This is looking very nice. I think it is a bit clustered so a proper layout might do you wonders, but for the most part I really like what you have here.

Seems kind of stressful, to me. Red is a color commonly associated with danger and urgency, which I don't think you should get while browsing a UI. I'd prefer cooler colors myself, greens and blues rather than red. That would also make it feel more "spacey" and less "bloody".

Riuthamus:
The current layout is clustered. There is a lot of information to be displayed or at least that the player needs to have access to. I think that the next real revision with have less shown and more ability for only what a player wants to focus on to be displayed on the screen. The Left and Right sides of the image were once in totally different windows, but with the increase in screen space the idea was to combo them. Still it make the screen look "busy" and somewhat confusing as to what is really important.

JTippetts:
I was torn between red or blue. Blue being the color for the Galactic Senate would have been nice, but I was out voted. The idea being to invoke danger and fear. This outside force is invading and it has changed the way the people in the game view the universe. Therefore, red seemed to be the most fitting. Still I am going to see if we can do a blue version for comparison.

Thank you both for your feedback.

I think if you use the extra whitespace padding some of the widgets on each panel and surrounding the entire window to instead enlarge one panel in the center of the window, it'll seem less cluttered.

Right now with every panel about equal in size, the user doesn't know where to put his focus, so it seems over cluttered. By putting one panel more towards the center and make it alot larger than the other panels (even if that one panel isn't important or even interactive), it grabs the attention, and I think it'd make the user feel less confused and overwhelmed, and from that starting point then they can 'explore' outward to the other widgets now that they have a clear starting point.

Here's an example of how you can still show the same amount of information, but visually make it seem less overwhelming:

[img]http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/4291/gui1q.png[/img]

Another thing is that the widgets around the side shouldn't have anything that drastically contrasts and steals eye focus from the central window. The huge white talent boxes currently contrast too much; once you get actual images in place, hopefully that contrast would be reduced.

I also agree with JTippets about the GUI color. You don't want to make the user feel [i]always[/i] in danger, or else when he's really in danger during the game, you can't heighten the tension much more... If he feels in danger constantly, once he encounters an enemy he can't feel too much [i]more [/i]in danger, which removes some of the impact of the enemy encounter. Once actually in combat, a shift to a red GUI might actually work very well.

Here's a quick example of a cooler (temperature wise) GUI you can show your team, along with JTippet's and my comments on the matter:

[img]http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/9102/gui2j.png[/img]
(Clumsy coloration, so I missed a some red spots that still shows through)

WOW! Okay I have been sold on the blue.
I have been working with a few fans from Reddit and have created a more streamlined version that I think everyone will like a lot.
Question, how did you make it blue so easily? Sorry not an artist.

I'm not an artist either. =)

I popped it open the entire screenshot in Paint Shop Pro, selected the red areas using flood-fill ("Magic Wand") selection, and did "[i]Adjust->Hue and Saturation->Colorize[/i]". Then I just slid the little color [url="http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/6281/pearlsbeforeswinephoto.gif"]doohicky[/url] until it looked halfway decent.

I'm sure Photoshop or Paint.NET (free) or GIMP (free) can do something similar equally easily... I even added that colorize feature to my 2D tile engine, so I'm sure any halfway-decent photo program can do it, even though MS Paint can't.

Ah. Thank you. I was thinking it would be something like that, but figured it would be best to ask. I am loading the newest version in this entry in a second. It is not blue yet. Still need to show the others.

Maybe the new version is stills suffering from widgets that are of similar size.

Awesome tips by Servant, hahahaha. Really liked the blue UI, I have seen your journal before, and the red UI really is too much, red may seem cool, but it gets tough to look into it too much. You can really add both options on the game!

Okay. I have posted a Blue version now to just get the right blue and that correct widget placement.

JTippetts: Thank you for suggesting the blue color shift.

Servant of the Lord: Thank you for showing off the blue.

Edit: Credit assigned to individuals.

(For posterity, JTippetts suggested the blue first)

I like the blue a lot, very nice!!!