Reskinning the User Interface

[Larrin]

Okie then...

I have no idea if anyone has worked on this before, but I've never seen anything released, so I'll assume not until somebody slaps me and points me at the prominently featured, stickied thread that I blindly ambled past on my way to make this post!

So I've been having a play with the various files related to the in-game UI, it mostly seems relatively straight forward, and here's a couple of screenies of a rough "v0.1" UI reskin ("hardware" only so far, buttons and screens are in the pipeline)...

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

Two main questions here:

1: Is there an interest for UI reskins?
2: Has anybody gone the whole hog on it before and is willing to hand over their knowledge to me?!

[MercantileInterest]

Hmm...

Can't say I care for the all white/refrigerator look but the concept is interesting, especially in regards to LPs. In character faction specific skins would be great for a role-play experience, not just re-skinning either but tampering with the basic shapes. For example, giving the University an interface reminiscent of holograms, Spartans something cold, utilitarian and metallic, Morganites something glittering and golden.

If you like, you can take a look at a few role-play multiplayer games.

Believers and Hive. Need to reach around page seven or eight before you can see the snazzy photoshopped Hive propaganda: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-2.92864/

Morganites and University. Action starts on page 2: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-3.100614/

Data Angels, Morganites and University: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=18228.0

Free Drones (Not so much of a consistent interface but whatever.) : http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17734.0

[Larrin]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll pop a Hotpoint logo on the next version

On a more serious note, when you said "not just re-skinning either but tampering with the basic shapes", that's where I'm heading. I've had a bit of a play, and cool-shaped buttons, etc shouldn't be a problem...

...on the other hand, I'm taking a bit of a baby-steps approach due to the mis-match issue you can see in the first screenshot towards the bottom. The graphic files for the UI aren't all in the same resolution, and you can actually see the effect of this in Vanilla, albeit less obvious.

I'll go have a play and see if I can put something together that might be of more interest visually as well as conceptually!

[MercantileInterest]

Are you going for the faction specific approach? Which files provide the graphics for the interface? Not just the framework, but the font, font colors and background?

[Larrin]

I'll have a go for something faction-specific for next time, love the sound of a gold-plated Morganite console you mentioned, if the colour palette allows!

Once variations on shapes are done they should be pretty easy to combine/edit and reskin at will.

As far as files go, this should be most of them:

(click to show/hide)

May be something missing still, but I think I got it all.

 - Font colour is controlled by text.pcx
 - Interface.pcx, menu.pcx and menu2.pcx control all of the background "screens"

I believe the fonts themselves could also be changed, I'm sure I've spotted "Arial" in the datalinks text or something before?

[Larrin]

Ok, I can't find where the orange colour comes from for the "Menu" and "Commlink" buttons! Arrrrgh!

So, I'm going to pop this on the back-burner for a few days and play with factions instead (until my blood pressure returns to levels less suitable for deep-sea exploration)

I did make a "Morgan" skin, but not happy enough to show it yet, soon though...

Also, I love the RP game reports in those threads, have mainly looked at the stuff in the Hive/Uni one, but I totally love the 'Propaganda Posters'

[MercantileInterest]

Will keep an eye on things.