v1.6.5 - ingame HUD & menu changes

[Mineral]

With v1.6.5 we did a big update to the ingame HUD and menus. These changes seem to have caused some confusion among players and as such we want to give a more in depth look at what changed.

First off we have the menu changes. These involve changes to the map such as opening it faster, removing the border and making the map in the squad menu opaque. Further we reorganized parts of the menu and updated textures to a more modern design. The original menu still stemmed back from the original Battlefield 2 menu and started to look rather dated. Additionally the reorganization of buttons and adding confirmation dialogues to destructive actions were made to decrease the chance of accidents and make the menus more accessible for new players. As we fix the last issues that slipped into 1.6.5 menus, we are also open for suggestions on how to further improve the menus.

The second and probably bigger change was the introduction of widescreen support for the ingame HUD. Battlefield 2 got created in an age when monitors were ginormous and more importantly the screens were square. As such the entire game did not get designed for modern widescreen monitors. In fact it took DICE 8 years to implement some sort of widescreen support and that only involved the 3d game scene. Further it only added support for 16:9 screens. In 1.6.4 we fixed that and added better support for even wider screens, but the HUD was still left in the ancient state of 2005. These limitations resulted in a HUD designed for 4:3 aspect ratios to be stretched across 16:9 and wider screens. As a result everything became 133% (on 16:9, 175% on 21:9) as wide as it should be. This resulted in circles becoming ovals, squares becoming rectangles, vertical lines becoming thicker than horizontal as well as things becoming more blurry than they should.

Thanks to the findings of Ekiso from the Forgotten Hope 2 team we were finally able to fix this in v1.6.5 and add full support for widescreens into PR. With this fix everything is now just as wide as it should be and the individual pieces of the HUD look as they were always meant to look. We understand that this is a big change for everyone who spent years looking at the old HUD.

Please see the comparisions below to see the clear difference between the old and new. We hope this highlight makes things a little bit more clear, if you have any further feedback or questions please use our feedback forum.

Comparison between old and new


Comparison between old and new



Comparison between old and new



Comparison between old and new

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[The_Turkish_Moose]

Is it out of the question to update some of the UI elements to be similar sizes to it's old 4:3 stretched version? I'm not saying stretch the actually image again, but I mean, make the compass at the bottom of the screen longer, it's too small now imo. Personally I think the comm. rose looked better more stretched out (excluding the icons - I'm talker about wider boxes and text).

One of my biggest annoyances is with the Commander screen. It's even smaller now with larger black bars. This over everything with the new UI needs addressing. The stretched UI in the commander UAV screen meant I could see more before. Now my view from the UAV is much more limited.

Thanks for addressing the community Mineral about the new UI.

[Michael Z Freeman]

This was one the most needed quality of life improvements and I can't see why it would confuse anyone. I still get confused by some of the in game functions, but never the GUI/HUD.

[Mats391]

Is it out of the question to update some of the UI elements to be similar sizes to it's old 4:3 stretched version? I'm not saying stretch the actually image again, but I mean, make the compass at the bottom of the screen longer, it's too small now imo. Personally I think the comm. rose looked better more stretched out (excluding the icons - I'm talker about wider boxes and text).

Just to make it clear, the stretched compass showed the same range as the new one. It also was just as accurate. Saying that, we can adjust the size of pretty much everything with only few limitations. Currently buttons do not work in the extended space and things like the squad list have a hardcoded width, but even these are potentially changeable by us, just require more work

[robert357]

I also think wider compass was better.

[Mats391]

I also think wider compass was better.

Can you expand on how it should be wider? We could make it show a wider range or edit the texture to increase spacing between the lines. If we do the later, we would have to adjust width of the compass accordingly to still show same range. That way it would become the same as old stretched version, just hopefully less blurry

[robert357]

As long it would looks similar to the old stretched compass I will be happy. If possible it can be combination of both? A little wider range and more spacing between.

[The_Turkish_Moose]

Can you expand on how it should be wider? We could make it show a wider range or edit the texture to increase spacing between the lines. If we do the later, we would have to adjust width of the compass accordingly to still show same range. That way it would become the same as old stretched version, just hopefully less blurry

Increased spacing is what I'm talking about. That would be my preference. If it's too much work then I'd rather you focus on more important things.

Can any improvements be made to the Commander screen? The black bars aren't very nice and the I hope the UAV screen becomes larger. The view from the UAV was actually better when stretched.

[BlackburnUTG]

So many times I accidentally switched teams when tried to click on "Squads".
Can those buttons be a little bit further?

[LORD-SATAN]

Opening the map with TAB faster was what we needed, as squad leaders. Thanks!

[Mats391]

As long it would looks similar to the old stretched compass I will be happy. If possible it can be combination of both? A little wider range and more spacing between.

Testing wider compass:

[The_Turkish_Moose]

Testing wider compass:

Yeah that looks very nice. The increased spacing makes it easier to read and accurately relay directions to the squad. I feel like this will also stop confusing people who think the camera FOV has changed

[robert357]

Yeah! This looks much better! Very nice.

[_Gabo]

Testing wider compass:

Now that the compass has been resized it would be more pleasant if it were redone because its quality is not very good, it is just a matter of aesthetics.

[Mats391]

Now that the compass has been resized it would be more pleasant if it were redone because its quality is not very good, it is just a matter of aesthetics.

Yes, updating textures to be higher resolution (super sampling) would be ideal, but also tons of work. If you are up for it, feel free to start with the compass

[Tomasinost]

Bring back old hud to actually make pr better.

[spacemarine42]

I am 100% on board with the new aspect ratio, it had seriously bugged me for years. Measuring distances is going to be a lot easier now.

That said, I definitely preferred the more complex old textures for HUD elements like the select squad menu, which had beveling/borders/shadows, as opposed to the current textures which are completely smooth. The new HUD textures seem to have lost some of the special character that PR has. If it's possible to change the old HUD elements like the "switch team" and "squad"/"kit" buttons back to correct-aspect-ratio versions of the old textures, then that would be great!