Rethinking the UI

[luovahulluus]

I played the Frontier: First Encounters D3D version for a while, until I got sick of the terrible user interface. I figured I'd give Pioneer a go, and the UI seems to be just as terrible. I have some experience designing UIs, and I thought I could give you some ideas. I can't code at all, so I can't help you there.

After 30 min of playing the game (starting at Earth, 1920x1080 resolution, fullscreen), this is what I have so far.

1. There are buttons all over the place.
It's like having a menu, where the first level is on the lower left corner, second level is on the lower right corner, and the third level is on the higher left corner. If you think about the usability, it would make more sense if all of them would be near the same part of the screen.

2. Exploring the galaxy and trading
Let's say I want to explore the galaxy, buying stuff cheap and selling them in the next system.
- First I need to go to the Galaxy sector view
-> go to the system info
-> go to the economic info
-> try to memorize the exports
-> go to the Galaxy sector view
-> choose a planet at random
-> go to the system info
-> go to the economic info
-> try to remember what the exports were
-> (repeat)

I'm sure you can see the problem here... Couple of quick-to-implement(?) fixes:
- There should be a [local] button at the new destinations economic info tab, that would show the exports of the place I'm at currently. This would remove the need to memorize the exports.
- There should be a [trade] button in the galaxy sector view. It would automatically compare local exports to the imports of the systems in range, and color code them accordingly.

3. Where the hell is that place?
Bulleting board message headlines should specify how far the target of the delivery is.

4. There should be a tutorial of some sorts.
I've played FFE for quite a few hours, but still felt a little overwhelmed by all the possibilities and unsecure of what shoud I do first.


Some other notes:
- Hand weapons were both a major export and illegal at Sol. Seemed abit strange.
- When I went to the galaxy sector map for the second time, I didn't see any names on the planets in range. They were gone for good.
- When I alt-tab out an in of the program, all the texts are gone. They came back after I went to the start-up menu.
- When I accidentally fired a weapon in the upper atmosphere the police came and killed me. Seemed a little excessive.

[jpab]

I figured I'd give Pioneer a go

Welcome!

I have some experience designing UIs, and I thought I could give you some ideas. I can't code at all, so I can't help you there.

We're aware that Pioneer's UI needs a lot of improvement, and we already have a lot of ideas (of the sort you've listed) for how to do that. Unfortunately, ideas are cheap and code is expensive. I don't want to discourage you from thinking of and contributing ideas, but you need to be aware that there's a good chance that any particular idea has already been suggested before, and that the reason it hasn't been done (yet!) is because we have very limited development resources. For this reason, lists of ideas at the level you've given are only of limited value: ideas aren't the bottleneck in the development process.

However, if you want to work with us to improve the UI and do some detailed design work, then we would welcome the contribution.

John B

[impaktor]

4. There should be a tutorial of some sorts.

See http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Manual
Feel free to contribute more to the wiki. No coding experience needed.

- Hand weapons were both a major export and illegal at Sol. Seemed abit strange.

Perhaps so, but maybe consider Colombia and cocaine.

- When I alt-tab out an in of the program, all the texts are gone. They came back after I went to the start-up menu.

https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/2779

- When I accidentally fired a weapon in the upper atmosphere the police came and killed me. Seemed a little excessive.

I've been thinking about looking into this part of the game, but don't know when I'll have time.

[FluffyFreak]

Welcome to the forum and the game! :)

You are correct that the whole flow needs a huge amount of work.

The HUD:
If you want to discuss the HUD itself and the crappy-old-Frontier-esque control panel then Nozmajner has done some work creating a different bunch of UI designs in another thread.
It has long been a point of contention for us, we've been wanting to get rid of it and rewrite in some way for so long that it's starting to become painful to talk about ;)

Tutorial:
How do you see an in-game tutorial working?
Should it be overlaid with the HUD / UI and popup on screens the first few times that you access them?
Could you do some simple mockups to show us what you have in mind?
That kind of thing can really help! :)

Trade:
I like the idea of a "Local" button but I think that the screen would need some work, could you draw an alternative design showing how it would look?
The trade button... that would be a bit trickier to do, for one thing that whole damn screen needs ripping out and implementing in a different way (in my personal opinion), but also how would you display the information? There's very little room on the sector view (where you can see all of the star systems) to display any extra data

Bulletin Board Messages:
I totally agree!

[impaktor]

Bulletin Board Messages:
I totally agree!

If that should just be included in the head line, and everyone agree, then I could fix that.

But then I wonder, what format should it be?

Different for each flavour?

Code: Select all

DELIVERY: something something to {system name} ({distance} ly) as soon as possible

Or same for all, e.g. distance last?

Code: Select all

TRANSPORT: something to somewhere as soon as possible ({distance} ly)

Then should deadline be in the headline as well? I don't think it too wise to put all useful raw data in the headline, since then the player will not bother clicking ads other than to accept. Is that what we want?

[luovahulluus]

Wow, a lot of stuff to chew on in just a day!

Welcome to the forum and the game! :)
You are correct that the whole flow needs a huge amount of work.

I have just scratched the surface of the game, but IMHO the flow of how the game plays is one of the most important things that add to the long-term playability of the game. Most of the UI designs in another thread were great, but focused on how to improve the HUD and the existing pages. I think we have to rethink how we could improve the flow of the game and then think of what kind of pages we would need to achieve that. Many of you probably have had similar thoughts before, and I know it's easier said than done. I think I'll put my head into it when I'll have some more time.

