Some interface thoughts from a new player.

[keith.lamothe]

Animated is possible but yea, it's one file per frame.  In AVWW we've implemented sprite dictionaries but that hasn't been backported yet.

Personally I prefer GUDare's because it just gets bigger and more-in-your-face; kinda hard to miss.  But doctorfrog's targeting reticle approach probably gets across better the idea that the wormhole isn't physically different in an obvious way, it's just a scanner artificially adding a bit of info that only it can see.

And yes, I think there's already an option for drawing the wormhole on top; I could try making that default to on, not sure what other folks will think of that

[Wanderer]

And yes, I think there's already an option for drawing the wormhole on top; I could try making that default to on, not sure what other folks will think of that

Nooooo.  I like seeing my traffic jam of stuff, the wormhole would just be one more thing in my way.

Animated is possible but yea, it's one file per frame.  In AVWW we've implemented sprite dictionaries but that hasn't been backported yet.

Ugly.  Ugly ugly ugly.

Personally I prefer GUDare's because it just gets bigger and more-in-your-face; kinda hard to miss.  But doctorfrog's targeting reticle approach probably gets across better the idea that the wormhole isn't physically different in an obvious way, it's just a scanner artificially adding a bit of info that only it can see.

The two concepts can be merged pretty easily.  The 'rotation' would be a bit annoying but it's not difficult.  I was tempted to make a personal version of the thing at 512 pixels or so.  With the massive traffic jam on the wormholes, it's a bit hard for me to see there ARE wormholes, nevermind what color they are. I still don't want them on top though.

[Volatar]

My general rule is, I will play with any stranger who:

• Isn't uptight
• has beaten the game by themselves at level 7 or above. I don't like training the basics.
• Has a decent computer
• Good schedule

Amusingly, even though I have played AI War on and off for two and a half years I have never actually beat the game.

Also, if a minimap showing everything would be a performance issue, what about a selective minimap? All non-turret static structures could show on the minimap: stations, power stations, special assets, etc. They could blink when attacked, and the wormholes would also blink or have a ((o)) glyph indicating incoming attack. No need to render every last ship on such a tiny window.

I would personally be perfectly happy with a mini map that simply drew everything as colored dots.

[TechSY730]

My general rule is, I will play with any stranger who:

• Isn't uptight
• has beaten the game by themselves at level 7 or above. I don't like training the basics.
• Has a decent computer
• Good schedule

Amusingly, even though I have played AI War on and off for two and a half years I have never actually beat the game.

Yea, it took me about a year and a half for me to beat my first solo game. (I beat a co-op game significantly earlier than that)

Also, if a minimap showing everything would be a performance issue, what about a selective minimap? All non-turret static structures could show on the minimap: stations, power stations, special assets, etc. They could blink when attacked, and the wormholes would also blink or have a ((o)) glyph indicating incoming attack. No need to render every last ship on such a tiny window.

I would personally be perfectly happy with a mini map that simply drew everything as colored dots.

That's what it did. It turns out even drawing a bunch of colored dots is rather performance intensive.
Though, a "grouping" type thing that is done for close clusters of the same ship in the main view could work for the mini-map too, so that thousands of dots don't have to be redrawn every frame.

[zoutzakje]

the option for drawing the wormhole on top is pressing (and holding) the control button. I use it allll the time, very helpful for scouting in a map with "show unexplored wormholes" off. I wouldn't want it to be default to see wormholes on top though. I've gotten used to the way this works and I look at what's underneath the wormhole a lot more often. You could make it a toggle in the settings though so that people can decide for themselves what they want to be default.

[clone]

Yeah, it's the ctrl hotkey as far as I know.  But the point of this thread is that the game hides too much important information behind hotkey buttons.

I mean, one of the many points.

[TechSY730]

Yeah, it's the ctrl hotkey as far as I know.  But the point of this thread is that the game hides too much important information behind hotkey buttons...

Well, there is a lot of important information, more than can fit reasonably on the minimum supported resolution (1024x768 I think). The question then becomes what information is critical, and what information needs to be a keypress/mouse-click away, and what information needs to be a button away.

This is actually a pretty difficult problem. The current UI does a pretty good job of keeping the most critical information always in front of you, but as you have pointed out, there is plenty of room for improvement.

I've seen several non-hotkey intensive solutions to this dilemma before (though they still do have hotkeys as an option, for the "hardcore" players). Two in particular I can think of is Starcraft II's UI (particuraly their replay UI), and the Spring RTS Engine (with its resizable, togglable, optional translucent windows)

[clone]

I disagree, I think the game does a pretty poor job in some respects of delivering the information that the player needs.  The planetary gravity well is one big example.  If you read through the thread you can see how not presenting this information clearly causes a ton of confusion for new players (and is fiddly for seasoned ones).

