Devs, can we get more UI color controls?

Ozram

Ozram
Agony_Aunt said:
Just the usual probably, time and effort required to implement. Even if it will only take 40 hours of time to do, that's 40 hours of people's time not doing something more important.

That 40 hours is not unrealistic. Yeah, its a simple feature on the surface, but there has to be meetings with multiple people to discuss how it would work, which requires at least one code monkey, one manager, and a UI guy. Once its decided how it will work it then has to be approved by a higher manager, and time in the plan allocated. The the dev(s) have to implement the first version (a few hours possibly to implement it, as well as the UI for it), then unit testing by the devs, then passed to QA for checking, possibly back to the devs for bug fixing, back to management for approval for code merge.

Not to mention, even if discussed and approved, the prioritization could be a killer. Its sat their in their bucket list, all specced out, devs can be ready to work on it, but simply no time. They look at the plan for the coming week. "Let's do the colour thing!" Manager: "Nah, not this week. You have to deal with features, X, Y, an Z this week. Maybe next week."

Next week: "Let's do the colour thing!" Manager: "Nah, still needs to be on the back burner for now. Features A, B, and C are your tasks for this week, oh, and QA found a bug in your code for feature X, you're going to have to rework that one. In fact, C is lower priority, yeah, you know, bookmarks, we might have to drop that one for 2.1 now... forums are going to explode when they hear about that, but nothing to do about it, features A and B are more important."

And that is life in the world of software development.
Click to expand...

Ah well so be it. I suppose if it ever becomes a real priority for me I can third party it like others have. Agreed it's not a big deal.
 

Snarfbuckle

S
Basically you would need to code the RGB XML file for each section of the hud and split up the hud in different components in the colour mapping, perhaps split up the actual code for the actual hud.

-Radar
-Target info
-Ship info
-Heat Bar
-Speed bar
-Left Window
-Right Window
-Bottom window
-Chat Window
-etc...
 

Flimley

Flimley
I support this idea. And have stated many many times before with this common request. The orange burns my eyes.
 

Tiamat

Tiamat
Agony_Aunt said:
Just the usual probably, time and effort required to implement. Even if it will only take 40 hours of time to do, that's 40 hours of people's time not doing something more important.

That 40 hours is not unrealistic. Yeah, its a simple feature on the surface, but there has to be meetings with multiple people to discuss how it would work, which requires at least one code monkey, one manager, and a UI guy. Once its decided how it will work it then has to be approved by a higher manager, and time in the plan allocated. The the dev(s) have to implement the first version (a few hours possibly to implement it, as well as the UI for it), then unit testing by the devs, then passed to QA for checking, possibly back to the devs for bug fixing, back to management for approval for code merge.

Not to mention, even if discussed and approved, the prioritization could be a killer. Its sat their in their bucket list, all specced out, devs can be ready to work on it, but simply no time. They look at the plan for the coming week. "Let's do the colour thing!" Manager: "Nah, not this week. You have to deal with features, X, Y, an Z this week. Maybe next week."

Next week: "Let's do the colour thing!" Manager: "Nah, still needs to be on the back burner for now. Features A, B, and C are your tasks for this week, oh, and QA found a bug in your code for feature X, you're going to have to rework that one. In fact, C is lower priority, yeah, you know, bookmarks, we might have to drop that one for 2.1 now... forums are going to explode when they hear about that, but nothing to do about it, features A and B are more important."

And that is life in the world of software development.
Click to expand...

There is an additional step that would need doing. Ben Parry answered a post about this ages ago and explained that whilst some parts of the HUD are plain white textures others have colours which is why certain elements go weird colours when we alter the XML values. He said that all of those tinted textures would need re-doing in white or customer colours would never work properly. After that is done and the HUD is tweaked so that retexturing doesn't break anything they would then need to split the elements up and do the bits you said. It sounds like quite a lot of work for a purely cosmetic change so I can see how it would be low priority.
 

avow555

avow555
If we are some point getting customisable avatars then surely they can incorporate a simple HUD colour customisation.
Should have been in from the start really, simples!
 

frostypaw

frostypaw
avow555 said:
If we are some point getting customisable avatars then surely they can incorporate a simple HUD colour customisation.
Should have been in from the start really, simples!
Click to expand...
this very much.

infinitely more interested in that than any bobbleheads or changing the look of a character I don't see. The HUD is onscreen almost all the time - gotta be done.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Ozram said:
Ah well so be it. I suppose if it ever becomes a real priority for me I can third party it like others have. Agreed it's not a big deal.
Click to expand...

