Oolite Bulletins

Comments, positive/negative, are welcomed.

I would rather not consume bandwidth by posting these images in the forum.

You can click your way through the Flickr HTML pages, and if you have Active-X/JavaScript enabled, you can view them at various sizes in your browser.

Note that my native resolution is 1680x1050, and these had to be resized to 1024x640 before they could be uploaded to Flickr (Flicker can automatically resize, but it doesn't do the best job at it).

The main page, where you can see all the images. Click the thumbnails to select images and view various sizes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34159828@N06/

When you have a screenshot selected by clicking it, click the dropdown under "Actions" to the left over the image and select "View All Sizes".

Very innovative combining the compass with the pitch/roll indicators!

All up looking pretty good!

Personally I'd swap the Altitude and Fuel columns. I'd also move the Aft Shields underneath the Front Shields.

I'd consider making the entire panel 'contrast enhanced' rather than just around the instruments. It looks slightly messy having the individual bits contrast enhanced.

Finally - where is the target name when you have a missile locked-on?

I have two observations to make:

1) Having the default keys on the docked HUD may not be a good idea, because keys are changeable by the user.

2) When you are in condition critical, the last thing you want to have is huge messages blocking the central part of the viewscreen. I think it would be better moving the message out of the way, possibly making it smaller and relying on screen color changes to notify the player that they are going south in a matter of seconds.

Micha wrote:

Very innovative combining the compass with the pitch/roll indicators!

All up looking pretty good!

Personally I'd swap the Altitude and Fuel columns. I'd also move the Aft Shields underneath the Front Shields.

I'd consider making the entire panel 'contrast enhanced' rather than just around the instruments. It looks slightly messy having the individual bits contrast enhanced.

Finally - where is the target name when you have a missile locked-on?

Micha; thanks for comments.

Clustering Speed, Altitude, Fuel and Cabin Temperature together seemed logical to me. Having said that, I thought about how I wanted those laid out when sundiving for fuel. So; the rightmost 3 of those indicators are all I need to pay attention to when skimming for fuel, and fuel is in the middle for "focus". That leaves Speed, then, to the left and in a more central location.

I liked the idea of having Forward Shields on top ("in front"), Aft Shields on the bottom ("in back"), with the energy bars in the middle; one can think of the energy indicators as the ship's "core", or "reactor". So it is kind of presented as a "schematic". Logical, if you think about it. For a while I messed around with a little wireframe-Cobra Mk III image containing the "energy core" at its heart, with the Forward Shields in front of the little Cobra and the aft shields in back. But by the time the proportions looked good for all of the elements, the Cobra image was TOO large (taking up too much space on the screen) or the shield and energy bars had to be reduced in size too much.

(edit) It also seemed logical (to me) to have weapon temperature clusted together with the shields and "core".

I wanted the areas between the instruments absolutely clear for visibility. I DID experiment with the bottom area all- contrast- enhanced, but it didn't seem to look good with one big band of "underlay" at the bottom of the screen.

I have found that in combat it REALLY helps to have those areas in between instruments clear.

Target name when a missile is locked on? If I understand what you mean; compare YELLOW_1A with YELLOW_1B. In YELLOW_1A no target is selected, and you can see the 4x ECM Hardened Missile Icons at the lower left. In YELLOW_1B, the station has been targeted, and in the missile area you can see the name of the station (the target).

The underlay for 4x missiles is sized just right for 4 missiles (regardless of type) and/or for Q-Bomb(s). The underlay for the target name has a shorter height, but it is adjacent to the missile underlay, the top edges of the 2 underlays line up, and it is VERY WIDE... it looks continous. The PAGroove Stations OXP added some long object names, and I wanted the underlay to be able to cover all object names. There is room to spare; it extends almost to the scanner underlay.

another_commander wrote:

I have two observations to make:

1) Having the default keys on the docked HUD may not be a good idea, because keys are changeable by the user.

