Guns Interface Mockups

What it says on the tin: interface mockups for Guns.

Annotation marks

 * 1) The status panel continuously gives you an idea of your current systems status -- i.e. how damaged everything is, how effectively is everything being cooled, and (in the case of weapons) how long until it will fire again. Here's a more zoomed-in version.
 * 2) The large bar at the top of the modules display represents your hull integrity. In our example, Narc's tank has been shot at a couple of times, and so his hull has taken some damage. The bar (like most) changes color in a green-yellow-red progression as it drops from 100% towards 0%.
 * 3) The smaller bars under each module (in this case, under the starboard treads) show that module's integrity and coolant effectiveness. The example starboard treads are undamaged, but the port-side treads were lightly hit, as was the coolant system itself. The example weapon (some kind of microwave projector?) was heavily damaged (making it take longer to reload and making its coolant system less effective).
 * 4) At the center of the screen is the current player (Narc). This is obviously not a final look for a tank.
 * 5) The arrow here is showing Narc's current direction of movement (as it does for EzTarget at the top-right of the image). It may make sense to include these arrows (except less poorly drawn) in the game, as aids to the player.
 * 6) This one's interesting: you're seeing the firing cone of the single weapon aboard Narc's tank. This firing cone gets larger when the tank is in motion and when the target cursor is moved (especially if moved from one side of the tank to the other), and smaller over time as the turret the weapon is mounted on manages to turn to the required bearing to fire. In this example, Narc is moving and the target is about 90 degrees off the axis of movement, so the visible firing cone is about the best that can be managed.
 * 7) The targeting cursor. When using a controller, the target cursor is always rotating at a fixed radius from the center of the screen (until the R-stick is released, at which point it turns semitransparent).
 * 8) A target! In this example, EzTarget. I think it can be taken as understood that he shot us earlier, and scored a damn good hit on our weapon.

Obvious problems (and possible solutions)

 * The status panel could get pretty damn cluttery. This example has an extremely simple tank, and it's already fairly difficult to pick things out. On the other hand, there isn't usually much you can do about module damage during a fierce fight, and the great big HP bar at the top is a decent idea of how much damage you've taken.
 * Possibly helpful would be to put another HP bar in the center, this one being the sum of hull HP + module HP.
 * The status panel might get in the way.
 * Mitigating this, the status panel tries to get out of the way of the targeting cursor (so if you mouse over it or tilt the right stick in its direction, it will swap to the other side of the screen; sort of like Chrome or Firefox's current activity bars ("Waiting for wiki.narc.ro..."))
 * It's actually not terrible to have a blind spot a player needs to manage. It's a little meta-gamey, but it allows a clever (or lucky) opponent to try to hide under a player's status panel and get a shot in before being noticed... unless the player already moved it to the other side.
 * "STATUS" text is probably unnecessary; it should be fairly obvious that you're being shown the state of your tank.
 * Status bars are unexplained; how does a player know what those three bars under his weapons mean?
 * Direction arrows might be distracting
 * Make them optional. Battles are expected to be fast and brutal, so anything that reduces cognitive load is good, but some players would almost certainly prefer to have the extra GUI elements off.

Annotation marks

 * 1) The first situation shows either a turret-mounted weapon's firing cone after both cursor and tank facing have been steady for a time, or else a fixed-mount weapon's firing cone with the cursor inside that cone. This is the optimal firing situation, and shots are practically guaranteed to pass through the spot the cursor's pointing at, and the green outline for the firing cone reflects this.
 * 2) In the second situation, the cursor has just moved (same effect would've occurred if the tank had changed facing). It's impossible to hit where the cursor is pointing, so the red outline reflects that. If the weapon is fixed-mount, the red firing cone will very soon fade out. If the weapon is turret-mounted, the next two situations will happen:
 * 3) Here the turret has just begun moving to make its gun face the cursor. The orange color shows the turret is rotating in the correct direction, but isn't including the cursor yet. The wide firing cone is also an accuracy indicator: a shot fired now might hit anywhere in that cone.
 * 4) Finally, the turret has managed to bring the gun around far enough that it *might* hit where the target cursor is pointing, however it's not quite steady yet. Over time, the firing cone will get narrower and turn greener, but it's possible to fire right now.