Why has the UI to be so ugly?

[tomkpunkt]

Hi,

I decided to give KSP2 another shot with the recent 0.1.5 patch, but it let me down once again.

I just can't wrap my head around why the developers would approve such a user interface. I'm playing at 1440p and all I see are issues. For instance, the edges of boxes are inconsistent, the fonts switch between 1px and 2px in width without any pattern, the action buttons are misaligned, and the icons for orbit (sun), sea level, and delta V are all off. The dithering areas are uneven, and the list goes on. It's frustrating.

I think 0.2.x should adress this.

 

[The Aziz]

I don't think it will, they're still very much aiming for retro LCD interface all over the place. The only way to fix this is overhaul the UI completely (hopefully back to one of the pre-release designs, they were cool)

Edited October 30, 2023 by The Aziz

[tomkpunkt]

I wasn't referring to the overall design of the UI – the colorful, retro LCD look is fine. However, the way it's rendered leaves much to be desired. It's as if the icons are the wrong size. For instance, in "APP.BAR", the two 'P's look different from each other. The circles for RCS and SAS have sections that are 1px wide and some that are 2px wide. The action icons for Solar and Wheels are misaligned, and the same goes for the Lamp icon. It's just sloppy work.

[Periple]

It's going to be tricky to get a pixelated UI like that to scale gracefully to all screen resolutions. I also think they should file it under "things that seemed like a good idea at the time" and just go with a clean, flat look, no pixelation.

[Vl3d]

7 hours ago, tomkpunkt said:

I wasn't referring to the overall design of the UI – the colorful, retro LCD look is fine. However, the way it's rendered leaves much to be desired.

The problem is that you don't know what's pixelated by design and what's pixelated because of bad rendering. Just look at the map view icons.

Also... too many font styles everywhere!

[Alpha_star]

Not too much of a problem for me though. I also play KSP2 and like the new retro-future style. It’s like something from the 90s instead of the 60s in the first game.

However, I do like the idea of an option to switch the style of the characters. If anyone in the development team is reading this, please consider adding this to the game!

[didkodidko]

I find the IU cluttered, non ergonomic and hard to watch on a first glance. In addition to the bad style choice, the position of indicators for atmo hight and g's are barely visible. SAS buttons are very badly placed and so stupid with this rotating plane in it. 

[Barrackar]

On 10/30/2023 at 2:09 AM, tomkpunkt said:

I wasn't referring to the overall design of the UI – the colorful, retro LCD look is fine. However, the way it's rendered leaves much to be desired. It's as if the icons are the wrong size. For instance, in "APP.BAR", the two 'P's look different from each other. The circles for RCS and SAS have sections that are 1px wide and some that are 2px wide. The action icons for Solar and Wheels are misaligned, and the same goes for the Lamp icon. It's just sloppy work.

I don't see any of the supposed issues except the circle thing - because that is how you do circles with pixels. You cannot draw a circle on a screen without some parts of it being wider than other parts. If you remove the parts which you currently see as 2px (i.e. wider) than it will instead look like it has weird gaps at certain angles. The alignment of the icons seem aligned to me. The slanting of the solar panel icon may create an optical illusion, and similarly the circle OP drew on the APP bar may create an optical illusion. To me the icons are aligned and both P's look the same.

Overall, I like the new UI as a default layout. It would be improved by allowing customized scaling of UI elements so each person can make some parts bigger/smaller as they see fit but as a default it gets most things right. I.e. the most important things are more prominent than the less important things.

[The Aziz]

21 minutes ago, Barrackar said:

because that is how you do circles with pixels. You cannot draw a circle on a screen without some parts of it being wider than other parts. If you remove the parts which you currently see as 2px (i.e. wider) than it will instead look like it has weird gaps at certain angles. 

Over 85% of steam users have at least 1080p screens. Let's use it, instead of forcing a poorly applied antialiasing, since that's how it looks because..

22 minutes ago, Barrackar said:

both P's look the same.

my dude. No they aren't

3 out of 4 A's look different, B's look different, I's look diferent, O's look different, P's look different, R's look different, S's look different, and that's just three pieces of the same UI, I could proably get entire alphabet here.

[runner78]

The problem here is probably when pixel art fonts are not used in the font size for which they were designed.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

3 out of 4 A's look different, B's look different, I's look diferent, O's look different, P's look different, R's look different, S's look different, and that's just three pieces of the same UI, I could proably get entire alphabet here.

That happens when they try to scale the UI to a resolution that doesn't match the pixels. They're using nearest-neighbor to avoid blurring the fonts, which gives those really ugly artefacts. It would be a quite a lot of work to get that pixelated UI to scale gracefully, effectively they'd have to hand-design a bunch of them scaled to different pixel densities and then figure out which one to display when you pick a resolution. Even so the UI elements would end up looking different sizes on different resolutions.

If they ditched the pixels that problem would go away...

[The Aziz]

And here I was taught, in artistic university, that fonts work best as vectors, because they're infinitely scalable.

Now I don't know if it's possible to use those for an interface, but it looks like they first made a teenytiny pixely letters and then scaled them up. A first bad call of many.

[MechBFP]

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

3 out of 4 A's look different, B's look different, I's look different, O's look different, P's look different, R's look different, S's look different, and that's just three pieces of the same UI, I could probably get entire alphabet here.

Really, this is all that needs to be said. That single blown up screenshot speaks volumes as to the problem.

[Superfluous J]

I understand why they did it. They want it to harken back to a time when pixels were visible on the screen and you had to make your letters out of dots.