2) When you are in condition critical, the last thing you want to have is huge messages blocking the central part of the viewscreen. I think it would be better moving the message out of the way, possibly making it smaller and relying on screen color changes to notify the player that they are going south in a matter of seconds.

another_commander;

Thanks for comments.

(1) TRUE. I didn't think about that, but then again I don't really expect (?) to package it as an OXP for downloading anyplace... hmm... as a minor point of order maybe this thread should be moved to the Discussion area?

I've found that HUD OXPs are very much a personal experience simply because everyone has different resolutions and aspect ratios. So every HUD OXP that I have ever downloaded and tried had to be tweaked for my monitor. If someone were to ask me for the OXP, I would have to give them a disclaimer: "This was deliberately designed for 1680x1050".

Again; as a minor point of order, maybe I should have posted in Discussion; I don't intend to ever change my default keys.

(2) I will think about that. Note; I have YET to even experience being in "critical condition", at least long enough for the HUD to kick in? I've tried... deliberately letting Thargoids whomp on me, etc. By the time that the game is probably in the "critical" area, I explode. Hehehe... maybe I am not a good enough pilot, maybe some people have a sense for it and manage to veer off JUST BEFORE they explode, and the game is actually in a "critical condition".

JeffBTX wrote:

I have YET to even experience being in "critical condition", at least long enough for the HUD to kick in? I've tried... deliberately letting Thargoids whomp on me, etc. By the time that the game is probably in the "critical" area, I explode. Hehehe... maybe I am not a good enough pilot, maybe some people have a sense for it and manage to veer off JUST BEFORE they explode, and the game is actually in a "critical condition".

I will go off-topic for a while (for a change ), because I think that this information will be useful. If you are developing OXPs, the Debug Console is a tool that you should keep handy at all times, because it enables you to test things that normally are either impossible to test without it, or require substantial effort to generate the right conditions for testing. To test your HUD in condition critical:
1) Download the Debug Console from here.
2) Download the Debug OXP from here.
3) Install the Debug OXP in AddOns as you would with any other OXP.
4) Launch the debug console, then launch Oolite. You should see messages in the console window stating that communication with the game has been established.
5) Launch from Lave in Oolite.
6) Alt-Tab to console and type: player.ship.energy=1. This will simulate condition critical, with energy almost fully depleted. You should then be able to see your CC HUD (assuming that it is set to trigger at low energy levels).

Just a quick observation...

If you were thinking of releasing this (excellent) HUD, keep in mind we don't all drive Cobras, and missile and energy bank numbers can vary.

Lovely piece of work, though.

I'm not a big fan of the excess grey for the panel contrast around the edges of the large thing in the middle that shows you where everything is (I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called!) and underneath the missiles area and date, although I do concede that it is very useful and effective when looking at or near to the sun.

With regards to the positioning of the various bars for shields, altitude, weapon temperature and such, it seems a bit odd to me, but then I've switched HUDs a few times and each time had to completely re-learn where everything is, so if you find that an instinctive arrangement then fair enough!

I am most impressed with the Compass/Pitch/Roll indicators! I have to say that it seems to be one of the most useful and friendly ones that I've seen, and I imagine it's pretty good in-flight!

Finally, the docking screen seems a little hectic to me, though that may just be the all colours... It would also clash with the BGS backgrounds, and duplicate information shown there.

So overall, a very nice job! If I ever find the time/energy/motivation to make myself my own HUD, it would quite probably be a combination of this and MilHUD (which I'm currently using)!

Did I mention I liked the compass!?

another_commander;
Thanks for that info; I copied & pasted your post into a TXT snippet, and downloaded those two files; temporarily extracted them to look at them. At present, I don't know if I would be using them for anything, but I have them archived (Is the .EXE Vista 64 friendly?).

smivs;
Yes... as I indicated to another_commander (re: showing the keys on the "docked" HUD)... I kind of posted in this area without thinking about it. It probably should have been posted in "Discussion" as in "I'm showing off my HUD, what do you think?", as opposed to "Here is my HUD, should I release it as an OXP?". It just didn't occur to me. To be honest, I want to keep the player-centric (keys) and ship-centric (Cobra III) aspects as they are.

