UI Breakdown and Comparison

Thanks for making your pictures available on that imgur account by the way - I used your CoH 2 UI picture to make a mockup of what I think would be my ideal interface. Some stuff is probably controversial (like moving the VPs and the global unit control) but I think the rest is an improvement.

Main UI (notice how the main bar is compacted, the resources are vertical, the VPs and global unit control are moved, and the minimap controls are compacted):
Show Spoiler

UI showing a unit/unit upgrade being hovered over (a T-34 in this case) (notice how it replaces the stuff in the main bar while you hover, because you'll be looking at it anyways so you can't be looking at the main bar too, and also notice how it lines up the resources so you can still compare costs):
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UI with notifications + blizzard timer (notice how they don't take up side on the left of the screen, so all the UI elements stay at the bottom where they cover up the least amount of screen real estate and where your mouse will already be if you're clicking on the buttons on the right):
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UI with hovering over doctrines (notice how I was too lazy to do a shitty Photoshop to show how this would look, but again the idea is that if you are hovering over something in order to read it, you won't be reading anything else so it makes sense to cover up the main bar):
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I just don't understand why you guys at Relic are so adamant on keeping one specific UI format for everyone.

The ideal fix for this would be to simply make the UI modular so people can move stuff around however they feel like it. This is a PC game after all, which means we should have more freedom in customizing the game to fit our preferences. I'm not a programmer and have never developed a game, but they're just 2D blocks with text and images in them, so I don't see how that would be that difficult to implement.

However if that's too much manpower to devote to the UI, then the quickest solution that'll most likely make most people happy is just having an option to switch between the classic CoH 1 setup and the new CoH 2 one. Would that take more than like 1-2 man hours? It also can't possibly make anyone angry... it will only benefit everyone.

Also, I find it really disappointing that I can't customize my hotkeys within the game. It's standard for basically any other game type to have remappable keys, so I don't see why this is not a feature for this game as well. We shouldn't have to use some external script like AutoHotkey for this!!! Even Doom had remappable keys if I remember correctly, and that game came out like 20 years ago.

To TychoCelchuuu:

Hahahahaha nice one! Someone should get Quinn Duffy on the line quick!

I just don't understand why you guys at Relic are so adamant on keeping one specific UI format for everyone.

The ideal fix for this would be to simply make the UI modular so people can move stuff around however they feel like it. This is a PC game after all, which means we should have more freedom in customizing the game to fit our preferences. I'm not a programmer and have never developed a game, but they're just 2D blocks with text and images in them, so I don't see how that would be that difficult to implement.

However if that's too much manpower to devote to the UI, then the quickest solution that'll most likely make most people happy is just having an option to switch between the classic CoH 1 setup and the new CoH 2 one. Would that take more than like 1-2 man hours? It also can't possibly make anyone angry... it will only benefit everyone.

Also, I find it really disappointing that I can't customize my hotkeys within the game. It's standard for basically any other game type to have remappable keys, so I don't see why this is not a feature for this game as well. We shouldn't have to use some external script like AutoHotkey for this!!! Even Doom had remappable keys if I remember correctly, and that game came out like 20 years ago.

indeed.
the whole is blows. I tried a few times and i always ended up alt+f4, soner or later. I know im too old, but this game -even its called coh2- way too far being a good second part of the vCOH.
No more money from me. HF

Thanks for making your pictures available on that imgur account by the way - I used your CoH 2 UI picture to make a mockup of what I think would be my ideal interface. Some stuff is probably controversial (like moving the VPs and the global unit control) but I think the rest is an improvement.

