pioneerspacesim
UI: Interface icons show up on top of the side panels
Observed behaviour
Some icons on the side of the screen show up on top of expanded side-bar panels.
Expected behaviour
Side-bar panels cover the icons
Steps to reproduce
- Add some missiles to a ship -> missile icon shows up in the in-flight view
- Open the comms window
- Missile icon shows up on top of comms, interfering with the text
My pioneer version (and OS):
- Pioneer: Trunk (2025-06-15)
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12
My output.txt (required) and game save (optional, but recommended)
N/A, instead attaching screenshot.
There is a similar and even worse issue with the system overview and enemy ship scan data:
There is a similar and even worse issue with the system overview and enemy ship scan data:
Thank you, yes, this is what originally alerted me to the issue, but I couldn´t figure out how to make that pop up again, so I used the missile display instead.
With the current UI, during combat my eyes are constantly darting between opposite corners of the screen which distracts me from the piloting in the center of the screen.
The user experience could be improved if the enemy ship scan data was placed on the bottom left of the screen above the player ship data. The logically related and combat-relevant ship-to-ship comms are also on the left side of the screen. Also, it would be better if the player ship data would not disappear when a window is opened in the top left. The comms log window could be shortened to accommodate the ship data underneath it (with a button available for lengthening it to full length and making the ship data disappear), while the cargo and scan manager windows are already way too short to interfere with the ship data on a 16:9 monitor. The ship data should only disappear if the top left windows cannot be shortened due to large UI scaling or a very narrow monitor aspect ratio.
The missile launch buttons could also be placed in the bottom left with the weapon heat indicator to logically group together all of the weapons systems and prevent overlaps of the missile buttons with other windows. This would also put them closer to the other ship control functions such as landing gear deployment.
Furthermore, I would prefer it if the weapon overheat bars were always visible like the hull indicator and contained information regarding the weapon type on mouseover. This would make it easier to see what the offensive capabilities of the player ship are without having to navigate to the equipment menu. The secondary missile weapon types and quantities are always visible, but the main weapons are not.
@sturnclaw #6181 only partially fixes this - the various icons, for example, missile, are still overlaid (same issue in the System View).
Really the side-panels need to render at a higher z-order than the rest of the UI.
With the current UI, during combat my eyes are constantly darting between opposite corners of the screen which distracts me from the piloting in the center of the screen.
...
@DamagedEngine Sorry, I missed this. Can you create a separate Feature Request for this please? Ideally with UI mockups?
Really the side-panels need to render at a higher z-order than the rest of the UI.
Any "side items" like missile, ecm, etc. buttons need to be reimplemented as sidebar HudModules; they are currently using a legacy rendering path which doesn't care about what's rendered over top (or underneath) them and doesn't care about Z-order.
Regarding the Z-order, I'll look into what's going on with the full-screen "HUD" window and how it's interacting with the UI panels that should be overlaying it. There's probably a subtle submission order issue there that's responsible.
The same issue occurs in the System View with the ship icons being overlaid over the top of the sidebars.
While the HUD icons can be fixed by turning them into sidebar modules, the System View icons can't be. Ultimately the sidebars / any "cockpit"/HUD elements should be at the highest Z-order (ie, closest to the camera) than anything else inside the game view.