But if nothing else, it *might* inspire ideas for other people. Thats what sharing is all about. For example, aside from the idea that different people might redefine their keys, someone might still craft an excellent looking HUD OXP that does have the chart legends on it. MAYBE even use this concept, but package it together with enough Icons and stuff (and for example the "Data Plate"; put together a few for every ship); to make it adaptable enough as a releaseable OXP.

I am STILL probably going to use a raytracer at some point to design a photorealistic "docked HUD". Back under Oolite 1.73.x, when I STARTED to do this, the cockpit / dashboard was starting to look fantastic. As I indicated at the top of this thread, I found out that "solid cockpits" wouldn't really work for me, but I might still put together a raytraced docked HUD. "Buttons" can look like buttons... with embossed characters... shiny metal and reflections... glowing lights... the data area would look like a real display, with molding around the edges, etc. It just takes quite a bit of work... and the HUD that I posted today was done in less than a day.

Using a raytracer would produce something like CaptKev's Fighter Huds... but in the raytracer the elements are put together much like a construction set... materials defined, etc., down to the last bolt and screw if I wanted to be that detailed.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

I'm not a big fan of the excess grey for the panel contrast around the edges of the large thing in the middle that shows you where everything is (I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called!) and underneath the missiles area and date, although I do concede that it is very useful and effective when looking at or near to the sun.

With regards to the positioning of the various bars for shields, altitude, weapon temperature and such, it seems a bit odd to me, but then I've switched HUDs a few times and each time had to completely re-learn where everything is, so if you find that an instinctive arrangement then fair enough!

I am most impressed with the Compass/Pitch/Roll indicators! I have to say that it seems to be one of the most useful and friendly ones that I've seen, and I imagine it's pretty good in-flight!

Finally, the docking screen seems a little hectic to me, though that may just be the all colours... It would also clash with the BGS backgrounds, and duplicate information shown there.

So overall, a very nice job! If I ever find the time/energy/motivation to make myself my own HUD, it would quite probably be a combination of this and MilHUD (which I'm currently using)!

Did I mention I liked the compass!?

Mauiby de Fug;

I can't take credit for combining the compass with pitch/yaw/roll indicators. Who knows WHO did that first, but I know that at least 2 or 3 HUDS had that back in December (2009).

I can say that making the compass oversized, with P/Y/R, AND the joystick sensitivity indicator dial, can make "aiming" with the compass very accurate, when the elements are sized right. You know when you are headed EXACTLY to or from something.

About the "large thing in the middle" (the scanner)... if it were JUST an ellipse, then the forward / aft / port / starboard view indicators (the arcs) would be invisible (where they protrude a little way past the edge of the ellipse), because I made my scanner black. I COULD (and I probably will, sometime tonight) trim those 8 areas down a bit... instead of looking "boxlike", they might be 8 short pointed "horns" or "spokes" at the edge of the ellipse. I know what you mean, I think, if you feel it is "ugly" as it is now, but if they are changed to looked like "the (short) points of a star", as opposed to "boxes", the scanner would probably look better.

The reason I want my scanner black against an underlay; first, it shows up very well against all backgrounds... in space, against planets, and it shows up real well against the sun. Also; if the scanner were red or green etc., then that interferes just a little with perception... with a black against grey (underlay) scanner, the blips for ships, stations, anything just leap out at you.

"underneath the missiles area and date"; not sure what you mean, the Missile Icons, and the Missile Target ID area, and the clock are all at the bottom of the screen. The band that extends from the missile area to almost the scanner is the ID area; the PAGroove Stations OXP, for example, added some very long names, for example "Frontierworldsranger1 Station (Frontierworldsranger1 Variant)" (61 characters).

