Poll: Kickstarter for art revamp for AI War? (Tip: Vote no)

[Tridus]

I'd forgotten about Endless Space, actually. Anything new/tweaked besides the soon-coming expansion, Tridus? Haven't played it since a moth or two after i came out.

There's been tweaks and things added (like wonders), but nothing major has really changed.

Until the expansion. They're gutting and totally redoing combat balance, mechanics are changing significantly, planetary invasion is getting a lot more involved, there's a (simple) formation system, they've added things like fighters/bombers and special weapons/defenses to ship design, planet types are totally rebalanced, and the new faction is radically different from how anything else in the game plays (no access to Dust, no heroes, no disapproval, a heavy dust system harms them until they can cleanse it).

I haven't gotten to try any of it, so I have no idea how it's going to work out. But it's highly ambitious for a $10 upgrade and I'm excited for it.

[Mick]

Hmm, those sound like just the kinda changes that games needs.

Endless Space is a game I think has a wonderful interface and flow, but it always seemed to be missing an "X-factor" to me.

[x4000]

Do you happen to know how on earth they are doing that in an expansion?  Is that a standalone expansion, or what?  I guess that must be it, the more I think of it.

[Coppermantis]

Honestly, it doesn't sound a whole lot more expansive than any of the expansions released for Civ V (Even though the only real ones so far are G&K and BNW). It depends on exactly how "totally" they're redoing the combat and mechanics, though. I don't think it will be like an AVWW1 => 2 transition as far as changed mechanics go.

[Tridus]

Could be, I don't know. I haven't seen anything to that effect though. It's being called DLC in a lot of places, but nobody is calling it standalone in the releases.

[TechSY730]

Just clarifying what I said earlier.

I don't think a grand UI redesign is needed. However, it could certainly use some tweaking or possibly even some retooling/revamping.

If you are going to spend a couple thousand dollars on AI war, I think puttin it into UI work (and maybe a skilled UI/usability engineer/designer) would go much, much further than putting it into graphics.

Again, the UI is not bad; its pretty darn good, considering the amount of "stuff" that needs to be availible to the user. But some work could be put forth into making it really great.

Again, not a huge priority.

[x4000]

If you are going to spend a couple thousand dollars on AI war, I think puttin it into UI work (and maybe a skilled UI/usability engineer/designer) would go much, much further than putting it into graphics.

I think that trying to convey to such an engineer what needs to be shown and what the constraints are, plus enough domain knowledge for them to be able to do it, would make the result not great or super expensive.  I've worked with such people before, of varying skills, and often their superficial knowledge of the subject matter was really causing bad designs.  In every case I was able to take a few of the things they had designed, and then had to just tweak that and use that as a consistent metaphor.

One thing that I keep finding with "UI designers" is that they like designing UI.  As in, they like designing multiple UIs for the same game.  Every UI is different, and you switch sections and the sections don't work the same and so the users are confused.  It's incredibly stupid.  Look at some of the AAA games where the menus are pretty but huge amounts of space are taken up by someone's head, and all of the levels of menu work entirely differently from one another.  I don't think that is more usable; it's possibly more attractive, but then again they aren't displaying terribly much info.

Usually a usability expert's advice is "show less data."  But that's not terribly helpful when you're writing business software where the management needs like 60 columns of data at once, or you're having to show data cubes in various forms, or similar things.  And the same holds true here.

In other words, I don't claim to be a great UI designer -- I'm not.  I could never work for Apple or whatever.  But I do know quite a bit about designing effective UIs for ultra-complicated systems, and I think that most UI designers do not have this skill at all.  I think they'd do really poorly with AI War.

THAT said, the opposite is true for something like Valley or whatever.  There the data is smaller, and I struggle trying to make something minimalist and attractive.  One of those Apple UI designers would run circles around me there.  It's all a matter of context, and through my past experience this is what I've observed.  I haven't worked with every UI designer in the world or anything, but I have yet to meet one who could effectively handle complexity of this scale.

[Chthon]

In other words, I don't claim to be a great UI designer -- I'm not.  I could never work for Apple or whatever.  But I do know quite a bit about designing effective UIs for ultra-complicated systems, and I think that most UI designers do not have this skill at all.  I think they'd do really poorly with AI War.

Your argument that you could never work for Apple or whatever falls upon a logical fallacy.  That Apple or whatever designed their own UIs themselves and didn't just steal the base elements to customize for their own work.  The truth about the Mac/Windows OS style was that it was first developed in Xerox Park by the Xerox Corporations for their corporate computers.  In effect, both companies simply did what you professed to doing yourself.  They took good ideas, and adapted them to their own purposes.

