I don't like the Unity interface.

[Buttons840]

I gave the unity port some time, and tried to give it a chance but I finally decided I prefer the old SlimDX interface.

A few things I specifically dislike:

1) Round buttons.  Every interface element is rounded on the corners and has a huge boarder/outline.  It all takes up too much space.  In many places these bubble buttons have been used poorly, for example on the galaxy view these bubble buttons are used to present the player totals next to planets, upon mousing over these bubble buttons they disappear.  And generally speaking the screen just feels much smaller with all these large interface elements filling the screen.

2) Why are there no colors in the planet summary?  Previously if a train station was owned by the yellow AI, it would be yellow, but now it is gray just like every other structure, friend or foe.

 
In general the whole game seems to be more strenuous on my eyes.  I play a lot of game, but I have a hard time with AI War and fear it may trigger migraines.  I'm not sure all the reasons I feel this way; probably just the color contrasts.  I love the new gameplay mechanics, but the interface just make it very inaccessible for me.


I haven't seen much discussion about this, although I wasn't around when the Unity version was first released, but I'm wondering what others think of the new interface as well.  From what I've seen it seems mostly positive.  Am I the only one unhappy with these things I've mentioned?

[Vinraith]

I miss the higher contrast colors, and certainly agree about the color coding in the planetary summaries being a real loss.

[Collic]

I don't quite understand what you mean when you talk about the galaxy map interface. I think it's far cleaner and more readable than the old slim dx version; the old version had a fuzziness to it whereas the unity one is far crisper and more legible.

I can see what you mean about the size of the ui, the pop-ups in particular are a lot larger now, but I don't really find that's an issue. I'd love for these to be scalable through the options menu (a smaller font size would make all of this take up far less space), but its not something I'm desperate for.

I'm sorry to hear its bothering you, though.

Edit: As far as colour coding in the planetary summaries goes, it wouldn't surprise me if we see this feature return. I know there are still a few minor ui elements left to be added in (like the graphs for example).

[Buttons840]

I would like smaller buttons and font.

And speaking of font, the font in the lower right side of the screen, which shows the ships you have selected is out of place.  The font seems more fitting for a medieval magic setting than a futuristic science fiction.

[Arcain_One]

I miss the

-health percentage of the ship you had selected
-the graphs of what had happened in your game
-the sleek look of the opening menu and loading screen

Now that I've got that out of my system...

[Collic]

The graphs are coming back, don't worry

[Ozymandiaz]

I miss the

-health percentage of the ship you had selected
-the graphs of what had happened in your game

These two I can agree with. But its a minor thing for me. (I laso kinda liked having the AIs listed in the main screnn, but looking them up in the stat menu is ok too ^^). Color in the summary is a nice touch, I suggest making a change suggestion in the bug tracker .

I guess the main focus currently is to get all the underlying mechanincs working smoothly before they do any graphics changes, as well as preparing for the next expansion..

I did originally like the old style build buttons and transperent background better, but the new ones are ok as well, kind of grown on me so to speak. After all I look more on the systems in zoomed out mode then I do anything esle .

Overall I think the Unity engine looks a lot more smooth then the SlimDX one.

[keith.lamothe]

Buttons840, sorry to hear you don't like it as much.  Sounds like a big part of it is the can't-please-everyone thing in that we used to get a fair chunk of negative feedback that the fonts and whatnot were too small.

There's also stuff like the planetary intel summary (the galaxy map mouseover, not the right-sidebar in the planet view itself) having colors.  I really want to bring that back too, though I'm not sure what would be involved due to the vagaries of applying a diffuse color to a gui texture in our current setup.  I'm pretty sure it's doable, though.

And the health percentage of the selection and graphs are both coming back, it's just a time thing.

As for migraines, please explain further.  My wife also gets migraines and I added the "Reduced Visual Stimulation" graphics toggle for her, and she's able to play it without problems on that front.  Of course, migraines have such diverse triggers from person to person, etc.

[HitmanN]

I don't particularly dislike the new interface much, but there are two things I've been slightly annoyed about.

* The small 'i' in the font has no dot on top of it, and is somehow harder to read on occasion. I'd say every standard font has the dot on top, and I for one am not used to reading dotless i's. It's like learning a whole new letter. The font feels like something fit for titles and such, but not average text. Although this hasn't ruined my gameplay yet, it does very mildly irritate me at times.

* The attack multipliers all have the same color, whether they're good or bad. I sometimes quickly have to glance through the multipliers to see what is good against what, and I don't particularly pay attention to the numbers, since most of the time the bonus is at least 4, so it's worth using regardless of the multiplier. Then one time the multiplier is actually 0.1, and I'm happily mistaking that multiplier to be good. Even in the old percentages the good and bad had different colours, so I didn't need to check the numbers at all to see which were at least equal and which bad match-ups. It's only when I'm looking for the best tool for the job that I compare the numbers. Again, rarely gameplay affecting, but increases the risk of making mistakes... at least for me. Mistakes that I didn't do in the 3.x versions.

[Buttons840]

I'll check out the reduced visual simulation.

I would love the option to chose a smaller font, and also to chose square buttons instead of the rounded corners the current "bubble buttons" have.  Basically just make the interface elements smaller like they were before.  You can't go wrong with giving us another option.  I'd consider this an important accessibility issue.

