Can we talk about Green UI?

[Deathrydar]

Oh look. Another whiney "I can't deal with the UI" thread. And the OP will spend 25 pages trying to explain his ridiculous stance on something that no one is going to change anyway because the devs here don't cater to whiners.

Bye!

[soronil]

Originally Posted by Deathrydar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh look. Another whiney "I can't deal with the UI" thread. And the OP will spend 25 pages trying to explain his ridiculous stance on something that no one is going to change anyway because the devs here don't cater to whiners.

Bye!

Super useful contribution, man.

Not OP but look at the comparison between the two images in this post:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...&postcount=203
And tell me that the green UI is at a perfect scale at all resolutions and couldn't possibly be hard to read on certain set ups to some people.
If you say so, then you're not qualified to contribute to this discussion anyway, so bye indeed.

[Mblake81]

Originally Posted by Coridan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

LOL what? I was playing since June 99, I figured out F10 ui in about 2 days everyone used F10, people who didn't got made fun of. Running the stone ui on a 14" monitor in 640x480 you basically saw nothing lol. Hitting F10 was amazing.

I am not defending the guy you are responding to but just responding to your post. I used the stone UI up until the start of Kunark. So did the people I played with, no one made fun of anyone using the UI that I recall. IIRC my computer puchased in 2000 using the Gforce 256 would lag a bit when toggled to full screen.

You saw everything in the periscope that you seen toggled to full screen. It was the same image but larger. IIRC that is why periscope view existed in the first place. Despite it being the same image it wasn't so intensive on your computer, the stone UI didn't move around on screen.

[soronil]

Originally Posted by Mblake81 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You saw everything in the periscope that you seen toggled to full screen. It was the same image but larger. IIRC that is why periscope view existed in the first place. Despite it being the same image it wasn't so intensive on your computer, the stone UI didn't move around on screen.

Exactly. traditional graphics pipeline first calculates the world in "world space" and then translates it to "screen space" where many operations are done by pixel. Less pixels, less calculation. The stone UI would be over 2x faster than full screen UI, which was a big deal for in-era hardware.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by soronil [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Seriously?? You sound out of touch or that you aren't listening to valid criticism.

I agree there are a lot of people just bitching because they don't like it, but a large part of it, and a legitimate problem, is that it's simply hard to read on many set ups.

You guys tried to use an interface designed for resolutions that were used at a much larger scale (1024x768 on 16" is not the same scale as 1920x1080 on a 20"). It didn't work very well for some people.

I made a bigger post here:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...&postcount=203
But basically you guys really need to consider upscaling the UI, OR releasing multiple versions with different scales.

Actually, all "you guys" did was use an interface that has been packaged with P1999's download for at least a couple years, and which would have been forced on "green" anyway, and make it look more accurate for what it was supposed to represent. That's it. Hence what Wenai meant by calling it a win from his standpoint: You being unhappy with the window scaling or whatnot is not related to any work they did, or would have done. You're actually unhappy with Nilbog and Rogean for requiring the use of the "Velious UI." That's appropriate enough for a "green UI" thread, but understand that different people involved had different roles. Wenai/Deezy/Jibartik essentially set out, originally, to replace grey buttons with white buttons. They're not the folks to be unhappy with if you dislike the UI more generally because if they had done nothing at all you'd still be unhappy, only you'd be unhappy with the older version of that UI. I'm not calling your complaints invalid, only pointing you towards the correct people.

Danth

[soronil]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They're not the folks to be unhappy with if you dislike the UI more generally because if they had done nothing at all you'd still be unhappy, only you'd be unhappy with the older version of that UI. I'm not calling your complaints invalid, only pointing you towards the correct people.

Danth

That is a valid point. I actually like the recent ui changes and appreciate them, and I personally am willing to do janky things like force myself to play in fullscreen at weird resolutions to play the game. But people have valid complaints about "The UI" in that the scale is not classic, and hard to read/use on many set ups.

Yes most people are confused / directing at wrong people / making stupid arguments, but that does not mean that there is not a valid issue with "The UI" that could probably be addressed (and maybe should be addressed, depending on how difficult, before doing any other UI work)

[Wenai]

Originally Posted by soronil [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Super useful contribution, man.

Not OP but look at the comparison between the two images in this post:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...&postcount=203
And tell me that the green UI is at a perfect scale at all resolutions and couldn't possibly be hard to read on certain set ups to some people.
If you say so, then you're not qualified to contribute to this discussion anyway, so bye indeed.

I am at work currently. But when I get home I will dig up some velious screenshots. The UI components were different sizes based on the resolution of the monitor. EXACTLY like how it is behaving here.