My bars arrangement is working pretty good for me. When refueling by sundiving, all attention is on the cluster to the right of the scanner... specifically the last 3 bars for altitude, fuel, and cabin temperature. Weapon temperature is grouped with shields and energy; and most of the pilots attention is on that during combat anyway, when he has to check on it.

One thing I ALMOST did, which I did for a previous HUD, was to put the weapon temp bar close to the MIDDLE of the screen... to the right or left of the targeting disk, or even in the middle of it, but it was very tiny and unobtrusive. It was the exact height of the targeting disk (at the time). One is mainly concerned simply if that laser is hot or cold, or close to cooled down, not necessarily if it is at about 25% or 75% or 0%.

I agree that the "Docked" HUD is probably "too busy and chaotic". I haven't tried BGS, though I looked at screenshots and read the descriptions. For one thing the description for BGS states that it requires the game to be in windowed mode(?) and I like to play in full screen.

I liked that about the BGS screenshots; that they depict map legends for the short range chart, etc (although apparantly in monochrome-ish).

I probably WILL clean up and re-design the "Docked" HUD in the next few days.

JeffBTX wrote:

I haven't tried BGS, though I looked at screenshots and read the descriptions. For one thing the description for BGS states that it requires the game to be in windowed mode(?) and I like to play in full screen.

This is incorrect. BGS, as all background OXPs I've seen so far - either released or in progress - works just fine in full screen.

Also, the Debug Console executable works fine in 64-bit Windows.

It just occurred to me that the fancy map legends, the keyboard legend, etc., is unavailable *while in flight anyway*, for example if you want to re-set a course, or if you scooped up some hot cargo and want to look for a specific Econ/Gov type.

It lacks "universality".

So I DID "over-finesse", I think.

Ah well. Learned and practiced a few things doing it. I will give the whole thing a big make-over.

Scanner! I knew there was a word for it! The joys of a preoccupied mind...

I haven't seen any other HUDs with a combined compass/pitch/roll indicator, but if I didn't like the overall look of the HUD then I probably didn't pay much attention to the details and so wouldn't have noticed! And I do like the oversizedness...

I'm quite happy with the grey underlay for the scanner, and do think that things would show up well against it. 'Twas the other 8 areas I was referring to - they seemed bulky and unnecessary to me. But then, I hadn't actually noticed that the arcs poke out of the ellipse in my HUD! I think I see what you're doing now, and yes, trimming them down might well work better.

"underneath the missiles area and date" - I was referring to the underlay again. Clearly I was having a bout of word failure! For me, the green stands out against the black well enough anyway, and the underlay is not needed.

I've never had any problems with running BGS in full screen at all. The fact that the map legends are displayed I find nice, especially when I'm being forgetful and can't recall which symbol refers to which. And yes, they are indeed monochrome-ish, although I find that this means that they don't obtrude too much on they eye to be distracting...

Anyways - enough nit-picking! 'Tis still a fine piece of work!

JeffBTX wrote:

Micha wrote:

Finally - where is the target name when you have a missile locked-on?

Target name when a missile is locked on? If I understand what you mean; compare YELLOW_1A with YELLOW_1B. In YELLOW_1A no target is selected, and you can see the 4x ECM Hardened Missile Icons at the lower left. In YELLOW_1B, the station has been targeted, and in the missile area you can see the name of the station (the target).

Yes - that's the point - I can see the target name in 1B, but not the missile icons. Do you have a shot where a missile is locked onto a target, not just the targetting computer?


As for gthe arrangement of the various instruments, that's fine and That's why I prefixed those comments with 'I' - as in, I would have a slightly different logical grouping. Personal preference..

Micha;

I think (?) see what you mean...

When a missile is locked onto a target, the missile icons look just as they do in YELLOW-1A, except that the *armed* missile is in red.