Display optimization and ergonomics

[cddx]

Hello,

Regarding the display of various data on the screen, it would be good to reorganize everything a bit with this extension, because we end up with alerts on the left and on the right of the screen ...

It would be nice to group all of the asteroid alerts and management on one side of the screen and put all the resources on the other side so you can display as many as possible.

Since part of the left side of the screen may be obscured when opening the build menus, the ideal would be to put the resources up to the full-screen height. The clock would be moved either to the centre of the screen or to the right (still at the top). Ideally, it would be in the centre of the top menus centred on either side of the clock to show more data at the edges of the screen.

The right of the screen would then be for all alerts for all asteroids with their associated graphics, all sorted by asteroids

It should also:

• Be able to rename asteroids

• Be able always to display all the graphs of all the asteroids

• Organize the asteroids in the order you want

• To be able to check a whole sub-menu of resources (in one, click: to be able to select all types of metals, seeds, food, etc.)

• Being able to change the size of all the windows (schedule, types of food consumed, and new graphics windows) and being able to put them in full screen, because the windows are small is frustrating especially for 4K screens, and to avoid scrolling with the smile

• For construction menus, being able to stretch the windows upwards to display more objects (especially for 4K screens, and to avoid scrolling with the mouse)

• On the resource charts, specify the scale and be able to choose the display scale

• It would be nice to be able to have all the modifications (especially graphics) in the bass game without the expansion in case you want to play on a single asteroid

• Be able to add a black or opaque background behind the texts of resources and alerts to facilitate readability

[The Plum Gate]

Some of that sounds like an advanced building type waiting to happen.

Have you seen the colony achievement screen? This has got to be the ugliest UI element in the game.

What would be nice is a better widget system - something that you could pin whatever you liked wherever you liked. We already have as many hotkeys as a flight simulator.

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Pinning categories would be nice.

Honestly, it would be nice if the menus pulled out from the side and material selection showed up above the selection fold ( center ), the amount of mouse travel is probably being disregarded. I can see this type of interface being a bit more laptop or touchscreen friendly, though the game is greatly removed from those platforms - you never know.

Hopefully they simply mush the base game and DLC starts into the same 'choose your start' window - where we get fully fleshed out DLC content and original base game asteroid types - it would be nice if they released a few full sized asteroid types to the base game as a free launch gift to base game owners. Players that want the multi-asteroid experience can then buy into the DLC.

[Hodhandr]

On 1/27/2021 at 4:56 AM, The Plum Gate said:

Hopefully they simply mush the base game and DLC starts into the same 'choose your start' window

The merge will come: In the early closed beta of the DLC, you could start on a single large asteroid, and they stated they want to merge the code-bases for the base game and DLC (which are technically different games right now).

I haven't seen any concrete ETA on when those will be, but I expect that they will force us to use mutli-asteroid colonies in the DLC until they're happy with how the multi-asteroid and rocket mechanics work (and maybe add some more different starts), then enable single-asteroid games.

The code merge would likely come some time after that - it sounded like it's fairly complex, and as while the longer you delay, the more work you need to do, it's also not something you want to do with "hot code" (a lot of code changes frequently) since that just makes everything a mess.

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But yeah, pinning categories (with no subitems pinned: all items, otherwise, only the pinned subitems; should be foldable/collapsible), renaming asteroids (there's a mod for that!) and rockets (probably a mod for that) and in general control over your UI would be nice QoL, and accessibility for is always useful, even to fully able people. As an example, I pretty much always play with subtitles on in games so I can check those I don't hear the important quest dialogue over, say, loud gunfire.

All that said, I expect the QoL stuff in general to have fairly low priority. Not that we should stop requesting it, of course.