Example of a "Perpetual Style" User Interface for STO

[Zach]

This was originally posted by Mattastic over on STOnet. Given that the forum is closing, i thought i would post a copy of the thread here.

Over the past couple of days I've been ranting a little bit on the thread about Commander Atwell's LCARS designs. I know fan-interfaces aren't that commonly created, so I thought I'd explain first why I'm working on this.

I'm a little fond of Perpetual's take on the game interface, despite popular opinion, and I was curious about what it could have been, if it was expanded to include more LCARS features like I had originally hoped. I suspected it was their intention to include more of these features eventually. As I got drawn into the aforementioned thread, however, I realised that it really is a shame that few (if any) people have followed Atwell's lead (I certainly haven't seen any other interface art). Maybe it's just 'cos I'm a modder at heart, but doing all this has been fun so far.

Neither the render of the Galaxy-class bridge, nor the art of the avatar are my own work.

Anyway, I'm coming up against a bit of artists block with this, so I thought I'd post it now and get some opinions. And ... yeah. *shuffles off*

[Zach]

This certainly makes me feel sad all over again about the current status of Star Trek Online.

Hopefully whatever company has it now will do it justice.

[Falin]

This certainly makes me feel sad all over again about the current status of Star Trek Online.

Hopefully whatever company has it now will do it justice.

we can only hope they will open their minds, sit back, look at what PE wanted to do and go a collective ....... "NO" and then move forward and make a great game.

[Starbear]

PE's consepts wern't bad him my mind, I just think they tried to take the easy way out. Their designers wern't reaching for the stars and to make a great game thats kinda what you need to do. In my mind the new developer can build on working ideas (which is what PE seemed to be doing) but they deffently need to add enough stuff to make it origonal, fresh and interesting.

I hope that the UI eventualy looks like a LCARS system, that would in my mind realy capture the star trek feel, and based on how the game is designed you could have it so that when you use a station (if they go down that path) you would get a window that was an exact look of the console infront of you... that would realy capture the feel of trek.

[Zach]

I hope that the UI eventualy looks like a LCARS system, that would in my mind realy capture the star trek feel, and based on how the game is designed you could have it so that when you use a station (if they go down that path) you would get a window that was an exact look of the console infront of you... that would realy capture the feel of trek.

I too hope that go for a refind LCARS look. I liked very much, the concepts that Perpetual Released and in turn, the Atwell LCARS created by Atwell way back when - they felt very star trek to me while being logical and streamlined for the time period.

[Bajoran Berrie]

i think they would have to have a LCARS based system:

 numero uno. its damn cool looking and EVERYONE wants it.

and numbero dos. if there was any play on 'classic' ships on the holodeck or via csome temporal abnormality, you would need to learn a new system. and god knows if they put anything but LCARS on the Enterprise D we would all be RAGING!

[Suricata]

As mentioned in the thread on STOnet, LCARs really isn't a functional system, it  looks nice, but thats about it, it uses masses of screenspace with no purpose and for the most part is just random numbers scrolling down the screen. I don't think the screenshots gave the STO UI justice really, if you look at the chat window you could see the LCARs borders were there and we never actually saw any of the pop up windows in thier ful detail to see exatly what the UI would of shown, all we got to see was the base UI.

Anywho, here is the UI I posted in that thread as well. :-

[Starbear]

You know whats sad Suricata, I was in the same boat as you and I never saw that Screenshot. I do admit I liked the UI that PE had designed, and in all reality I hadn't seen enough of it to realy make a judement call on it. I guess when I as LCARs I realy mean just the "feel" of LCARs, or as close as you can get to it in the UI. It'd be neat if on a map you had some numbers off to the edge to give it that "flair" but yah funcionality mixed with art is what I wan't to see the UI evolve to.

[Bajoran Berrie]

suricata, are you left handed?

just asking because layout of the UI seems to be matched for the lefties. i always find it easier and quicker in a jam to revert to icons on the right hand side. but that makes little difference. and when i said about LCARS i meant a feel, not the actual system.

but i think you did a pretty good job on ur concept UI.

[Suricata]

Right handed, I put the navigation on the left because most surveys on browser useage show people expect thier web navigation on the left of a page, so I followed the principle though here, since most people playing MMO's will be used to browsing the net. Eitherway, it would be able to switch sides depending on the user. My intention was (and I believe its what PE were most likely intending) that each button would open up a window. So the LCARs border next to the buttons would stretch out to show a window for the appropriate button.

Eitherway, as with all game UI's its just a matter of getting used to where everything is, after a few hours of playing you'd instinctivly be used to where teh game places the icons.