This is not something that involves dumping icons or numbers on the screen - it's something that simply involves visual 'hints'.  There's no need to hide it on the mini-map, which can only be accessed through a hotkey.  It should be represented on the battlefield.  It's a vitally important thing to consider, and maps are supposed to be abstracted overviews, not contain more information than the battlefield.

I agree that the interface does a lot of things right though.  I'd say it's 70% brilliant and 30% god-awful.  What it does well it does extremely well.

[Cyborg]

I agree that the interface does a lot of things right though.  I'd say it's 70% brilliant and 30% god-awful.  What it does well it does extremely well.

God-awful? I am definitely one of the more direct, straight-shooting posters on this board, but don't you think that's a little over the top? 

[Wanderer]

I agree that the interface does a lot of things right though.  I'd say it's 70% brilliant and 30% god-awful.  What it does well it does extremely well.

God-awful? I am definitely one of the more direct, straight-shooting posters on this board, but don't you think that's a little over the top? 

Nah, just someone who's never tried to play the old DOS Hacker game.   UI?  Grab the manual.  That's your UI. 

[clone]

No, because it's only 30% god-awful.

It's difficult to express.  I can't say the interface is "good enough" or "okay" because it doesn't really express my thoughts on this well.

I'm very polarized about it.  Some aspects of the interface are exceptional - some of the best I've seen.  Other parts of the interface are so questionable I just can't wrap my head around it.

[clone]

How many hours have you guys pumped into this game?  Of course you're accustomed to the interface, if you didn't become accustomed to it you wouldn't still be playing.  I'm getting accustomed to the interface too after almost 30 hours.  That's why the thread title is "Interface thoughts from a new player" and not "How I learned to get things done with the AI War Interface."

Most people are not going to put that much work into adapting to a non-intuitive interface, and I certainly didn't with the demo - I'd imagine a lot of potential customers are the same.

And I can assure you that my friends and I are no strangers to complicated games.  Few can deny that the Dwarf Fortress interface is clumsy though.

[TechSY730]

I disagree, I think the game does a pretty poor job in some respects of delivering the information that the player needs.  The planetary gravity well is one big example.

Well actually that one is about to be fixed.

On planet view, the game now draws two circles representing the key zones of the planet's "gravity well".

Thank you for bringing this up, it probably would of kept being an issue if you hadn't of mentioned it.

They also fixed the wave warning thing

Now for wave alerts that list the actual ship type being sent at you: moving your mouse cursor over a wave alert will bring up that ship's data, similar to mousing-over a ship of that type.

In fact, you are credited in both of these changes.

EDIT: BTW, if you are curious, you can see the changes so far for any upcoming version at http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta

[Eternaly_Lost]

How many hours have you guys pumped into this game?  Of course you're accustomed to the interface, if you didn't become accustomed to it you wouldn't still be playing.  I'm getting accustomed to the interface too after almost 30 hours.  That's why the thread title is "Interface thoughts from a new player" and not "How I learned to get things done with the AI War Interface."

Most people are not going to put that much work into adapting to a non-intuitive interface, and I certainly didn't with the demo - I'd imagine a lot of potential customers are the same.

And I can assure you that my friends and I are no strangers to complicated games.  Few can deny that the Dwarf Fortress interface is clumsy though.

Designing a intuitive interface is a lot harder then you think. A lot of companies have spent a lot of money on trying to do that, with the biggest issue being what is intuitive to Person A is not even remotely to Person B. It really depends on what a person has experienced before, and just about everything can become 'intuitive' with enough time, even the mess that is Dwarf Fortress, I don't even think about what I am hitting when I play that game now myself. I think I need to assign this dwarf to this task (like cooking) and just do so without thinking about anything more about it.

The best way to really deal with it, likely is to make some suggestions and if they are good, they will make it in.

[TechSY730]

I think more companies should take the Valve (was it Valve?) approach to intuitive UI design.
Take a person with little experience with computers (and most certainly no experience with the product you are developing), sit them down, start the program, and watch them for an hour or so. The devs are not allowed to talk to the tester until the time period is up.
Preferably, you would want to have more than one person per cycle, to mitigate that "intuitive to person A but not person B" effect.

You could possibly get a few other audiences as well, like those who are familiar with computers but not the genre of game, and those who are familiar with the genre of game but not this game exactly, and see how the responses differ as you get closer to the target audience.

Of course, this does rely on having some good "sufficiently uninformed" testers around, which is not always easy, or cheap.