****-up Redesign of the Class Customisation Menu

[Anderz]

EDIT: Apparently "m0ck" is censored in the title?

I got a bit tired of having to click through six menus just to change my scope, so I decided to see how one might go about re-designing the kit selection menu to be less cumbersome and time consuming to navigate and more feature rich.

Below is what I came up with! (Warning: Super large image)

LINK TO DESIGN (http://i.imgur.com/aqXOE.jpg)

Here are the individual screens without annotations:

Screen 1: http://i.imgur.com/oO5en.jpg

Screen 2: http://i.imgur.com/kJ1Er.jpg

I aim to do something similar with the map screen next, namely by merging it with the deployment screen so they're one and the same.

What do you all think?

[CheeZeX]

A lot better than whats available now lol. That many arrows though may be a UI designers nightmare however.

[ChipMHazard]

Looks great.
One thing I would like for them to add, or you to add to your idea, is a apply camouflage to all loadouts option. Other than that I prefer your idea over what we have now.

[ShadetheDruid]

Very awesome redesign. The only thing that really bothers me about the current design is that the loadout drop-down menu thing is so small (a pain if you need to switch in a hurry), but this would be nifty.

[Dragonskin]

Nice, I hope SOE sees this. That redesign makes a lot more sense.

[Beerbeer]

Much better. I dislike their entire menu and interface setup. It's not intuitive, this is better.

[Figment]

Was wanting to make similar suggestions. Though I'd personally prefer not to be taken out of the game for class selection (would go with pop ups). Possibly create a "cycle" bar for the bottom tabs.

I'd want to have the chat system visible and accessible at all times and keep an eye on the killspam.

I think the suit adjustment bit could use more work though. But that might in part be due to the symbols themselves: they're indistinguishable at a glance due to all being brown, similar shaped with poorly contrasting symbols on top. Bit of a waste of space. Would expect those symbols to change in time.

I'm also not happy with the "class -> custom class" selection thing. Why not just a numbered favourites list? MUCH FASTER. (PS1: equip term: tap "G" to access term, tap 1: cloaker with Mag Scat pistol, REK and CUD, tap 3: rexo with Gauss rifle and shotgun for general grunting, tap 5: Agile with engineer kit for driving, tap 9: cloaker with four boomers and REK, tap 0: fortification engineer, etc. etc.

Hell, you could do this quick menu as the voice macro system in PS1:

G -> [G]runt -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [E]ngineer -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [H]ealer (Medic) -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [I]nfiltrator -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [L]ight Assault -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [M]ax -> 1, 2, ..., 0
G -> [S]niper -> 1, 2, ..., 0

[Canaris]

very nice design, I remember when someone did up an interactive web page for the implant system in PS1, a little while later it was the incorporated into the main website.

[wasdie]

That would be a lot nicer. In their attempts at making each screen very clean they've buried their options under many different buttons.

The only problem with that is scaling and clutter. I think they should take some of those ideas though.

Downsize the screen to 1440x900 or 1366x768 and see how it looks then. I think you'll see the problem pretty quickly.

A lot of the concepts are good though, specifically on the left hand side having the custom loadouts as a node of a tree under the class button and the general organization of the weapon selection screen.

[Stanis]

I hoped there would be a screen that let us name and select our loadouts.

I'd rather have my top 10 loadouts listed than have to go into class, pick loadout, tweak it for this respawn, back to previous, click on deployment.. select class .. select loadout again..

It is a convulted overly complex mess.

[belch]

nice! I like it!

[Phantomdestiny]

you Sir have my vote +1

[LostSoul]

Looks allot better then the system they have now, can't believe even Planetside 1's inventory selecting system was allot better. The use of the mouse in the menu's when you are running for your life towards a terminal to switch class/gear has killed me so many times by now it isn't even funny.

Quick menu's is what we need.

[Rahabib]

as a media designer, I have to say I am quite impressed. The usability and accessibility of all critical components are on the first screen and the layout is far more intuitive than what SOE has. The one major compliant I have now is that its hard to determine what is a button and what is a label without rolling over items, but thats a problem with SOE's original design.

good job.

[SturmovikDrakon]

Are you the same Anderz that did the UI redesign concept for BF3?

Your work is great dude, +1

[SGTalon]

Ok we got Malorn a job over there with Map Design. Lets get our buddy Anderz a job as UI Design :)

I agree that the current UI for certs and Deployment is very annoying. This definitely seems like an easier set up.

[Figment]

as a media designer, I have to say I am quite impressed. The usability and accessibility of all critical components are on the first screen and the layout is far more intuitive than what SOE has. The one major compliant I have now is that its hard to determine what is a button and what is a label without rolling over items, but thats a problem with SOE's original design.

good job.

Agreed.

Seems to me in part due to their buttons having a very similar shape and colour language as a frame section. There's too little contrast. Maybe if the frame fades like the guns if it's not a button and there's a shader effect of some sort for buttons?

Of course, since it's not an interactive image, the mouse-over effects aren't visible right now. But if you look at the dropdown menu arrow, perhaps that highlighted arrow can also be blackened out on buttons, or similar blackened shapes apply on other buttons?

[Bags]

way better than soe's terrible ui

[Anderz]

Are you the same Anderz that did the UI redesign concept for BF3?

Your work is great dude, +1

That would be correct. And thanks :)

[Fujilives]

Mostly a nice improvement on current UI - primarily the biggest improvement is the little "+1" to the grenade / health-kit area - something I immediately felt should be added to the game as well.

That whole area with melee/ability/suit/grenade/utility, as well as a more (similar) compact version of the primary/secondary/camoflage etc should all be added to the respawn-screen as well. I shouldn't have to navigate multiple tabs and menus just to restock on basic infantry items between deaths. While on the topic of respawning - the redeploy option needs to allow more flexibility in class changes when being used from the map-screen, I.E - when redeploy countdown timer completes, take you to the respawn-menu with no option for where to deploy except the spot you already chose, so you could define which class you'd like to drop in as.

[Figment]

Mostly a nice improvement on current UI - primarily the biggest improvement is the little "+1" to the grenade / health-kit area - something I immediately felt should be added to the game as well.

Btw, the +1 may want a +5 next to it.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Very well done, i really like it. Combine it with keybinding the loadouts to the number keys (press "1" to select "loadout 1" while in deployment / resupply screen etc.) and we would finally have a FPS-appropriate UI
(because the current one looks like someone made it who never played an FPS...let alone Planetside).

Also chiming in here to add the thread i made in the suggestions forum about the UI:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=51082

But your idea combined with hotkeys for loadouts basically makes my thread obsolete. DO ET SONY.

[Boomzor]

I'd like to add the addition of hot keys, much like figgy said but with numerals instead.
1-6 for the class tree, then 1-X for the pre-customized load out for the class.

(blatant rip of Anderz' image, cheers mate)
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/9418/ps2classhotkeys.jpg

So, pressing 3,1 in the example above would equip the medic custom loadout 1 and you'd be ready to fight nearly instantly.

All of this (entire thread) is just as easily translated to the vehicle selection screen as well.

[thegreekboy]

I like it a lot