vgstation-coders
Undusting UIs general discussion
General Idea
I think a lot of our UIs are very outdated, and may give us a worse look than we deserve. I believe that improving our UIs to look a bit less outwardly outdated would be a good thing.
In this issue I want to show which UIs are, I think, in need of undusting and hear what people are thinking about it.
Things I am interested in porting
1. Browser information panel
This part of the screen. Other stations have ditched the BYOND statpanel for a while. This is for example what it looks like on virtually any major server that isn't /vg/:
It looks cleaner, the font is bigger, you can display more information. There are also two non-skub advantages :
- Since it's not BYOND anymore, you don't have random lags preventing the MC stat panel from appearing.
- Since 516, the browsers are on a different thread than the rendering stuff. This would improve performance at little bit on clients.
2. Fullscreen mode
TG has implemented it. I tested it. It's awesome. It shouldn't be too difficult to port.
3. Item/mob name on hoovering :
Some maptext like this. It could be a toogle. I don't find it particularily invasive but I understand this could be a topic of future discussion.
4. Different cursor on shift-click:
I couldn't screencap it but on TG-derived server your cursor changes to a small magnifying glass when you shift-click. I find it cute. Thoughts?
5. Smaller chatbar :
The TG chatbar is smaller and actually contained within their chat panel, rather than taking into account the full bottom bar of the screen. I think it's a bit neater. However their chat bar is too small and I would want it to be slightly bigger. This could easily be make a toggle.
6. TG say/TG examine
This is realtively neat and has the advantage of making working typing indicator easier. It could also very much be a toggle, like most UI stuff.
TG has this thing on shift-click
Pros:
- searchable
- less space in your screen
- updates when taking an object and since it's not stat() it's much faster
Cons:
- it's fucking TGUI, so the first time you do it there's a 0.3 seconds delay
- and I would probably need to port their RUSTG iconforge to make it not-suck, I thinkk
Things I am NOT interested in porting
I don't intend to port TG widescreen feature which changes the viewport from 7x7 to 7x10. Gameplay concerns aside (which, I think, are fairly minor), it shrinks the chat window too much and you don't have the time to read everything that happens in busy rounds.
I don't intend to work on TGChat at all. Their chat can bluescreen of death if TGUI doesn't work, which is not really necessary. Their only main draw is the ability to filter between radios/OOC/proximity chat, which is also a design choice I am not interested in adopting.
Thoughts on this ?
- Don't care possibly don't want it.
- No.
- We already have this but it's hidden in the bottom corner. I'm tangentially ok with this.
- Sure fine.
- No. Toggle maybe.
- Not sure what this entails.
- Nah we have this on alt click. It opens tab. No need for some window to appear.
I am very much part of the old = good, new = bad camp.
I am very much part of the old = good, new = bad camp.
Okay but that's not an argument
I do not like the item/mob name hovering at all, I find it irritating and invasive. I do not have strong opinions on the rest of it.
1: looks bad, we don't need le epic modern design web2.0 nodejs bullshit 2: how does that work? might be cool 3: only on a modifier key or something, the status bar info is usually enough 4: feedback to the player like that seems good imo 5: i really don't see the point of this other than 'old UI bad' 6: not sure what this means, can you provide more info? 7: probably better than alt-clicking tiles, but also kinda meh. additional feature rather than replacement?
most of this seems like changing stuff for changes' sake also I really don't like this issue and how awfully it presents the ideas/UI elements from other codebases, there are pictures missing a bunch of these bullet points and some of the more complex UI elements with multiple features only have 1 picture. A lot of these would be better off showcased with videos
- this looks fine, if it really makes the game run better i see nothing wrong with it but how does the rest of the menu look?
- has no images or videos showcasing how it actually looks, i don't care for it if you don't show what fullscreen mode looks like
- the giant mouse-over text is genuinely awful from my experience, everyone will hate it if it's not a toggle, nobody will use it if it is a toggle, waste of effort, don't want
- no pictures of how this looks, don't care/don't want
- i use the current chatbar for ooc, i don't like this change
- the say window looks fine to me but wtf is that examine window? I don't know what is going on in that tiny cropped image you're showing, showcase how it actually works with a video or something. Don't want it. Also, isn't this whole examine window a bandaid fix because of TG's combat mode because they can't right click/alt click anymore?
TG can still alt-click outside of combat mode, I think. I would respond to "change for change's sake isn't an argument" with "inertia for inertia's sake isn't an argument". A fair point about not having included some screencaps, I will try to later tonight.
Le lun. 9 juin 2025, 12:46, MercuriusGH @.***> a écrit :
MercuriusGH left a comment (vgstation-coders/vgstation13#37702) https://github.com/vgstation-coders/vgstation13/issues/37702#issuecomment-2955555983
most of this seems like changing stuff for changes' sake also I really don't like this issue and how awfully it presents the ideas/UI elements from other codebases, there are pictures missing a bunch of these bullet points and some of the more complex UI elements with multiple features only have 1 picture. A lot of these would be better off showcased with videos
- this looks fine, if it really makes the game run better i see nothing wrong with it but how does the rest of the menu look?
- has no images or videos showcasing how it actually looks, i don't care for it if you don't show what fullscreen mode looks like
- the giant mouse-over text is genuinely awful from my experience, everyone will have it if it's not a toggle, nobody will use it if it is a toggle, waste of effort, don't want
- no pictures of how this looks, don't care/don't want
- i use the current chatbar for ooc, i don't like this change
- the say window looks fine to me but wtf is that examine window? I don't know what is going on in that tiny cropped image you're showing, showcase how it actually works with a video or something. Don't want it. Also, isn't this whole examine window a bandaid fix because of TG's combat mode because they can't right click/alt click anymore?
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I really like 1 and 6. 1: I would stick with normal tabs, just throw more info into the status to reduce the amount of tabs. 6: don't know how examine works
- if it's a technical improvement sure, I'm thinking if it's a unique/new UI it probably has the potential to be styled differently so I'd definitely go for something more classical/not just TG's UI transfered over
- if it works and doesn't bug shit out or give some form of unfair advantage sounds like a good addition
- abysmal dogshit
- sounds cute
- prefer the old but works as a toggle
- say looks fine but examine needs a video demonstration/looks like way 2 much popup compared to the well contained text display
my biggest concerns are of lag and bugs but I can't say we don't already have those on our current menus so idk it depends