I personally think you might do well with them.

[Tridus]

That, and given what happened to Windows 8, Microsoft could use someone with an eye on the practical side of "how do we make something people can actually use to do things."

[iozay]

Honestly, I believe that it would be enjoyable but it is simply not worth the expenses. I see more value in improving the usability of the ui for new players w/o blowing them away, while keeping the complexity/depth as exists now

[x4000]

In other words, I don't claim to be a great UI designer -- I'm not.  I could never work for Apple or whatever.  But I do know quite a bit about designing effective UIs for ultra-complicated systems, and I think that most UI designers do not have this skill at all.  I think they'd do really poorly with AI War.

Your argument that you could never work for Apple or whatever falls upon a logical fallacy.  That Apple or whatever designed their own UIs themselves and didn't just steal the base elements to customize for their own work.  The truth about the Mac/Windows OS style was that it was first developed in Xerox Park by the Xerox Corporations for their corporate computers.  In effect, both companies simply did what you professed to doing yourself.  They took good ideas, and adapted them to their own purposes.

I personally think you might do well with them.

It depends on what time period you're talking about.  I'm thinking of much more recently than you are.  Either way, my point still stands regardless of if you don't like my example. 

And Apple really is a great example in general, recently I mean: they go for beauty and simplicity, at the expense of both customization and advanced functionality.  Aka, their answer to a UI being too complex is to cut features.  The whole story of iMovie is a great example of that.

I'm kind of the opposite of that, in that I'm willing to compromise on the UI being harder to understand, but not willing to cut features that actually matter.  If it's extraneous, sure, cut it.  But most stuff in, say, Windows or Linux is not extraneous.  Not always the best designed in either case, but that's not really the point either.

That, and given what happened to Windows 8, Microsoft could use someone with an eye on the practical side of "how do we make something people can actually use to do things."

I think that they had their own big problem.  They didn't want to cut functionality, unlike Apple does, and so instead they just tried to hide the functionality in order to get an Apple-like simple UI.  That... turned out to be a colossally bad idea, naturally.  Rather than having an interface that is a bit harder to learn but has a minimum of clicks to get to everything, they went to something that is surface-simple but which is way more complicated to get to the innards of.  I guess fine for casual users, sort of, but an enormous slap to advanced or even moderate users.

[Martyn van Buren]

Going back to the first topic of the poll, I think the art is actually in quite a good shape.  It doesn't look enormously arty but to me it conveys the feeling of being alone and tiny in the vast emptiness of space rather well.  It also doesn't look bad --- although it's a simple style and obviously an indie game, it looks consistent and professional when you first boot it up. 

That said, if you're looking for opportunities to work on the art incrementally, I think the game could benefit from some things that makes a well-defended AI world look more immediately massive and terrifying to a new user, which I think could be done well within the scope of Chris's occasional tinkering.

[Chthon]

Going back to the first topic of the poll, I think the art is actually in quite a good shape.  It doesn't look enormously arty but to me it conveys the feeling of being alone and tiny in the vast emptiness of space rather well.  It also doesn't look bad --- although it's a simple style and obviously an indie game, it looks consistent and professional when you first boot it up. 

That said, if you're looking for opportunities to work on the art incrementally, I think the game could benefit from some things that makes a well-defended AI world look more immediately massive and terrifying to a new user, which I think could be done well within the scope of Chris's occasional tinkering.

Wait... the AI fielding a mothership against you isn't terrifying enough?

[Cyborg]

I think this puts you in an unsustainable situation in the future. Right now Keith is very agile in implementing gameplay changes and making the game more fun. This isn't a case of ASCII art interfaces or anything.


Let this thread die.

[Martyn van Buren]

Going back to the first topic of the poll, I think the art is actually in quite a good shape.  It doesn't look enormously arty but to me it conveys the feeling of being alone and tiny in the vast emptiness of space rather well.  It also doesn't look bad --- although it's a simple style and obviously an indie game, it looks consistent and professional when you first boot it up. 

That said, if you're looking for opportunities to work on the art incrementally, I think the game could benefit from some things that makes a well-defended AI world look more immediately massive and terrifying to a new user, which I think could be done well within the scope of Chris's occasional tinkering.

Wait... the AI fielding a mothership against you isn't terrifying enough?

The AI is terrifying --- I think the art could do more to tell a new player how terrifying. I don't think this is something that's a problem but it was a suggestion for something that could be improved.