The User Interface of The Old Republic Explained

A few days ago we wrote a small post about what we know so far about the User interface of Star Wars: The old republic. Little did we know that BioWare will post a major update to the official blog of SWTOR, with new details on how the interface of the upcoming MMO has evolved during development.

This new essay, penned by lead UI artist Michael Voigt, delves into how the dream-weavers at BioWare Austin strived to keep screen clutter to a minimum.

We used the analogy of the cockpit of a steam locomotive compared to a modern sports car. The locomotive had indicators and dials jumbled in all corners of the cockpit and the sports car had a sleek driver dash containing all the necessary indicators in an organized layout…

Our game features beautiful scenic vistas and we wanted the user interface to complement those and not take away from them. The simplified sports car style silhouette gave a more letter-boxed effect and we felt this introduced less visual noise overall.

You can read the complete essay by clicking here.