, without you the game would not work and we would not be pushing new ideas into game development. You guys are awesome and deserve every praise you get!

[frazbgy]

I can not wait until they change the elevator panels.

[aderek]

If we can finally heads up text that I can actually read against all background colors that will be a big step in my opinion.

[leynadIX]

Scale: 8 colors to every armor, 8 diferents armors, 64 ítems in a looong Mouse wheel trip.

[haakonht]

Incredible. A UI framework inside a game engine, this is the Lumberyard Presentation Foundation.

[Hyde-Jahf]

Kudos to the UI guys for doing some really important work. I'd love to hear you guys pushing for UX focus group studies when you get to the Overlay UIs (different groups: fully newb, average user, experienced user) early on in your work to make sure everything is defining in a player friendly view.

Not just mobiglass and elevators but the settings menu. Keybindings and controls really need a lot of UX and workflow vision for the complex overlays. Control bindings are critical to player experience and are really arcane right now.

It would be great if there were some form of 3D virtual environment for keybinding that could walk a newb through visually what is mapped and what can be mapped. Experienced players could jump to specific views to assign individual functions. This same virtual control representation could even be used for an introduction to play mechanics for completely new users that is continually used going forward to customize their controls.

Some similar focus group work would be welcome on MFD hotkey / interaction functionality as well. Not just making them pretty but designing them for quick use via controls and hopefully making them viable for future VR functionality (otherwise I worry that the implemention chosen may not allow for the hoped for future VR function). Putting that part last as it's really the Overlay UI I think is the most benefit.

[Methadras]

Important UI/UX stuff. However, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the UI's in very specific spaces. The first is color and font selections. The second is these color and font selections being applied to ship HUD interfaces. There are instances where the HUD's and text will get washed out against planetary background colors. Thirdly, scaling of these HUD/Font/Color selections to the ship UI interfaces need be better tailored. They aren't right now. Each ship needs to be specifically tailored to have it's HUD as configurable as possible and make sense. A lot of it doesn't still.

[cthulhu]

UI has been the main bottleneck of production of new assets for years now.
So happy they crafted this block system so any dev can craft their own UI as they make an asset.

[AcheliusDecimus]

I cannot wait to see the new UI in action, I hope it is intuitive, for example, I don't have to scroll through endless screens, but things are categorized sensibly, and we drill down into the content we want. Also, a search option for extremely long lists to filter out things we don't need faster than a drill-down would be welcomed.

[cooller]

add a mechanical vehicle options tho... not only a bunch of monitors... I WANT MY RED BUTTONS!

[sebastienrivas]

Excellent panel.
Dude I have same issue where the brain pulls you in so many paths away, around, in, out of a subject at hand, it is really hard to keep up, if not excruciating. But the thing is, not a single viewer has a 10th of your knowledge so really, just keep the objective at hand and tam the brain horse. You will find your panel much more enjoyable from get go and some viewers might even connect better and enjoy it more.

Excellent imagery for context purpose and explanations, love you guys.

[Marcusstratus]

Have really been enjoying all these talks!

[Imortist]

So an hour of the panel spent discussing... ELEVATOR BUTTONS Oo and how things work in GREAT detail, I cant thank you enough for that, it's great that you guys share so much detail with us. But, some abstraction would be more prefered I believe, and focused more on what is coming for us in terms of UI. New heads on display, plans to rework mfds maybe, different way of interaction with the system.
Wouldnt it be cool if we could use our keyboard when we're using trade consoles or ship MFDs? What I mean by that is lock in the MFD display with the keyboard and be able to tab through parameters and adjust them exactly. When in combat I would much prefer a clear screen or customizable heads on display so I can set up what I - the pilot need. Everyone is different and we all have our drawbacks and strong sides, maybe Im less keen on checking my shields, I would duplicate it, maybe Im not that accurate with the keybindings, being able to set up exact value would be a benefit. Being able to customize our UI in general would be absolutely great. Let US the players decide what we want to see and what we dont. Let us share our set-ups.

[unslept_em]

oh no this first dude sounds so nervous on stage
you can do it dude I believe in you

[Neoai]

Dude Chill out and Relax! you are so nervous. WE ARE SC, we are cool :) Yes the game is in dire need of a user-friendly UI and thank you for being in the team. Can't wait to see what you guys do ^^ Chill and keep on Rockin

[davidpendock]

Brilliant panel and what I've seen from Inside the Verse with just how customizeable the interfaces are I can't wait to see what art is going to do for Vanduul interfaces. Great stuff.

[weswes]

close door button that actually closes the doors, i give you the future!!

[ts]

The reason the ground floor is the ground floor and not the 1st floor is because for a large portion of human history multistorey buildings weren't common, neither were floor boards. The ground floor was literally just the earth you'd built on. When we started building multistorey structures we had to make the 1st floor.