Neo GUI

[onpon4]

Rationale

The Brushed GUI looks nice, but is sub-optimal as a functional GUI due to its layout. Many people in the Naev community have noted how wasteful it is of vertical real estate. However, the Slim GUI (which is generally laid out better) looks a lot worse. We need a nicer GUI that combines the advantages of both.

Proposal

We are working on a GUI called "Neo" to serve as the new default GUI. This GUI will be designed to be simple in its design, nice-looking, and most importantly, out of the way (by taking up plentiful horizontal space rather than limited vertical space).

We have drawn a mockup of how we intend to make Neo look, and how we intend to lay it out:

The black background of the sidebar will be semi-transparent; it is opaque in this mockup so that the Slim GUI below it doesn't obscure its layout. The planet overview panel will also have the same look and semi-transparent black background, while the bottom bar will either be opaque black or semi-transparent black with text. All bars will be given opaque black backgrounds to ensure maximum visibility for them.

The bars shown are:

• The shield bar. Text will be contained showing the shield amount in GJ.
• The armor bar. Text contained will show the armor amount in GJ.
• The battery bar. Text contained will show the battery amount in GJ.
• The speed bar (showing how fast you are currently moving). Text contained will show the speed in mAU/s.
• The heat bar (showing the ship's current temperature). Text contained will show the heat in K.
• An example of a weapon bar.

Weapon bars will be used for both true weapons and activated outfits. The weapon bars will be laid out as follows:

• The box on the left (which is empty in this mockup) will be filled with the store image for the respective weapon/outfit, similar to how Slimv2 does it.
• The sword icon will indicate that a weapon is primary, a shuriken icon will indicate that it is secondary, and a number will be placed there for activated outfits and weapons which are only on an instant weapon set. The circle behind it will fill to indicate fire delay time (similar to the tiny bar in the Slim GUI). In the case of launcher weapons with a lock time, it will instead be an indicator for lockon.
• The circle under the flame icon will indicate the heat of the weapon/outfit.
• The main bar itself will be used for weapon ammunition, if any, in which case the number will show the number of shots (despite the percent sign in the mockup, only an absolute value will likely be used). For weapons that don't have ammunition, it should ideally be used for some other purpose. This part isn't entirely decided, but for activated outfits and beams, it can serve as an "indicator light" showing that the outfit is on. The text could possibly show "On" or "Off", or alternatively may be unused. In cases where we can't find a use for the main bar, it may just be left blank or possibly redundantly copy one of the two sub-bars.

Alternative solutions

It would be possible to update the Slim GUI with a couple extra features and use it as the default, but Slim doesn't look very good and has a horrendously messy codebase. I think an entirely new GUI is the best solution.

[onpon4]

Commenting on this to note that we're making some great progress! Most of the core functions have been defined and it's now displaying the ship's basic stats:

We decided to add a dedicated stress bar (that's the web icon) and flip the heat and speed bars. Here you can also see the actual font being used rather than the font we used in the mockup.

We also decided that the sidebar will also include a weapon sets list which shows you not just what weapset is currently active, but also what weapsets can be switched to. There's space for that and my ship's two weapons currently unoccupied by the sidebar shown here.

🕷️🦇

[onpon4]

At this rate, we might actually finish this in time for 0.9.0! 😄

The only things left to do are the planet target indicator, active cooldown display, and buttons for fleet control. We're not 100% decided on where we'll put the fleet buttons, but probably in the top-center of the screen.

🕷️

[onpon4]

This is now complete and will be in Naikari 0.9! 😄

🕷️