Main UI (notice how the main bar is compacted, the resources are vertical, the VPs and global unit control are moved, and the minimap controls are compacted):
Show Spoiler

UI showing a unit/unit upgrade being hovered over (a T-34 in this case) (notice how it replaces the stuff in the main bar while you hover, because you'll be looking at it anyways so you can't be looking at the main bar too, and also notice how it lines up the resources so you can still compare costs):
Show Spoiler

UI with notifications + blizzard timer (notice how they don't take up side on the left of the screen, so all the UI elements stay at the bottom where they cover up the least amount of screen real estate and where your mouse will already be if you're clicking on the buttons on the right):
Show Spoiler

UI with hovering over doctrines (notice how I was too lazy to do a shitty Photoshop to show how this would look, but again the idea is that if you are hovering over something in order to read it, you won't be reading anything else so it makes sense to cover up the main bar):
Show Spoiler

Very very strange sense of esthetics. Weird almost. Customizable UI maybe would be an answer for you. If u put some much efort to do those pictures it means that this UI realy bother u. I can understand your frustration but orizontal alining is a more ergonomical choice.

I don't think vertical alignment is a "very very strange sense of aesthetics." I mean, the original Company of Heroes did it and nobody complained...

Great video! Thank you for putting this together. Two things you missed:

1) The task-bar (big space with unit text displayed) is meant to be an isolated /clean place for you to view all unit icons in a multi-selection.

2) The Global Unit Control in the top right of the HUD can be hidden using the arrow to the left of each icon row

You totally nailed the horizontal resource layout.

Great work

Rob (UI lead)

Thanks for posting here Rob! And #2 is a hot tip, I never noticed that arrow. Being able to close and open aspects of the UI is very cool! Can we have one of those little arrows for the new replay control box in the bottom right too? It really gets in the way during a broadcast or livestream.

Are there plans to make an obs mode for the UI? What blizzard has done with the HoTS replay and obs mode view for streamers is fantastic:



It has all the information that fans want to see (resources of both players at once is particularly important), with much more main window viewing area than the standard UI view.

Is anything like this in the works for COH2?

I don't think Blizzard did that, did they? They just made it so that dedicated fans could mod the game. This is pretty cool because fans can usually do a pretty good job because they know what they want (I for one can name some stuff I'd like to change about the CoH 2 interface...). But unfortunately this stuff costs money to implement and given that Relic doesn't even have the resources to let us set our own custom hotkeys, I doubt they will let us modify the interface.

People have done some really cool stuff, too (although GameHeart is done via a custom map rather than just the Blizzard UI mod tools):

I don't what you mean exactly by whether or not Blizzard "did it". It's a standard feature that is implemented in HotS and no longer has anything to do with a mod.

Ah, my mistake. I've seen observer UIs similar to that that people modded in with the tools Blizzard provided. Well in any case Blizzard is making Relic look even worse then! Step up your game Relic!

well, tbh, since we won't get obs mode or a good replay viewer at release, we should rather ask what their ideas for obs mode/replays are, what is planned etc. and then comment on that. given relics information policy though, the chances for that happening are pretty much 0.

i don't quite get that though, instead of saying "we have obs mode planned for post release", you could just add "... with the following features: ..." (using the MoSCoW-Method)

people can then see what is coming and maybe comment on features that might have been forgotten.

in a perfect world...

I think the horizontal layout of resources is unintuitive. I also think the minimap being hotkeyed to numpad 0 makes absolutely no sense. Have we ever received a straight answer on WHY we can't have customizable hotkeys?

I'm left-handed so hotkey customization is a sensitive subject for me.

Agreed that all hotkeys should be customizable. I couldn't think of an easier thing to code. This was another feature that I expected for coh2 without ever imagining that we would have to beg for it.

well... easy to code when you think of it when you start coding :-P

like with most features:
even when you don't plan on implementing it right away, if you got it on your "To Do-List", you will code the rest of the game accordingly. If you don't, that might make it a helluva lot harder to implement it later on.

well... easy to code when you think of it when you start coding :-P

like with most features:
even when you don't plan on implementing it right away, if you got it on your "To Do-List", you will code the rest of the game accordingly. If you don't, that might make it a helluva lot harder to implement it later on.

This.
Beeing a software-developer myself i could laugh all the time people throw out a "that has to be easy to code" statement, because they clearly don't know how much of an issue new features can be, depending on if you had them in mind or not.
Changing the UI is probably pretty easy for them (because exchanging visuals is not that big of a deal), but changing it so everyone can have their own interface can be a real pain if it wasn't planned to be that way.

