Hello!
I have been playing several space based games over the years that have different in-game UI concepts. However, if you are playing long enough you will almost run into situations when some UI element is in your way overlapping the point of interest of your current building/docking whatever action. These games usually offer several levels of UI details, but this is not always the combination you would prefer the most. Mods may introduce great improvements but they usually do not let you to quickly customize the in-game UI.
Example: In one of my favorite games when I am docking my ship the in-game toolbar usually is in way as it is covers the docking connector. I can hide the in-game toolbar entirely by hitting a key twice, but doing so unfortunately my on-screen HUD elements are also hid, so I am loosing my telemetry info which is crucial in these situations. So I would need my own logic to group the UI elements or move them around.
I read on the DU forum that the in-game UI will be highly scriptable, this is good. What I am talking about is features like these:
- drag/drop of on-screen UI elements individually or grouped
- hide/unhide individual or group of UI elements
- UI may have an 'UI edit mode' if that is easier to implement; player can enter or leave UI edit mode by a click of a key
- ability to create UI profiles for e.g. a landing profile in my above example would hide the toolbar but leave essential HUD elements on-screen
I guess the planned UI scripting will cover skinning (colors, transparency, fonts what not) so I do not want to include UI skinning here. Modders will create awesome DU UI skins for sure, branded after player's organization etc.
An additional positive side effect of a such a customizable UI I described above is that it would somehow improve OLED friendliness of the game. As we know OLED screens, at least current generation of them, are not suitable for games having menus/toolbars in fixed locations of the screen - and 99% of the games fall into this category - b/c of burn in. So a less 'hard-coded' in-game UI would make DU somehow OLED friendly for current generation of OLED screens.
Thx for your time!