Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field

[Hythlodaeus]

I hope you take no offense 54x, but I made another edit based on your latest changes. First I better explain what I thought it was wrong with your latest mockup. I found it easier to make my points directly on the image.



(Accidentally saved in jpeg, so sorry for the low quality)

Either way, after taking a good look at it, I feel the current stats should be plainly visible, hence why we should keep the original stats column. I do like your base stats at the bottom of each bar (reinforces the idea of base value, and the faded colour conveys the notion that these "belong to the past" and are not so important anymore), though, so I think that's a keeper. Additionally instead of having the current stats at the end of each bar, why not showing the value change instead? Also, at this point, I believe the little pencil icon is now useless because name changing can be handled at the customize menu.

Based on these, here's my latest mockup:



Although it reverts back a little to the original, I feel it conveys information more effectively, and adds just the right bits of additional data in a simple and non-busy way. Positioning the scrolling arrows back at the top also means the player doesn't need to move around between scrolling profiles, changing the name, and closing the menu.

[Volutar]

I like this last one better.

[54x]

Of course I don't take offense.

The edit text button is to prompt people that they can rename the soldier, not to customise appearance. Ideally that button should be in any area that is clickable for an editable name, for instance next to the craft name in the craft screen, or the base name. I definitely think it should remain there in terms of indicating how to use the interface, as I never discovered that you could edit names when I played the original game, back before I even had internet access. Perhaps there should be a picture-based customise button too? If it looks silly we can change the customise button, when it's ready to go in, back to being text-based.

Your other points are well-taken, however. I had considered it seemed natural that changing the picture would leave the screen intact but scroll the soldier being referenced, and I dislike interfaces where scrolling buttons are separated from each other by too much distance, but I could go either way on the matter, especially seeing we should be getting either arrow keys or tab and shift-tab to switch soldiers in the long run anyway. However as the number of characters is going to need to be limited to something small enough to fit the top frame, I definitely think that the scrolling buttons shouldn't be up there.

I really like that you added back in the total column and changed the figure to the right to be the lifetime improvement of a stat. That's pretty awesome. So, all in all, a small counterproposal:

Edit: Ah, sorry, you edited in your explanation for moving the arrows up since I last viewed the thread. I considered putting them directly next to each other as well, but it looks very crowded if we do it the easy way and move everything to the left. What might look good though is playing some small amount of musical chairs with the arrows and the picture, which would give us a nice centralised location for it, instead of slightly offset from the right-hand edge. (and thus v3 becomes v4, lol)

[Hythlodaeus]

I really like that you added back in the total column and changed the figure to the right to be the lifetime improvement of a stat. That's pretty awesome.

Well, to be fair, I wasn't thinking of a lifetime sum of stat improvements, but rather temporary ones. As in, how much it has grown since the end of the last mission. This would show exactly how much exp the soldier has earned after each mission and avoids overly long numbers crowding the graph (image what would be having several +150-ish in every character in a later game phase. Not exactly visually appealing).


EDIT:

Sorry. Just seen your edit. Deleted half of this post in consequence of it. I really like it as it is now (the second picture). Very clever way to reorganize the screen, I must admit. I totally subscribe for that version, as even the screen looks very well balanced right now.

EDIT 2:

And here's a slightly retouched version of mine. I get the feeling the portrait frame looks a bit better when separated. Also added a slight black edge around the picture to stop the light brown from the coveralls to merge with the light purple and gray from the frame. What do you folks think?

[moriarty]

I like draft #4, too. Putting the character portrait in the middle balances the screen as well as emphasizing the soldier as a person, so we can grow attached to them very nice.

EDIT: Hythlodaeus, yes, I agree, that's even better.

[Hythlodaeus]

A thinner portrait frame isn't bad looking either, but unfortunately I lack the colouring skills to make it really stand out, although I think I nailed a pretty nice shape. 54x, would you like you take a stab a it? I also moved everything right to the portrait a few pixels to the right, and squashed the armor and customize buttons just a little together, just so I could line up the portrait edge with the graph's 0 number perfectly, in order to get a nice symmetry.

[luke83]

Wow, you guys have been busy, its looking really good, not sure if i prefer the thick or thin picture frame at this point, i would honestly be happy with either 

[Daiky]

And once we have a higher resolution you can add things like "country of origin", "years in xcom duty", "background story",...

[Warboy1982]

@Daiky surely you mean hours or days?

[pmprog]

Or minutes if you're in my LP

[luke83]

Or minutes if you're in my LP

Don't feel to bad , i played a Crashed UFO on a Farm map last week, i cleared all the map except within the UFO without any troubles and because i am to Lazy to move all the troops to the UFO door , i tohugh sure i will be able to finish it with 2 troopers , sent them in , the alien did a sneak attack out of the door and killed both. SO i started sending all my troops over to finish him off, needles to say i finished the level with 2 troops and that last Alien ended up with 6 kills  

 I really want Group selections like Apocalypse

[54x]

A thinner portrait frame isn't bad looking either, but unfortunately I lack the colouring skills to make it really stand out, although I think I nailed a pretty nice shape. 54x, would you like you take a stab a it? I also moved everything right to the portrait a few pixels to the right, and squashed the armor and customize buttons just a little together, just so I could line up the portrait edge with the graph's 0 number perfectly, in order to get a nice symmetry.

Sure, absolutely. The thinner frame will let us give you your 1px border while keeping the headshots at a pretty logical 32x32 size. If you're keen on having larger corners, we can go with something like this:

[Hythlodaeus]

Hmm... don't get me wrong, but I still prefer my version on this one. I like to have it lined up with the 0 so it gives the illusion of perfectly splitting the screen in two logical parts. I also didn't want to break the continuity of the name box, hence why I separated the portrait and coloured it darker. I just can't seem to find a way to emboss the frame properly though. I also prefer the rectangular shape to the 32x32. Feels more like a real photo.

[54x]

Hmm... don't get me wrong, but I still prefer my version on this one. I like to have it lined up with the 0 so it gives the illusion of perfectly splitting the screen in two logical parts. I also didn't want to break the continuity of the name box, hence why I separated the portrait and coloured it darker. I just can't seem to find a way to emboss the frame properly though. I also prefer the rectangular shape to the 32x32. Feels more like a real photo.

Sure we can do both those. The 32x32 portriats will have about 5 pixels of clearance with the male dreads hairstyle, (which I expect to be the largest, as it comes in equal to the male flat top hair style) so we can actually squish them down if we want a rectangular shape instead of just the illusion of one. I've removed the different shading for the top border, so it looks unbroken, but kept the bolded corners so that it looks like we've got a slightly rounded photo area. I've removed all but 1px of clearance from the top, so we have an actual rectangular photo, and bumped down the incapacitation text (ie. psi training, wounded, etc...) so that if it were flicked to the left it would sit nicely between the photo and the graph.

[Hythlodaeus]

I guess we will have to let the people decide on this one, because I still favour my version of the portrait at this point . Smoothed the corners on the portrait's edge, and added a Country field on the right side of the screen, while moving the Kills count to the same line of the Missions number.