Well, don't be too dissapointed. Just because that's how things go, it doesn't mean they might not surprise us at some point. I doubt for 2.1, that's already suffering backlog, but maybe later this season or the next. Who knows?

Fortunately, at least you can edit it yourself and there are tools to help with this.

I presume you are familiar with this?: http://arkku.com/elite/hud_editor/
 

Infidel Deity

Infidel Deity
The cockpit is what we see, almost all the time of flight.
Custom coloring of the HUD, should have been an option from the start.
And the possibility to designate all tasks to buttons on the keyboard. :)

Hope we get there soon. [yesnod]
 

nosscar

nosscar
Other games can be modded, x-rebirth, fallout 4 ect, yes i know they are single player, but the cockpit is what only the player sees, the files can be adjusted in your own game files to show other colours, so would it not be possible for a clever modder to figure out a way to have a mod to change the various bits of the cockpit to our chosen colours.
 

Psypher

Psypher
Lowe1978 said:
Would love to see this - but already know the answer.
frown.png
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"I find your lack of faith disturbing" :p
 
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Zplintz

Zplintz
I'd like far more customisation of the hud. Personally everytime I found a general scheme I liked, I ĺost the scanner flag colours and ended up reverting to default.

I am guessing the current system greatly reduces the processing required (by reducing the colours available).

Hopefully long term may see an overall hud colour scheme that also allows standard friendly/allied/enemy scanner colours. (Please)
 
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Psypher

Psypher
Julio Montega said:
Although that is quite the quote,
do you really see it this way?

Ui change suggestions date back to PB (as far as i can look back),
and not a single one was introduced, apart from the option to "toggle orbit lines"...
Wow.
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The quote was more for the fun, but seriously, I really don't know what to expect from Frontier in this regard.
I'm in no way a programer or a game designer, but I think that a simple solution like three sliders isn't a hard feature to implement in the game, although it's not the ideal solution, it is a start. And I want to believe that, in the future, when those major features were released, the devs will have time to fine tune some aspects of the game, being the UI one of them.
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
Psypher said:
The quote was more for the fun, but seriously, I really don't know what to expect from Frontier in this regard.
I'm in no way a programer or a game designer, but I think that a simple solution like three sliders isn't a hard feature to implement in the game, although it's not the ideal solution, it is a start. And I want to believe that, in the future, when those major features were released, the devs will have time to fine tune some aspects of the game, being the UI one of them.
Click to expand...

Ultimately the HUD is pretty low priority compared to many other aspects but sliders (at least) so you can attempt to make these changes in-game would be useful.

There have been more changes to the HUD than just the orbit lines. Additional warning lights that players asked for, indications that a station was behind rather than in front of a celestial body etc) - where FD have deemed it important enough they have made changes.

Maybe we will see more along with the changes coming in the next big update (like tabs in the controls setup section for example)?
 
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Para Handy

Para Handy
Triple88a said:
By this i'm referring to currently you can change the hue and so forth however it's still not good. For example when you make the UI blue, everything is blue, when you make the UI green, everything is green.

What i'm asking for is to give us the option to change individual things. For example I want to change my UI to white/gray however I want to keep friendly targets to green and enemies to red.

Shouldnt be too hard to change the UI images no?
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You can keep hostiles RED, Friendlies GREEN (well, teal) others Yellow/Orange, Missiles etc WHITE and wakes GREY by using this combination that I use:

It is called Mocha, detailed by user Cmdr Uncertain in this post:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=73419&page=18&p=1226693&viewfull=1#post1226693

It is a very useful, non-garish colour scheme where everything on the scanner is easily recognisable (not all schemes are) and menu and UI items are perfectly usable. The screenshots in that link will give you an idea, I totally recommend it after trying out many others.

<MatrixRed> 0.7, 0.08, -0.08 </MatrixRed>
<MatrixGreen> 0, 1, 1 </MatrixGreen>
<MatrixBlue> 0.15, -0.15, 1 </MatrixBlue>

[cool]
 
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