GUI! Absolute or relative?

[croxis]

I have a question on the UI, I can set it up one of two ways.

Absolute: The UI is set to be pixel perfect. The larger the screen/window resolution, the smaller the UI will look. This is the case in almost every 2D game and many early 3d games. I believe SC4 is this way as well. Another way to put it, the bigger the screen resolution, the less percent of the screen the UI will take up.

Relative: In all modern 3D engines the UI is also 3d graphics (including sc4). The UI scales with the screen resolution, so the UI will take up the same percent of space no matter if it is 640x480 or 1280x1024. Several new games has an option where the user can scale the UI to their preference.

[threestooges]

I unfortunately haven't been following the project too closely recently, but I'll at least toss in my two cents for the UI. I like the idea of the user selecting the size. In the Absolute style, it's nice because you can see more of your city, and the menu isn't in the way. However, the benefit of the Relative style is that, if you choose a higher resolution, the buttons don't all become 1 pixel squared and resultingly difficult to click/read. If you can execute the selectable size option, even if only to offer the two options of pure Absolute and Relative, I think that would be most versatile. Between the two, it would be a matter of how legible things like text (budgets, news items, etc) are at higher resolutions. Between the two, for ease of using the menu, I think Relative would be better (with an option to hide it perhaps for pure city-viewing enjoyment).

[daeley]

actually, in SC4, the UI is not relative... it has several sets of images for the different screen resolutions. If you increase your screen resolution beyond that, the UI becomes smaller and smaller.

However, the benefit of the Relative style is that, if you choose a higher resolution, the buttons don't all become 1 pixel squared and resultingly difficult to click/read.

not really true: the size in pixels remains the same, it will just look smaller since there are more pixels on the same screen size. However, since there are more pixels, everything also looks "shaper" so I don't think this is such a big problem.

[wouanagaine]

if you use absolute, then when people use a strange resolution or a very different one than the one the GUI was originally designed, it can take too much screen space or being to small

if you use relative you're still have problem with resolution with not the same aspect ratio as the one designed for ( 4:3, 16:9, 16:10 etc .. ), the icons can also be too blurry if the user resolution is way bigger than the one designed for

You may use relative with a bunch of predefined aspectratio/resolution set and use the closest set

You may also rethink GUI so you don't have to choose between relative or absolute

[nerdly_dood]

According to the poll, there is unanimous support for an absolute GUI!

Not that I voted or anything... No, not me... Naw, i never vote in polls.

I figure that you could get a UI that would work on a minimum 640x480 screen, which would appear smaller on larger screens. That way it can be more easily edited pixel-by-pixel.

[croxis]

On another note, if people wish to suggest mockups I would be more than happy to mull over them.

[Nique]

The best solution is to go for a absolute GUI, relative can scale up (and destroy) a 'once' beautifull' GUI.

At this stage, i just try to draw an image to the screen. And it seems to me, that is being relative now.. believe me, this is insane, The world upside down.. it destroys my beautifull logo... and the image can (almost never) get his right 'size' back.. no please no.. if you want it to be 'relative' we should make use of (indeed) 3D (vector based) images... otherwise it will going to be looking very very ugly:

This is relative to resolution:



I think we should make pixel-perfect GUI elements. No relative-scaling to resolution. The bigger your screen res, the smaller the buttons, the more 'play' space you have. In fact, it's the same as in your Operating system.. with a 2000x* resolution your taskbar will look very small. I think that when users have such a high resolution, thay are able to see the 'small' gui elements in the game too.. So don't worrie let's keep it that way ;P Absolute is good.

(remember that an absolute GUI element is not limited in such a way that we cant make a 'full width' toolbar / popup window. Just a matter of 'repeating-bg' images then. This is how your OS GUI works also. This is how almost 'every' game works. If you want a 'ugly' GUI (or take some really hard work on your shoulders) go for relative.. if you want nice (and not that hard to make) GUI's .. stay absolute. Lets keep it simple for the first version, we can allways overdo the gui to relative if people have time for that

[croxis]

That isn't scale, that is aspect ratio. Check the other post here and on the panda forums.

[Nique]

Lol no, i just wanted to explain what would happen when you use relative gui.. with huge resolutions.. images will look blurry like that.

[croxis]

This is why vector graphics need to be more common!

[Nique]

This is why vector graphics need to be more common!

Nice vector graphics are harder to make, and besides that, does panda3d support vector graphics.. looks to me that we have to convert it  to .egg files then..