• snowsuit2654@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    180·
    6 天前

    I feel like some of the old cluttered WoW UIs might be an example of maximalism, by trying to show as much information as possible. altr

    • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1041·
      6 天前

      Eve players: noooo… It’s not just a spreadsheet

      Veteran WoW players: hmm… I can still see the actual gameplay, lemme add another stat display

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        273·
        6 天前

        The standards we used to put up with…

        Back when games were measured by how enjoyable they were rather than a little number in the corner.

          • zikzak025@lemmy.worldEnglish
            9·
            6 天前

            It was a different time, the novelty of the experience made up for the lower frame rate. A stable 30fps used to be considered good, and 15fps was fine for a game like WoW which didn’t really need to rely on buttery smooth gameplay.

            The internet was also just a lot slower back then, too, so in one sense the framerate only needed to be as good as your ping, essentially.

    • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      6 天前

      This is what I would actually consider maximalist UI. OP’s is neither minimal or maximal, it’s just overstylized UI.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 天前

          Not sure. I used Healbot, which looks similar to what’s on screen, but it’s been so long I have no idea if it can be configured to look like that.

      • Silicon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 天前

        I’m curious to know what it is like these days but not enough to give blizzard more money anymore.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          5 天前

          Oh WarCraft stopped being a passion project a long time ago - Blizzard’s enshittification is pretty rampant.

          If you get the itch to play WoW, 100% do so on a private server set to one of the earlier expansions.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      6 天前

      Lol I had all of those and then some but I also had enough resolution/UI scale that it was all tucked to the sides (other than the nice looking hp/mana bars that framed the middle of the screen).

      Did the people who stood in fire do so because they couldn’t even see what they were or weren’t standing in? Should guilds have done fund raising to buy better GPUs and monitors to best help progression? Thinking back to when I had a hand in guild leadership, it didn’t even occur to me to base any recruitment or raiding roster on PC specs, but it seems so obvious now in hindsight. Too bad I can’t go back.

    • alsimoneau@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      4 天前

      That’s not so bad. I have more than this, but with a larger screen you have more space.

      So this is a healer. They barely need to see anything anyways.

  • ravelin@slrpnk.netEnglish
    28·
    5 天前

    There was this while concept at the time that digital interfaces should mirror familiar physical interfaces in order to be easily understood by users, and it’s fascinating and honestly not without value.

    • Tuuktuuk@nord.pubEnglish
      33·
      6 天前

      That is probably what the image in the post is about, really.

      It’s supposed to make the program more accessible for those who are not used to the concept of computer programs at all.

      • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
        121·
        6 天前

        It will come back when all the big players are only offering cloud services, to ensure normies don’t demand that computing be allowed in the hands of everyone again. “It’s so easy to use! Why couldn’t those old PC things get it right? God those were terrible, I’m so glad we subscribe to ChatGPT for $80 a month, and those scary Muslim leftists get ion-cannoned when they have conversations about how they want life to be better instantly now.”

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 天前

      Don’t please.

      I remember these UIs and learning after many hours that one of the elements was clickable.

      This is horrible design from a usability standpoint.

    • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
      38·
      6 天前

      You say that, but that’s what Apple has been doing with Liquid Glass, and tons of people hate it, myself included

  • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    65·
    6 天前

    And you just know the globe rotates when you hover over Habitats, and the drawers pull out when you hover over those

    • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      51·
      6 天前

      I had this as a kid. It absolutely did all of those things, and the intro cutscene showed this menu as just one nook in a giant museum with other things to see. I had a few of their other games as well.

      I can all but guarantee that a lot of the curiosity and enthusiasm for learning that I had as a kid was directly thanks to these edutainment games. Compared to my overwhelming adult apathy it really stands out.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
      6·
      6 天前

      And a little lizard runs across the bottom every once in a while! I had a Czech version, very painstakingly localized (but nothing beat The Way Things Work).

    • stray@pawb.socialEnglish
      5·
      5 天前

      Seeing this helps me understand older sci-fi better, the ones where people access the computer as a virtual reality office which leads to other things. It makes sense that the authors would assume VR as the natural progression of a UI like this.

      It seems like when personal computers were new they tried to replicate the familiar to ease new users in, but now that we’re all very used to them we’ve abandoned the concept almost entirely. I feel like we might be in the beginning of a trend back to it though, now that our internet connections and graphical abilities are more up to the task.

  • oyo@lemmy.zipEnglish
    17·
    5 天前

    Is there a Linux distro or program that would allow me to do this to my desktop?

        • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websiteEnglish
          1·
          4 天前

          Having trouble finding it but I swear my PNY Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (I think?) circa 2003 came with a Linux 3D desktop/launcher software that sounds like this. (X11 based I guess.)

          Not sure if it was bundled with the card, came with the Nvidia drivers, or what…but it worked just fine with Linux at the time (probably Slackware, not positive what I was running then).

  • sonofearth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    5 天前

    TBH I prefer the modern minimal UIs. It is easy to understand. Although I don’t mind having an option.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2314·
      6 天前

      Unless someone is incapable of reading, these labels are not color coded and listed under unique button structures to help them stand out. What part of this is inaccessible?

      • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
        326·
        6 天前

        Yes, people who can’t read because they are blind would have accessibility issues…

        It is pretty much guaranteed that the images did not have alt text for screen readers and were not set up to be tabbed through for someone who needs to use a keyboard and not a mouse because of dexterity issues. Then there is the problem that there isn’t a lot of contrast, the text is angled, it isn’t clear what is clickable and what isn’t, and a bunch of other stuff that are issues for people well beyond colorblindness.

        While it could technically be created in a way for an alternate accessible way to interact they never really were. It takes a ton of work to make anything other than plain text accessible, and even that takes more work than just typing. It takes exponentially more work with something like this.

        Nobody bothered to take that time unless they were sued. I am currently getting a state agency through a complete website redesign because we could not feasible make the old one accessible, and that is only happening because we were sued as a state agency is obligated to make their site accessible. The first things to go was shit like this.

        • RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyzEnglish
          1·
          5 天前

          I’ve been using this style of UI literally yesterday on a WinXP machine and every time you hovered the cursor over a button it played back what the button does, and some extra information. But yeah, mouse-only.

          • Strider@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            5 天前

            And that’s the fucking nightmare we seem to have at every web service now. Browsing is nigh impossible because everything will jump your cursor and autoplay.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        199·
        6 天前

        5 downvotes in 7 minutes for a question? Smells like alt account brigading.

        Anyway, especially with more modern accessibility tools and frameworks, why can’t a design like in the OP be accessible?

        • three@lemmy.zipEnglish
          421·
          6 天前

          Lots of wheelchairs around here that assume every one here knows about them.

          • Tuuktuuk@nord.pubEnglish
            82·
            6 天前

            Could you please elaborate on what you meant with this comment?

            • three@lemmy.zipEnglish
              38·
              6 天前

              You replied to the wrong comment, there’s no question mark in mine.

              • Tuuktuuk@nord.pubEnglish
                51·
                6 天前

                No, but I did, for some reason, write “question” where I should have written comment. I’ll go edit the comment now so that you will be able to reply to it!

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      6 天前

      It could still be done in an accessible way. Back when this style was popular though, accessibility on the web hadn’t advanced much. Now we have all kinds of tools to help

      • stray@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        5 天前

        I’ve watched a blind person play FF14. Making a fun-looking static UI accessible is a piece of cake compared to that.