9:10pm EST - Another update just hit the dev branch. Our dev server is updated and the new UI is officially live on development! Here's some shots of the various changes. Couple notes:

Disregard the metabolism notices stuck on the right, those are not hooked up fully yet.
Chat is smaller than in our sneak peek shots (thank you, Garry!)
It is really responsive!
The item icon isn't showing up when dragging things out of the hot bar so it can feel like it doesn't work. Don't worry, it is.

6:00pm EST - Garry has merged the UI Reboot to main a little while ago. Doesn't appear to have gone live on the development branch yet. Will keep you up to date.

12:10am EST - Several hours ago, Garry gave me some new glimpses of the UI Reboot. Not only has the design is improved, the UI is more responsive than ever. You can look forward to experiencing this for yourself within the next day or two on the development branch. In the mean time, here is a summary of what’s new (keep in mind, this is all a work in progress and nothing is finalized).

Overall design

This is an overhaul to every user experience throughout the entire game. A new menu system, new inventory view, even the chat has been completely redone. Beyond just aesthetics, this new UI stands to shift gameplay. Because it runs on Unity UI, responsiveness is better than ever. Everything is nice and snappy, no more lag when dragging and dropping.

Inventory view

The inventory view has shifted drastically, now lighter and more open:

Attire slots

The slots for player attire have gone from a horizontal to a vertical alignment. This is a welcomed change as it shortens the drag distance from your inventory slots.

Item selection

In the current UI system, you see item details when you hover over a specific items icon. The UI reboot mixes this up, adding a clicking action which brings up the item details, description, and actions.

Inventory slots

You may have noticed the inventory looks a bit different. That is because there are 8 less in this design. I've yet to hear Garry's thoughts on this, but before you grab your pitchforks, remember none of this is finalized.

Splitting stacks

As of now, it is still unclear how splitting stacks will work. There have been some great ideas for this set forth by the community. Given the new item selection paradigm, I think some form of slider in the item details view would provide a workable splitting solution (maybe even buttons for ½, ⅓, ¼ splits).

Edit: Garry added 2 commits recently which shed more light on how stacking will work: Center click will drag half the stack, right click will grab 1 item from the stack.

Chat

The chat is also entirely new. Each chat message now has the authors steam avatar along with a more spacious, two line layout. Seems to me, chat is already a cluster fuck (especially with 200 people). I don't think this new layout is going to de-fuck that situation in any way. That said, does seem more ascetically pleasing than the current system.

Metabolism

From what I’ve gathered, the visuals for health and hunger are purely placeholders at the moment. I’m glad, the circular radial percentage shit doesn’t seem like a good match for a health meter. Give me a bar and a number over that any day of the week.

Friends?

There are 3 placeholder icons on the bottom left of the screen under the chat. Their purpose is currently unknown. Is it to show which friends you have in your server? Maybe showing people in close proximity (if using local chat)? Your guess is a good as mine. This is all a work in progress, they may not even be in the final build.

Video

In conclusion, here is a short video of the UI Reboot in action: