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Why do other spring games have such bad interfaces

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9 years ago
They seem to lack many of the features and much of the polish of ZK interface. Why don't they just clone the code from the ZK interface? Why isn't the ZK interface the default for Spring games? Why is a piece of software as advanced as spring got such an AWFUL default interface?
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Iirc, many other Springrts games have cloned the ZK interface. GundamRTS and EvolutionRTS both use forks of ZK's ChiliUI.

Others take the approach of staying out of the interface discussion so that players may use base standard SpringRTS widgets freely across multiple games. This comes from the original mentality of SpringRTS games as "mods of Spring" instead of thinking of them as stand-alone games - you'd have a single common SpringRTS baseline experience and "mods" only changed the units, not the UI - your personal UI config would carry across multiple games.

BA and ZK^H^HKP are in the latter camp.

edit: holy crap I spaced there. KP, not ZK. Completely destroyed the message I was trying to convey.
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I wouldn't say zk belongs in the "hardcore spring" camp these days.
ZK ships its own lobby, unitsync replacement, UI, hacks to basecontent files, etc.

The answer to other spring games, which do not use chili and chili-based UI, is simple: they are not ZK, and they didn't bother.

FWIW, BA:R uses Chili. Also it has higher-poly models and a ton of shaders. The BA oldschooler crowd will rage when it's released, hehehe.

Sadly, i can't make jokes about "BAR will be released right after DF2013" any longer.
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CArankPxtl does this mean some spring widgets don't work in ZK? It makes a little more sense now I'm still a bit confused. Is it effectively a crap interface because a good interface would not work due to the variety of requirements of the different games? The portable widgets/ui config does seem cool is ZK part of that?

EDIT > EErankAdminAnarchid I guess my real question should be "why doesnt spring use Chilli whatever by default? Its so much better?"
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quote:
"why doesnt spring use Chilli whatever by default? Its so much better?"

Spring as engine? Because why should it.
Spring as default distribution? There are three "basic" skeleton packages from which you can start building your game, called "Spring ABC". C stands for Chili.

I get that feeling that this topic belongs on springrts.com.
... anyway. Nothing is really stopping you from just copying Chili into your local widgets folder and feeling smug and superior to all those natives of BA. :P

You will, however, notice, that the chili ui used by ZK does not fit other games very well. For instance, it won't fit with BA tech tree all too well. And if you look at a game that does it - Evo, you just might find that there is a ton of EPIC menu settings that do nothing in Evo because they are from ZK.

TLDR; UI is Work.
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It's a crap interface because TA had a crap interface. The default Spring GUI is the TA GUI, so it is easy enough to tell. If people want, I can go into detail, but the short form is that paginated build menus are cumbersome to use and limit discoverability; the direct use of text for unit states looks terrible, especially given how it resizes, though this is more an aesthetic and localization concern; and streaming economy is tricky enough to get the hang of that not seeing unit and building costs on the construction menu directly (as in, not just In tooltips) only serves to further obfuscate the system and any cost analysis.
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NotaLobby is amazing, but turd closed source. QT really works it, for sure.

ZK is not amazing - you have low standards. .NET with Webkit, ugly and turderiffic. Mono = no, just no. Springlobby is 1995 and lately is buggy as hell.

flobby is for the elite. Weblobby is blah, no offense to Carp for the accomplishment. It's coming along but Java - ugh.

Having a unified lobby would be epic. ChiliLobby will fail or at least introduce issues where the main spring executable exposes memory leaks when ran for longer periods than just a game. Though some games last 2 hours, I have played a 4 hour BA game once.


I think the big issue is having something cross platform and still present a smooth interface. That takes skill and time and unfortunately not just programming skill. Let's face it, most coder types are not designer types, as hard as it is to admit.

I would be willing to help; if someone puts together a sexy interface.

Agree with EErankAdminAnarchid.

TLDR; UI is Work.


Also I understand you are referring to ingame interface -- but same above applies.
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9 years ago
Best part of old spring UI are the <-- and --> on the prev, next page buttons.
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9 years ago
I remember pre-LUA/Chili days. That was chicness.
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9 years ago
quote:
It's coming along but Java - ugh.

There have been changes during your long cold sleep.
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9 years ago
A long time ago there was a Spring game called P.U.R.E. that actually went commercial. I think it was a complete flop. One review site said it didn't even have a menu in the game. I felt it was insane to release a game without a menu. Crude menu was born. It's now called EPIC menu and makes your life easier.

There have been bumps in the road. Had to fight with some devs to be allowed to add the tooltip window. Some wanted to continue the default spring method of showing tooltips in the corner. That's useless for a fast-paced game, this isn't some photoshop style app.

Anyway we've come a long way since the old days, we're finally fully chilified.

quote:
Weblobby is blah, no offense to Carp for the accomplishment. It's coming along but Java - ugh.