However, unless you display it on a screen with either the exact number of pixels expected or a multiple of that number, then you're going to have this problem. The ONLY way to fix it is to drop the idea of using pixel fonts. You lose some whimsy but gain a readable interface, and if the data matters to the player at all readability is more important than whimsy any day.

[Periple]

8 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

The ONLY way to fix it is to drop the idea of using pixel fonts.

If you want to be pedantic about it, there is a way to fix it and keep the pixel fonts! 

You'll need to design the UI at multiple sizes scaled to a range of resolutions, and then pick the closest one for the resolution selected by the user, painting that onto the screen so that the pixels line up. It will look slightly bigger or smaller than ideal on screen resolutions that are between the ones you designed, but it will work and most players probably wouldn't notice.

It's also tedious and a lot of work and you really have to love those pixel fonts to want to do it that way. I don't think it's worth it!

[tomkpunkt]

Every pixel truly matters, especially in games that utilize retro graphics or pixel art. There are numerous games out there with pixel-based aesthetics that execute it brilliantly. It's a testament to how attention to detail can elevate the entire gaming experience. It's disappointing when a game doesn't live up to that standard.

Edited November 1, 2023 by tomkpunkt

[The Aziz]

34 minutes ago, Periple said:

You'll need to design the UI at multiple sizes scaled to a range of resolutions, and then pick the closest one for the resolution selected by the user, painting that onto the screen so that the pixels line up.

That's about the worst thing you can do.

Just... Scalable UI that adjusts automatically. Other games can do that without losing legibility, so it can be done in KSP2

37 minutes ago, Periple said:

there is a way to fix it and keep the pixel fonts! 

Ye, thing is, I don't want to keep them. They simply don't fit the climate of the game. In the 90s we were at best sending probes to other planets, not having orbital shipyards, offworld colonies and interstellar motherships. UI should reflect that. And boi it did, in prerelease footage.

[Periple]

I agree, I was just being pedantic!

[Vl3d]

1 minute ago, The Aziz said:

UI should reflect that. And boi it did, in prerelease footage.

Pics?

[The Aziz]

They're by no means perfect still clunky in some elements, but they're lightyears ahead of what's in the game now, and no functionality would be lost.

I noticed something else though. The VAB.

The icons for tools and categories.. are largely the same to what we have now, only they have been pixelized for no reason. To think that they used to be so nice and clean...

[tomkpunkt]

Just take a look at these gorgeous icons; they're crisp, sharp, and aesthetically pleasing. The UI looks also pretty.

 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

On 10/31/2023 at 1:08 PM, The Aziz said:

And here I was taught, in artistic university, that fonts work best as vectors, because they're infinitely scalable.

Now I don't know if it's possible to use those for an interface, but it looks like they first made a teenytiny pixely letters and then scaled them up. A first bad call of many.

Uhm... yes and no. Vectors are infinitely scalable (which is great for print) but here they have to be  rendered on a screen which has pixels, so if the UI scaling doesn't snap to nearest pixel when it's being resized, you get that weird stuff OP was on about.

On 10/30/2023 at 10:09 AM, tomkpunkt said:

I wasn't referring to the overall design of the UI – the colorful, retro LCD look is fine. However, the way it's rendered leaves much to be desired. It's as if the icons are the wrong size. For instance, in "APP.BAR", the two 'P's look different from each other. The circles for RCS and SAS have sections that are 1px wide and some that are 2px wide. The action icons for Solar and Wheels are misaligned, and the same goes for the Lamp icon. It's just sloppy work.

That's the thing, if you say it's ugly then it appears you're talking about the style, but if you rightfully point out the sloppy misalignments and rendering issues that is in fact the UI and quality of UI implementation that you're referring to.

As others pointed out, I think this is either that they're not using a true pixel font and/or that they're not scaling to the nearest pixel.

Then there's the optical sizing of icons which is indeed sloppy, but they either have to resize or restyle some of them to fit in better.

Overall it is very clear that they slapped on a bunch of ideas from different phases of development and just stuck with it as we all know they have much bigger fish to fry, but as a pixel art fan myself, It does look inconsistent and sloppy, but I'm fine with keeping as is and focus on gameplay features that add replay ability .

Edited November 2, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[dr.phees]

12 hours ago, The Aziz said:

The icons for tools and categories.. are largely the same to what we have now, only they have been pixelized for no reason. To think that they used to be so nice and clean...

One wonders what has happened. Did they at some point loose their code and had to get it working in a hurry?

Those pictures look positively awesome compared to the current UI. Whoever made the decision to abandon that theme should take a step back, look at it again and hopefully understand it was a bad decision. Revert and move on would be a good way to go.

[Bej Kerman]

On 10/31/2023 at 9:26 AM, Barrackar said:

I don't see any of the supposed issues except the circle thing - because that is how you do circles with pixels.

That's literally not true. I have seen so many pixel circles drawn with either just one pixel of width or more while maintaining a constant apparent width. The way they're drawn here is not the only possible way to draw circles.

[Amandanaut]

Wow, that pre-release UI is so much  more legible.

I generally like pixel art, and I like the concept of the current KSP2 UI, in theory. But, in practice, all the little decorative dots and squiggles only serve to obfuscate the information that the UI is supposed to be providing me. It just makes the core experience of controlling the craft much more frustrating. Honestly, it's my number one complaint about KSP2. I can tolerate bugs, I can wait for missing features, but not being able to read the UI is just miserable.