Preview: The User Interface Refresh

[LeNitrous]

Hello all! Lately We've been teasing about the redesigns of Vignette. It took us a month as it had to start off from scratch again. However the main focus was to refactor the underlying code of many places so it can scale better in the future.

Whats New?

This redesign solves many problems both visually and technically that we've gathered in the initial version.

• The initial designs were an attempt at our own take of Microsoft's Fluent Design

  • While the reasoning is we were at the confines of our game framework, it didn't really appeal to us visually. We scrapped all of that and followed the design to a T. It looks close enough to a native modern Windows App within limitations.

• The first iteration only had a single side panel acting as the entire menu for the application. This will not fare well in the future once we've added more features along the way. It might as well introduce us more technical debt in the process.

  • Now, the side panel has evolved into a full screen menu giving more breathing room to everything residing within it.
  • Categorized settings much more clearly than ever with the option of searching for specific settings.
    

• Alot of users were confused on how to navigate through the app.

  • On starting, the first screen you'll see is now the main menu. You can hit Esc to switch to Scene View. You can do the same while in Scene View to go back to the main menu.

  • Hot keys such as these can be rebound in a later release.
    

  • On Scene View, you can now open the context menu by hitting your right mouse button anywhere to easily access specific parts of the main menu.
    

  • There's a new tab that wasn't present which is called "Knowledgebase". It is empty at the moment but it will be filled with guides on how to use Vignette. First party help is always better after all.

• And finally the Theme System. Nothing was wrong in the previous iteration, it just had to undergo a massive refactor so it could fare better.

  • You can basically drag and drop JSON files with no restarts required!
    

Notable Changes

• Backgrounds Simplified
  • Unfortunately this had to undergo the cutting room floor. It was deemed not worth the technical debt to implement a complex system for switching backgrounds when it can be achieved through OBS or similar programs. We can revisit it in the future but in no way it is a priority for the team at the moment.

That's it for the changelog! Keep in mind that Vignette is in a constant state of flux and this is considered to be a technical preview meaning only a minimal set of features are currently available in the application.

The release will be available at a later date. Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions down below!