At the end of the day, there is a very wide array of resolutions people will be using on P1999.

Cheap Laptop with integrated graphics? Probably 720p.

Desktop with standard monitor? Probably 1080p.

Some will have 4K, some will have ultra wides. At the end of the day the only logical thing to do is support the lowest resolution that is likely to be used. Because sizing a UI for 4K and expecting people on 720p to deal with it is ridiculous. People with larger monitors have the ability to play windowed mode, or play at a lower resolution. People with smaller resolutions don’t have any option to scale up.

Once again. This UI was pre-packaged and planned to be used anyway. All we did was replace some components with the proper Velious UI components and clean up some bugs.

[Mblake81]

Originally Posted by Wenai [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am at work currently. But when I get home I will dig up some velious screenshots. The UI components were different sizes based on the resolution of the monitor. EXACTLY like how it is behaving here.

At the end of the day, there is a very wide array of resolutions people will be using on P1999.

Cheap Laptop with integrated graphics? Probably 720p.

Desktop with standard monitor? Probably 1080p.

Some will have 4K, some will have ultra wides. At the end of the day the only logical thing to do is support the lowest resolution that is likely to be used. Because sizing a UI for 4K and expecting people on 720p to deal with it is ridiculous. People with larger monitors have the ability to play windowed mode, or play at a lower resolution. People with smaller resolutions don’t have any option to scale up.

Once again. This UI was pre-packaged and planned to be used anyway. All we did was replace some components with the proper Velious UI components and clean up some bugs.

I gotcha.

Originally Posted by Mblake81 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Everquest in 2001

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Originally Posted by Mblake81 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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Who is Frina Hateblade and Hurog Darkstar?

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Some of those boat pics have me nostalgia tripping hard.

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[soronil]

Originally Posted by Wenai [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

At the end of the day the only logical thing to do is support the lowest resolution that is likely to be used. Because sizing a UI for 4K and expecting people on 720p to deal with it is ridiculous. People with larger monitors have the ability to play windowed mode, or play at a lower resolution. People with smaller resolutions don’t have any option to scale up.
\

Speaking of logic...
The problem is this UI was designed for the lowest resolution that was likely to be used 20 years ago. It really needs to be scaled up to support the lowest resolution that would be used today, which will give the 80% of people at a higher resolution than that a UI which is much more usable.

Originally Posted by Wenai [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Once again. This UI was pre-packaged and planned to be used anyway. All we did was replace some components with the proper Velious UI components and clean up some bugs.

I completely understand that the scale of the UI is outside the scope of what you were trying to accomplish. And i am not directing my comments at you directly. I am just making statements to describe the problem and possible solutions.
The fact is that project 1999 will suffer because of the forced UI that will feel very "not classic" for most people trying to play at their native resolution due to the fact that it does not scale. If anyone wants to try to fix that, that would be much appreciated by many people

[loramin]

Originally Posted by soronil [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The fact is that project 1999 will suffer because of the forced UI that will feel very "not classic" for most people trying to play at their native resolution due to the fact that it does not scale.

Can we just talk about this bit? I think you and many others are entirely missing ...

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Green is the realization of ten years of effort by Rogean and Nilbog. Nilbog himself famously said (and I'm paraphrasing, but you can find the exact quote if you look) "I don't care if I drive away every last player, I'm going to make Project 1999 as classic as possible". The fact that we can even play at resolutions higher than 1280x1024 is them "compromising their vision" a little (I half believe that if Titanium made it easy, they'd disallow those resolutions too [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.])

For 10 years that's been the goal! Ten years of them making decisions people hate, decisions people spend 25 pages complaining about, decisions that affected the game even more than the choice of UI. And for ten years people have been talking about how such changes will be the death of the project.

Like everyone in this thread keeps repeating, these UI choices aren't theirs: they're R&N's. R&N have been doing what they're doing for a decade, and despite (quite literally) hundreds (if not thousands) of threads like this one, Project 1999 has never "suffered" from their leadership (which isn't to say they always make the right decisions: they're human, so of course they make mistakes too ... but in aggregate they've always "steered the ship" to success).

With Green's release the server will have a higher population than ever before, and that will be because of, not in spite of, Rogean and Nilbog, and the decisions they've made for the past ten years.

But again, even if those decisions left only 100 nerds playing on a "classic as possible" server? I feel like Nilbog (and likely Rogean too) would be perfectly ok with that, and wouldn't consider the project a failure if it happened. Because their goal wasn't to get as many players as possible, it was to make a server that's as classic as possible.