I think this may be related to my eye strain, as I'm accustomed to the small sharp buttons and text, but now that they are big and smooth, the game feels blurry.

I also like to talk about myself - seeing as most statements start with "I".  

[keith.lamothe]

You can't go wrong with giving us another option.

Now that is patently untrue   Adding additional optional font sizes and button styles has a significant upfront time-cost and an ongoing additional support load because any changes or new stuff must work will all the font-size/button-style permutations, etc.  I'm not saying it's not worth it (that's up to Chris, basically), but the costs have to be considered too.

I'd consider this an important accessibility issue.

Well, I'm not trying to disagree with you, but I don't recall anyone else raising this particular complaint before.  I may just be forgetting it, though.

[x4000]

I think most things have been addressed already by Keith or others, but:

1. Sorry to hear that the new interface isn't universally loved, but what is?  We like it, a lot of people like it, and it's here to stay.

2. The lack of colors on the intel summary icons is a temporary thing, an artifact of the porting.  Same with things like the missing health percentages on the selected ships box.  Please don't generalize minor nits like this into a distaste for the interface as a whole.

3. The "medieval" font is actually the... font from the AI War logo.   Always has been.

4. Almost definitely no smaller fonts coming.  You can use a larger or smaller fullscreen resolution to make the fonts and everything else larger or smaller.  Bigger fonts aren't going to give anyone eyestrain, that doesn't even make any sense, but the fonts are the size they are because of people complaining of eyestrain in the SlimDX side.  Making these variable-sized would be a pretty gargantuan nightmare for us at the moment, and the handy-dandy screen resolution lets you accomplish much the same thing.

5. Regarding pretty much everything else, in terms of ships and everything else that you'd be looking at, it's either the same size as before, or larger.  And in general the contrast is higher now, except in a few, temporary, niche cases that were cited in #2 above.  I don't see how there could possibly be more eyestrain here than there was in the older versions, in other words, unless people are now playing at a higher resolution than before or something.

6. The graphs are also something that only went away temporarily.  We could only do so much in time for the 4.0 release, and if we went chasing every last feature from the SlimDX side we wouldn't have finished in time to stay in business past this month.  It's all stuff that was fairly peripheral in the first place, though certainly I really liked the graphs, too.  And that stuff will make a comeback in the coming months, assuming we're in a financial situation where we're able to do that.

7. Putting the rounded buttons behind things such as on the galaxy map text is for contrast.  Those don't add to the size of the text on the galaxy map much at all, just 2px horizontally and vertically.  And they let us render the text without having to have the text borders, which is a MASSIVE reduction in cpu load, as well as solving the old complaints of "fuzzy" fonts from some folks in SlimDX, as well as simply looking cleaner.

[Buttons840]

4. Almost definitely no smaller fonts coming. You can use a larger or smaller fullscreen resolution to make the fonts and everything else larger or smaller.  Bigger fonts aren't going to give anyone eyestrain, that doesn't even make any sense, but the fonts are the size they are because of people complaining of eyestrain in the SlimDX side.  Making these variable-sized would be a pretty gargantuan nightmare for us at the moment, and the handy-dandy screen resolution lets you accomplish much the same thing.

The game does fill my entire display, but from what you say above I'm wondering if I'm upscaling/stretching a smaller render to fill the full display?  Is this possible?  If so, this would explain my complaints that the game seems blurry.  I'll have to look closer at my settings configuration.

Edit:

Just for clarity.  My monitor is 1680 X 1050.  Are you saying it's possible to render the game at a higher resolution than this?  IE, could I render the game at 1920 X 1080 and then shrink/downscale that render to fit on my smaller monitor?  Or, on the other hand, is it possible that I'm rendering the game a 800 X 600 (for example) and then upscaling it to my much larger monitor?

[x4000]

4. Almost definitely no smaller fonts coming.  You can use a larger or smaller fullscreen resolution to make the fonts and everything else larger or smaller.  Bigger fonts aren't going to give anyone eyestrain, that doesn't even make any sense, but the fonts are the size they are because of people complaining of eyestrain in the SlimDX side.  Making these variable-sized would be a pretty gargantuan nightmare for us at the moment, and the handy-dandy screen resolution lets you accomplish much the same thing.

The game does fill my entire display, but from what you say above I'm wondering if I'm upscaling/stretching a smaller render to fill the full display?  Is this possible?  If so, this would explain my complaints that the game seems blurry.  I'll have to look closer at my settings configuration.

It sounds like you are running at not the native resolution of your monitor, which on some LCD screens can indeed make it seem blurry.  But yes, you can run it at any resolution you want, and if you use a widescreen resolution on a fullscreen monitor, for instance, that can even make it look stretched or pinched.  I'd definitely suggest looking at your settings there, it sounds like that might be the bulk of what's going on -- it should be the clearest you've ever seen AI War, by a longshot -- the SlimDX version is super blurry by comparison, I can't even use it anymore.

[Vinraith]

With regards to my earlier comment "higher contrast colors" was inaccurate phrasing, what I really mean is that the color choices seem more muted in many cases, and I liked them brighter. The particular example that springs to mind is the "friendly/mixed/hostile" wormhole linkage scheme, which used to have bright green/yellow/red and now is more muted. This is purely a matter of taste, of course, though I'm curious as to what prompted the change. 

I'm very glad to hear the color coding on planet summaries and the like is coming back, it's very useful.