Could you stop talking about what you don't know. It's not java, it's QT.
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WTF you weblobbying with QT for ...... I'm going to look at the code and If I find a QTWebView the embeds a java/javascript applet to display.. I'm going to abuse you in C++

So you wrote an API for and embedded: http://weblobby.springrts.com/qt/index.html


That being said. One year later USrankAdminCarRepairer gets a hat tip.


http://www.moddb.com/games/pure - I think it was more the devs attitude towards the Spring community that flopped it. If I remember right.
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9 years ago
1) There is NO game that purely uses the spring default interface, since years.
If you want to see the real spring default interface then type into chat:
/luaui disable

For Balanced Annhilation it would look something like:

As you notice things look similiar-ish at first glance - but actually everything is different.
ALL the interface-elements are done via Lua scripts.

The reason for similiar looks is that both interfaces are inspired by old game Total Annihilation:

If you look closely you see how that inspiration still lives in zero-K as well, for example representing resources as two bars with some numbers around them etc.

2) ChiliUI is not the only way to create interfaces.
So if a game has already decided to use a different UI-framework, (possible before chiliUI was invented) then of course they still continue to use it.
It is not nessecarily worse, it is just different and most of those differences are more a question of taste.
As for features, it is both ways around: zero-K also misses some features that other spring games offer.
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9 years ago
Blarg, I completely brain-farted on the last line of my post. I meant BA and KP. ZK is obviously in the "spring game as game" not "spring game as mod of larger spring baseline".
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9 years ago
it looks like they wanted to have a lighter, more minimal package by default and let users write their own or clone from a game.
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9 years ago
quote:
Why don't they just clone the code from the ZK interface?
Cloning the ZK interface is hard. There are things which handle behaviour particular to ZK.

Some games use Chili:
* Evo has a cut down clone of the ZK interface from a few years ago. Forb is not much of a coder so as far as I know it is undeveloped.
  • Smoth pays attention to UI and makes his own (using Chili) because he has the capability and makes games that require their own UI.

In general:
  • Games without an established playerbase don't get feedback on UI. Also when a developer does not get to play their game it is hard for them to evaluate the UI.
  • Games with a TA:Spring derived playerbase have the old 2010-ish idea that players should install and manage their own UI. These games also seem to lack maintenance and BAR has absorbed the work usually done on the *A games.

In short other games have not put the work in. Also remember that there are people around who like weak UIs. Look at the popularity of Starcraft.

quote:
Why isn't the ZK interface the default for Spring games? Why is a piece of software as advanced as spring got such an AWFUL default interface?
Spring is engine. Somehow giving it the ZK UI would make it much less general. Also if it were up to the engine devs to maintain a large default UI it would inevitably break due to disuse.
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9 years ago
quote:
* Games with a TA:Spring derived playerbase have the old 2010-ish idea that players should install and manage their own UI.
I feel that is not true.
In which current spring games do players have "install and manage their own UI?"
As far I can tell all games bring their own UI without any need to "install" anything extra.

How is the interface of other spring games "weaker" than zero-K?
Imo all games have the excact same functionalities UI-wise.
The advantage of the UI-framework used by zK (chiliUI) is imo developer-side.
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9 years ago
ZK has good things like space-click, EPIC Menu, Deluxe Player List, and the Gesture Menu, all of which except maybe Gesture Menu are Chili. Even though those things are still presumably possible to implement in LuaUI, I can't think of any equivalents except for the WIP NOTA UI, meaning that players too get an effective improvement with ZK's.
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9 years ago
What I don't like about ZK UI:
1) Unnesesary grouping. Help menu and command tray are the same thing. los view and minimap are the same thing as well. I'm forces to decide what i want more: the good los or the good minimap (why minimap is bad is next)

2) UI elements take space that they don't have to take. The minimap (iirc) has a huge edge that is there for whatever reason. ZK resource bars were terrible last time I saw them (been using default res bars for about a year now)

3) Resource heavy. If only comparing to alternatives.

What I like:
1) Power in customization. I can make almost anything the way I want it. As a result I can use "i" for repeat, "k" for priority, "m" for movestate, "\" for deselecting 50%, backspace for selecting only 1 and a whole range of other shortcuts that get rarly used, but are there when I need them. I know this is not ZK-exclusive if you know where to look and how to LUA, but all I needed for this was 10-15 mins speccing a game and bashing random menus.

2) This also shows why NOTA UI is weak - I can't even change menu positions there without breaking something first.

/my 2 cents
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I lost my post, in short:
quote:
space-click, EPIC Menu, Deluxe Player List, and the Gesture Menu
Those are imo small things that do not define UI superiority.
For example "Gesture Menu" is another way to do the same things as is already possible via hotkeys. (Other games have hotkeys for buildings, too.)
How many ways to do the same task does an UI really need?
As long as there is one functional way to to do something, that is sufficient.
Playerlists with extra buttons etc exist in other games too. Same for ways to show unit stats.
Other way around some games have features that are missing in zK:
But these things are imo all minor and not relevant enough in everyday-normal playing, so they do not make one UI better than the other.

Btw is there really a "Deluxe Player List" in zK?
I only found "AdvPlayerlist" & "Chili Crude Player List"
If there really is 3 different playerlists then that is funny by definition.

/edit:
"Chili Deluxe Player List - Alpha" - three different playerlists indeed.
At quick look did not find any functionality that does not exist in other games, too.
No normal player cares about picking one out of three playerlists: that is the kind of stuff that is only relevant to fricklers and tinkerers. Why not pick one definitive playerlist to end such fragmention?
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