Hello everyone! This is your UI/UX Designer Paul. Recently I've been working on the design elements for the in-game Heads-Up Display!
For context, here' how the current "cockpit" outlook appears in-game. The ship rendered in green on the top right corner is the player's display monitor. This shows the player's ship from every angle giving the player a full view of their hull armor. Bars visually display shield strength, armor status, and overall hull integrity. Text will give concrete information regarding velocity, distance to target, shields condition, and overall ship status. The ship rendered in green on the top left is the targeting monitor, which displays a selected enemy ship. In the above preview, an enemy builder bot is selected. This will be a simpler monitor that displays more statistical information about the would-be opponent.
To give a more post-modern style to the player display, a radial theme was experimented with. The bars that indicate shields, armor, and hull wrap around the circumference as arc lengths.
Moving onto a vectorization of the above display, different design flourishes were tried out with the player monitor. All three bars have been placed accordingly and the other smaller displays that provide the other view angles of the ship have been given mockups as well.
Next up I've begun work on the Afterburner Gauge. There's no friction in space. For "brakes" your ship has "anti-inertial engines" which are basically thrusters that fire forward to slow you down and/or bring you to a stop. These are weaker than your main engine though. And the afterburner is when your main engine is kicking out 110%. So, the Afterburner Gauge visually represents when you will to be able to stop at a set nav point: (a) with anti-inertials, (b) with your main thrusters after a 180-degree turn, and (c) when even that will not stop you and you are guaranteed to overshoot your target.
Original post blogged on Rank: Warmaster Dev Blog.