I'm a coder. This website you're using? Yeah I helped code it.

Changing a hotkey from "T" to "R" or a custom key picked by the user couldn't be easier, no matter how you slice it. But thx for portraying me to be some kinda coder n00b!

I'm a coder. This website you're using? Yeah I helped code it.

Changing a hotkey from "T" to "R" or a custom key picked by the user couldn't be easier, no matter how you slice it. But thx for portraying me to be some kinda coder n00b!

i code for a living... changing a hotkey is very, very, VERY different from making it customizable. changing it in pre-written code that was not written to incorporate that is even more difficult than it would be when writing new code.

just compare coh's way of recording and playing replays to sc2's way. i can tell you i wouldn't want to be the person who was to rewrite that code... and if i was, i would probably start from scratch rather than using the existing code.

implementing customizable hotkeys IS a piece of cake if you compare it to writing a piece of software like, say AutoHotKey... still, it's not as easy as you probably think it is.

I'm a coder. This website you're using? Yeah I helped code it.

Changing a hotkey from "T" to "R" or a custom key picked by the user couldn't be easier, no matter how you slice it. But thx for portraying me to be some kinda coder n00b!

It is? Really?
Changing a hotekey in code is easy, yes, because if you don't have them customizable you basically can "hard-code" the key.
As soon as you have customizable keys you have to save a file, check what is saved, give the right parameters to the right listener, have to account for dublicated or overlapping keys, have to write an interface, account for the DAU, test all that stuff (ofc)etc.

while it is not rocket science, it still is work and time they probably rather put into something else.

And, pls, while i know coding a website can be a pain in the ass at times, it is noway near the same as coding a game

It is? Really?
Changing a hotekey in code is easy, yes, because if you don't have them customizable you basically can "hard-code" the key.
As soon as you have customizable keys you have to save a file, check what is saved, give the right parameters to the right listener, have to account for dublicated or overlapping keys, have to write an interface, account for the DAU, test all that stuff (ofc)etc.

while it is not rocket science, it still is work and time they probably rather put into something else.

And, pls, while i know coding a website can be a pain in the ass at times, it is noway near the same as coding a game

Is this discussion really going in this direction?
"Re-mappable keys are hard and the developers' efforts are best spent elsewhere?"

Firstly, if they're so crunched on time getting this game finished that they can't even work on something so simple to implement like re-mappable keys compared to everything else that they're coding in the game, then that's a fail right there.

Secondly, I want to emphasize again that being able to re-map keys to the individual user's preferences is a standard feature in PC games and has been for a very long time. Almost every other game has this. Hell even some SNES and Genesis games had re-mappable buttons if I recall.

And lastly, if they had designed this game without even thinking about the possibility of potentially having this "novel" feature called "re-mappable keys", and thus is so hard to implement later, then that's an even harder fail.

Is this discussion really going in this direction?
"Re-mappable keys are hard and the developers' efforts are best spent elsewhere?"

Firstly, if they're so crunched on time getting this game finished that they can't even work on something so simple to implement like re-mappable keys compared to everything else that they're coding in the game, then that's a fail right there.

Secondly, I want to emphasize again that being able to re-map keys to the individual user's preferences is a standard feature in PC games and has been for a very long time. Almost every other game has this. Hell even some SNES and Genesis games had re-mappable buttons if I recall.

And lastly, if they had designed this game without even thinking about the possibility of potentially having this "novel" feature called "re-mappable keys", and thus is so hard to implement later, then that's an even harder fail.

In no way i said i don't want customizable keys to happen or they shouldn't do it.
I just said people should not talk down on the effort it takes to implement them.

But yes, this close to release there is more important stuff to do than customizable keys. Doesn't mean they can't add them later or that i think it wasn't fail that it is not here already. All i am saying is that people tend to make things sound easier to do than they are in reality.