Game Engine: User-definable UI

[NapalmEnima]

Several Popular MMORPGs let their users customize their GUI. I suggest PS2 allow folks to do the same (to some degree).

Ideally, all the stats available to the Outside World would likewise be available to the internal custom GUI. If someone wants to whip up a "top 3 people who shot me this session" UI, let 'em.

And if you can do something in game to track those people when they're on my screen, so much the better. "You OWE that one."

This sort of thing shouldn't make it easier to spot cloakers (which is why this aspect probably won't happen). Maybe allow you to add extra icons to enemy names if/when they're displayed, replace their radar "blip" with a custom graphic of some sort.

And if SOE's stat display dump includes things like weapon damage and fall-off-over-distance, a GUI Thing that displayed that information would be Quite Nice to whip up. Snazzy-points for showing the damage done at the range of the current-target-under-your-cross-hairs.

Heck, you could even make that sort of thing a Game Mechanic.

• Advanced unlockable scopes would have more output slots. They might normally display target range/health/armor, but a custom gui plugin could stuff whatever text it wanted into the given space.
  
  Your upgraded goggles could highlight N targets. This highlight might come from a mission by default, but custom GUI code could add to the list of Highlightable Targets. Say your outfit has a real hate-hate relationship with some other outfit. So you install a GUI Gizmo that adds everyone from Selected-Outfit to your highlight list when there isn't something more important to display (mission objectives most likely).

So now you've got a proposed Handy Game Mechanic (visually highlight targets of interest via unlockable googles) interacting with Custom GUI Thing to make something Really Cool. And the Game Mechanic would be responsible for "not making cloakers easy to spot" so Custom GUI Thing can't be abused (as much).

Some custom GUI Stuff might simply make existing GUI information more attractive (MY_CUSTOM_OUTFIT ammo counter), while others might present information available online but not available through the standard GUI element (I've fired N shots from this weapon today, with X% accuracy).

Do Want.

Javascript, LUA, CustomSOEThing, whatever. Just make it happen.

Another groovy idea: Sort squad members by vehicle, and underline them all with that vehicle's current health. To pull that off, SOE would pretty much have to write the existing squad list using this mechanism (a given), and share that code (unheard of!). Then folks could come along and tweak it to their heart's content.

"Signed GUI Element". Some functions would only be available to Blessed UI Elements (in other words: Ones that SOE wrote). But the CODE/SCRIPT could be available to anyone.
A: "How'd they do that?"
B: "Like this."
A: "Oh. Hey! That gives me an idea."

Do Want ^ 2

[Vancha]

This idea could be summed up in 7 words..

"Can we have WoW-style add-ons?"

I agree completely. I know it's a bitch for SOE, but it does so much good for a game.

Firstly, you have added shelf-life. If you look at how much time some people spend on the UI, be it the developers who are making them or the users who are constantly rejiggering their UI, that's an easy extra month or so out of UI fiends (check a site like wowuigallary and see them rip apart submissions for not being pixel perfect, or having the wrong kind of font...)

Secondly, you have the communities that build around discussing these things. I've already mentioned wowuigallary, but add to that Discord, WoWInterface, Cursegaming and many, many more. If community is what keeps people playing games, that's more money and a larger playerbase (which itself keeps more people playing) for your game.

Thirdly, free interface developers. Over the years Blizzard's taken many of the ideas from player-made add-ons and implemented them in the default UI. Apple too have started implementing their own versions of certain community-made apps. Not only do add-ons get people to subscribe for longer, but you get a huge UI development team for your game.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Vancha

I agree completely. I know it's a bitch for SOE, but it does so much good for a game.

It really depends on how they're defining their UI now. If their UI is all built with XML & Lua scripts, making swaths of that spec public and letting people run with it wouldn't be all that hard. "Writing Documentation" hard rather than "Rebuild The UI" hard.

If it's all hand rolled C++, that's Much Less True.

Oh, I'd be stunned if it were all C++, but it's certainly possible. Lots of UI work could be done by graphic designers rather than programmers, and forcing C++ code to be involved means that a programmer has to be involved at some point. It's simply Smart Design to push that stuff further down the "food chain"...

OTOH, performance goals being what they are (particularly for FPSs), C++ may be The Way They Went here... maybe some "script/xml to C++" code generation program, the output of which could then be hand-tuned as needed. Painful... it'd be far better to tweak the generator so you don't have to make the same output-C++ changes every time someone messed with the initial "script/xml" input.

I can see a lot of the potential "query the global data" stuff having a noticeable impact if only because your UI is waiting for some info from the server between frames (ouch). A ping of 100 where every frame needs data updates from the server mandates 10 frames per second. That clearly isn't an option.

So such values couldn't be kept up to date Per Frame, save perhaps values that were being sent from the local client to the server. Data which the client could be trusted as an authority (shots the player fired with weapon X) could be handled locally without a server request.



No, I never wanted to be a game programmer... why do you ask?