Really Old Menu Concepts

[oDDity]

Who decided to go for what? I don't remember a vote on the issue. When all the competitors are ready, we'll judge them.

[sparhawk]

We even voted on this and we had a lengthy discussion about the differnt concepts. Since it is already in production you have to choices. Either accept it or you make your own version of it.

 

We don't have "all the competitors" because we have only one GUI programmer right now, and I doubt that he will prepare different versions and invest a lot of time and work just to have 90% of it discarded then.

[oDDity]

It's not as if there'as any rush. We probably won't need the final GUI menus for two years. I don't know why you'd want to force everyone to commit to a design they haven't even seen, 2 years before it's needed.

[sparhawk]

They have it seen already. If some people don't read the threads it's not our proble it's theirs. It's the same with not going voting. If you are not voting then don't complain that the wrong party is making the goverment. Same here. If you don't follow the threads then you can't really complain that we decided something without you agreeing.

 

It would be cool though if Napalm would show up and say what his opinion is on changing it now.

[pakmannen]

I agree, these look really great!! However, these appear as though they'd be fairly static screens ~ not much happening on them (little or no animation). Thus, they could become a bit lifeless after a while; or at least in relation to the type of menu Napalm is working on.

 

Oh, they could be animated. Here's the menu slightly animated in AfterEffects.

 

I really don't think we need to argue about this right now. As Oddity said, we are years from even needing a complete main menu anyway. And Napalm should have coded the menu in a general way, so art and buttons can be easily replaced. I thought this was the way we wanted it anyway, since FM makers should be able to replace the menu art to suit their mission, as you could in Thief.

[Springheel]

I have to admit, Pak, that does look pretty damn cool. I just wish you'd presented it back when we were discussing other options.

 

It may be that most of the work Napalm has done can be easily modified to fit this menu--changing button size and positioning isn't that difficult, and these just look like they're text anyway.

 

We will probably want to have a working menu ready for the first release, rather than waiting for the finished toolset--people shouldn't have to go through the D3 menu to access to the mod.

[sparhawk]

I have to admit, Pak, that does look pretty damn cool. I just wish you'd presented it back when we were discussing other options.

 

That's the problem I mentioned already. We didn't know everything back then but we already decided stuff. And we certainly don't know more now then we will know next year, so we should try to make such decisions right before we start implementing it, instead of years before. There are certain things that need to be decided earlier, but visual stuff is more easy to change then design decisions, so in general we should decide such thigs when we need it and focus on the overall goal and the bigger decisions we need.

 

It may be that most of the work Napalm has done can be easily modified to fit this menu--changing button size and positioning isn't that difficult, and these just look like they're text anyway.

 

I already added new buttons to the existing option menu for assign the use, frob and the inven tory keys, and this is REALLY easy to do.

 

We will probably want to have a working menu ready for the first release, rather than waiting for the finished toolset--people shouldn't have to go through the D3 menu to access to the mod.

 

Yes. I would like to have this in place, but then again. It's not THAT important for the progress of the mod itself. A pretty menu is done in a short time, it's the features that counts.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Oh, they could be animated. Here's the menu slightly animated in AfterEffects.

 

I was just thinking of that actually

[Dram]

That looks pretty damn sweet now pak. Poor napalm though, i wish he was here to comment and take/give suggestions.

[New Horizon]

That looks pretty damn sweet now pak. Poor napalm though, i wish he was here to comment and take/give suggestions.

 

Changing the graphics wouldn't affect Napalms work. The buttons might need to be moved around but his code for the menu would still work, regardless of whether or not we changed the graphics. Now, if we were discussing a huge rewrite of the code...then there would be trouble. I'm not endorsing either, just clarifying the situation.

[Napalm]

I liek this menu...its hott. And changing things like background/button setup isnt really THAT difficult, its harder for the menu designer. THe only difficulty for me is resizing all of them, but thats just time consuming not challenging

[Darkness_Falls]

The bottom line should always be that we're willing to change for a better idea or design regardless of how much time of effort has gone into it. We'll have a good old vote when the time comes.

I agree.

 

And that animated menu looks nice, Pak; but I do have some feedback. I'll wait until we all want to analyze the menus before I offer any feedback, as I know this was just a quick mock-up.

[Dram]

Napalm, good to hear its easy to do

[Napalm]

It's easy to do up to the point when I do the loadsave menu implementation in the menu, and the sliddef buttons in the options, niether of which are done. Everything else can be moved around quickly but for each of thos eit would be a huge number of things to move, so I'de prefer if we figure it out before i put those in.

[Napalm]

actually the menus perfectly far along to be shown, however it is identical (basically) to the menu that is shown in the concepts. Still if anyone wants to see it they can go right ahead...theres a slightly old (no options menu or new game) placed on the FTP in the darkmod/miscellaneous folder

[Napalm]

actually then menu isnt in secret theres a copy on the FTP.... the main thing is that it is the same as tyhe concept cept with sound and buttons.

[Springheel]

Since Napalm is ok with it then I'm the only one whose work will be wasted. I can live with that. Pak's menu does look great and it would certainly create a definable 'look and feel' for the mod. With some tweaking it would be perfect.

[sparhawk]

I wonder when we can actually see it. Seeing a concept and having it on screen is quite different. No matter how often it is said that teh concept looks the same.

[pakmannen]

So maybe I could get some help from Goldfish and see what we come up with? He sure knows AE a lot better than I do. And people should post their tweaking ideas and stuff as well I guess.

[Napalm]

well you can see a partial functionality version of the menu on the FTP now..but the one their still lacks loadgame/option in options

[Springheel]

My tweaking suggestions:

 

I think the parchment might look better if it did not go off the edges of the screen.

 

I really like the turning gear and the swirling mist in your animated version.

 

I think having some faint concept art fade in and out on the parchment is also an excellent idea.

 

I think the images on the left should be random, and include some of our best models/settings. The city watch, a builder, definitely the revenant, probably the thief model, etc. I don't personally care for the lamp in your example, though if we had a good lamppost model that might work. I think they would probably look best monochrome, though I'd have to play around to be sure. Do you have a PS version of that image that I could look at?

[god_is_my_goldfish]

So maybe I could get some help from Goldfish and see what we come up with? He sure knows AE a lot better than I do. And people should post their tweaking ideas and stuff as well I guess.

 

Sure, what did you have in mind?

[oDDity]

Unlike Sh, I like the way the menu goes off the top and bottom like a strip.

I'd like to see the mouse over on the text being a puff of smoke floaitng up and fading away. Reminiscent of Keepers writing glyphs.

The smoke circling around doesn't really look like smoke. You didn't set any evolution for the fractal noise.

[pakmannen]

Odd: That aint smoke. Just a copy of the background rotating with another blendmode set. Is evolution/fractal noise something you can do with 3d anims?

 

Goldfish: Not sure. I guess we should talk about it. Me and napalm talked a little on IRC last night. Maybe we could have a short meeting there someday? I'm guessing you will need the assets etc if you want to experiment a little yourself.

 

Spring: Yes, I have all three saved as psd files. Saved in CS and about 3-4 megs each. Want me to upload them?

[pakmannen]

According to Napalm there are several ways to animate things in a GUI and before we decide how to do it, I'm guessing we want to create pretty detailed/high-res concepts (animated) first, and then figure out how to best get them into Doom 3.

 

Also, a complete set of which screens we need would be good.

 

Edit - Oh, and is it maybe possible to use blendmodes from within the GUI editor? I noticed you could do fadeins and such, and if you could do different blendmodes that would solve a lot of problems