Tutorial:
How do you see an in-game tutorial working?
Should it be overlaid with the HUD / UI and popup on screens the first few times that you access them?
Could you do some simple mockups to show us what you have in mind?

For a total newbie I think the best tutorial would be a simple trading mission. "Click here to go to the bulleting board" "Click here to take this package to carry" "Go here to buy fuel and meat" "This is how you fly" "Click here to set a hyperspace destination" "Click here to hyperspace" "This is how you use autopilot" "Click here to compress time" "Dock and sell the meat". Or something like that. I know that probably is a lot to program and might not be very high on the priority list, so first version could just be an extended mouse-over tooltip of all the icons and a few pop-up windows telling what is possible in this window and that and giving some ideas what to try first/next.

Trade:
I like the idea of a "Local" button but I think that the screen would need some work, could you draw an alternative design showing how it would look?
The trade button... that would be a bit trickier to do, for one thing that whole damn screen needs ripping out and implementing in a different way (in my personal opinion), but also how would you display the information? There's very little room on the sector view (where you can see all of the star systems) to display any extra data

My first thought of the "Local" button was this: When you click and hold, you see the local exports and imports instead of the planet's that is being viewed. That way it wouldn't take more space than the current layout.

"Trade" button could just be a check box on the side of the screen. It would change the coloring of the stars/names on the sector view like this: If the system viewed has in it's major imports something that is a local major export, it's shown on green. If it's minor import vs. major export, or vice versa, the color is light green. Minor vs. minor is white and everything else is red. Maybe you could add the name of the commodity(s) on a mouse over tool-tip of the planet. This wouldn't take too much space, but would reduce the time it takes to find a new trading destination.

Bulletin Board Messages:
I totally agree!

If that should just be included in the head line, and everyone agree, then I could fix that.

But then I wonder, what format should it be?

One solution would be to write all the names of the planets with greenish text if they are in range and in reddish if they are not. This could be implemented to the whole game, except on maps where the coloring has another function. It is the year 3200, so our Google Glass successor that we have implanted in our heads could easily give us that information (and maybe other things too).

[impaktor]

Bulletin Board Messages:

...
One solution would be to write all the names of the planets with greenish text if they are in range and in reddish if they are not. This could be implemented to the whole game, except on maps where the coloring has another function. It is the year 3200, so our Google Glass successor that we have implanted in our heads could easily give us that information (and maybe other things too).

This not that simple, since you can make several jumps if the system is out of range, or even better, make several small jumps if the deadline is short, since the time in hyperspace it proportional to the distance squared. Also the speed/distance of the ship changes if you then buy/sell goods or fuel. I'm kind of against a game that plays itself. Part of the game is to investigate which missions are reasonable for me to take, can I take two or three in the same direction? Dare I?

If a mission has an unreasonable deadline in relation to its distance it is removed from the BBS.

So I think a game that automatically shows the missions that are in range, or in the same direction, and automatically figures out where to go, and which goods to buy for that destination, and which route in the star map to take etc. would just make the player into a zombie. Just click wherever the game tells you it's profitable to click, and the loop.

Part of the fun in the game is to plot a course, find a mission and be bold and see if you can make the deadline, etc.

[FluffyFreak]

Wow, a lot of stuff to chew on in just a day!

Yup, we're welcoming and chatty! :)

Welcome to the forum and the game! :)
You are correct that the whole flow needs a huge amount of work.

I have just scratched the surface of the game, but IMHO the flow of how the game plays is one of the most important things that add to the long-term playability of the game. Most of the UI designs in another thread were great, but focused on how to improve the HUD and the existing pages. I think we have to rethink how we could improve the flow of the game and then think of what kind of pages we would need to achieve that. Many of you probably have had similar thoughts before, and I know it's easier said than done. I think I'll put my head into it when I'll have some more time.

Yes some flow is more important than others. I'd like to get away from having to select other screens for things, not from separate screens themselves but how they're switched between.
Take how Enemy Starfighter (ES) handles it transition to the system map:


That is nice and seamless, you can imagine zooming out, deciding on something and the just zooming right back into your ship view again to carry on.
Now we display a lot of different information than ES so it's not going to be a 1:1 comparison between the systems but I can see it being an easier flow.

Zoom-out from cockpit to system map to pick destinations, view trading goods etc, zoom out further to sector map to pick other system to hyperspace too, zoom-in onto one of those to see what good they trade in and other system information.
No key presses just a seamless transition from ship->system->sector without keypresses.

[robn]

Yeah, epic zooming shenanigans would be awesome. Alas, I don't think I can commit another three years to UI hacking.

My current intention is that the camera will be the permanent background, and the various screens will move in and out over the top of that - the flight HUD will be just one form of this. The various maps should be unified so you can move from galaxy to starport in the same view. I expect some of the station and info view tabs to be chopped and changed to fit together better in terms of the information they provide.

But seriously. I've been working on UI for over two years and the old UI system is still heavily entrenched. And I have a heap of non-UI work to do too. So by all means, throw ideas around, I'm never going to discourage that. But don't be surprised if I ignore a great deal of it. Code is what's needed now.

[FluffyFreak]

Alas, I don't think I can commit another three years to UI hacking.

Rubbish! I bet you dream in XAML ;)

Yeah no worries Robn this really shouldn't all be on one person. I bet with all of the work you've done though it should now at least be possible for other people to add to the GUI just they are with the "return to game" button and extra ship details work.

Also some of this flow discussion might mean that rewriting the sector/system/etc screens could be easier than just porting the existing crap across to the new UI.