Is UI customization this simple?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Can the programmer just create a frame (visible or invisible) around the edge of the display, and let players move UI elements (Nav Ball, mission planning, warp, etc) around the edge of the screen and have it snap to the frame?  Or choose to snap some UI elements to the frame and other UI elements to a UI previously placed (to cluster or stack them)? 

(read a fairly lengthy post by someone who does not like the new UI layout - and I know nothing about UI design) 

[Beamer]

On 11/18/2022 at 5:56 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Can the programmer just create a frame (visible or invisible) around the edge of the display, and let players move UI elements (Nav Ball, mission planning, warp, etc) around the edge of the screen and have it snap to the frame?

Yes, that's possible. Snap to edges of the frame, or to edges of other windows. I work daily with applications that have a design like this. You don't have to look further than any typical Microsoft business tool for that. Visual studio has used this type of UI design for many years, as does a variety of MS server applications (like their various server managers). So do many programmer environments from other companies, as well as coding-aimed text editors (UltraEdit, Notepad++ etc). I would say it's fairly common for productivity environments to allow the user to snap things like property windows or result windows to any edge of the screen or to the edge of another window, or even just snap them loose completely and place them anywhere on the screen as a loose floating window.

It's less common in game design though, gaming companies tend to go for a specific look or design, artists are involved and we all know how those artsy types feel about messing up their carefully crafted ideas I believe the viewers used for SecondLife have a flexible UI design like this, arguably not a real 'game' but close enough. One of the first MMORPGs I played, Anarchy Online (think Everquest but in a sci-fi setting instead of a Tolkienesque setting) allowed you to snap various windows like inventory, nano-programs (i.e. spells), chat, equipment window etc to whatever edge you wanted in whatever order you wanted, and that was some 20 years ago.

Sometimes it is accomplished by modders, I have seen several UI mods for Cyberpunk 2077 that allow you to move UI elements to whatever position you want them - the flexibility is there in the engine, it just wasn't implemented as such by the gaming company itself.

So it's all perfectly possible, just less common in game design than in productivity applications.

 

[HebaruSan]

This is the code for @Error_Sophius's mod to do that:

• https://github.com/andrew-vant/dragctrl/blob/master/src/DraggableControls.cs

It's pretty short and simple, all things considered. And that includes having to reach into the game and grab components that weren't originally designed to work that way; including it from scratch would presumably be even simpler.

[Nuke]

depends on the ui api. ive had ones that are an infuriating mess (wx widgets) and others that are stupid simple that nobody uses (iup). uis for in game rendering are an entirely different matter and are designed to function on top of the graphics api rather than under it. 

[kerbiloid]

If speak about the non-KSP pgming, Qt/QML provides wide possibilities of adjustable and self-asjustable GUI.