New UI Preview Branch - Now Available!

[SethR]

Last week on Rhymes With Play, we showed a preview of the new UI that we’ve been working on. Today, you can get your hands on it! We’ve put it into a testing branch so people can get their hands on it as we iron out the last few bugs before it’s released to everyone. We’ve been banging on it for the past week or so and have fixed a ton of bugs, but that doesn’t mean we found all the issues. If you’re curious to check it out and help with the testing, you can switch to the branch (instructions below). Because it’s such an essential part of being able to play the game, we want to be sure it’s nice and robust before we set it live on the main branch. Depending on how many bug reports we get, that should happen pretty soon.

 

Getting the UI Preview:

1. Right click on Don’t Starve Together in your Steam library

2. Click “Properties”

3. Click on the “Betas” tab

4. Select “preview” from the dropdown

 

Here’s a link to the preview of the UI on last week’s Rhymes With Play, if you missed it: http://www.twitch.tv/kleientertainment/v/7187005. I’ll briefly go over the major changes here, just so you know what to expect.

 

Things To Note:

• Main Screen: You now have to log in (or go into offline mode) before you can do anything else (i.e. change settings, mods, etc). We added a version check to the login process. Playing offline ignores this check.

• Settings/Controls: These now live in a single Options screen (with two pages). We’ve moved the Input Device (keyboard/controller/etc) spinner to be on the Settings page. It’s in the top left. The Controls page will only show the controls for your currently selected input device. The order of the settings options has been rearranged to make it faster to access with a controller the options we expect players to change more often (i.e. those options are now in the left column, where they used to be on the right).

• Mods: Mods are now split into two categories: Client Mods and Server Mods. Client mods can be enabled, disabled and configured from the Mods Screen. Server mods can be viewed and configured from the Mods Screen (configuring from here will set the default configuration: you can change the configuration on a per-server basis on the Mods Tab). When going into the Mods Screen (i.e. from the main menu), you start on the Client Mods page, since that’s mainly what that screen is for. There is also a Mods Tab that appears on the Host Game screen, which allows you to do all of the above, as well as enable, disable and configure server mods for the slot you currently have selected (which gets saved and only applies to that slot). When going to the Mods Tab, you start on the Server Mods page, since that tab is mainly for setting up the mods for your server (though you can also change your client mods from here). Outside of that, the Mods Tab is a carbon copy of the Mods Screen.

• Mod Updating: We now automatically download and display mods that are newly-subscribed (and remove unsubscribed mods) while the game is open. There is also an indication of whether any of your mods are out of date. If so, you can choose to update individual mods or update all of your mods.

• Mod Tiles: You now have to actually click on a mod tile in order to select it (rather than the old behavior of hover-to-select). You can double click a tile to enable/disable the mod, or you can click the little checkbox in the bottom right corner. The screw icon indicates that the mod has configuration options. A red circle will show on the mod tile if that mod is out of date.

• World Customization: Two new options are available: Biomes and Start. The Biomes setting will change which biomes get put into your world: Default includes all the ones you’re used to seeing and Classic includes only the biomes from the original game. The Start setting will change what setpiece you spawn in. Default is your normal start, Plus is the start you normally find when using the Default Plus preset, and Dark is the start you normally find when using the Lights Out preset.

• World Gen: In order to accommodate the above changes, we changed how some of the data is architected for world gen. The starting setpiece is now governed by the “start_location” value in the world gen overrides table. It uses that value to grab the data that used to be hard-coded by looking it up in the START_LOCATION_DATA table contained in forest_map.lua. If you want to add a setpiece, you’ll need to add its data into that table. Selection of which tasks to consider for world gen is now governed by the “task_set” value in the world gen overrides table. In level.lua, we grab the data for the tasks with the GetGenTasks function (they were previously hard-coded into the preset definitions) and feed it into the world gen algorithm. Task sets are defined in tasks.lua and can be added with the AddTaskSet function. You can see examples of how we changed our preset definitions in survival.lua. Notice that we now just use “task_set” and “start_location” in the preset definition (and then the contents of those task and start definitions fill in the rest).

• Host Game: The Host Game screen has been reworked to use several tabs where we used to move you to new screens. Each tab will update to reflect the slot you have selected when you change slots, with the exception of the Bans Tab--bans apply to all servers you host. Besides the reorganization, not much has changed here that hasn’t been covered above.

• Browser: You can now view a list of the players that were on the server the last time the server sent a message to our listing server saying “I’m alive--here’s some information about me” (which happens minute). Note that this message is separate from the player count data, so the player list might sometimes have a different number of players listed than the player count shows in the browser list. Though they’re separate, both get sent fairly frequently, so the discrepancies shouldn’t be too bad. Not much has changed beyond that--mostly the new art and layout. Only new things I can think of is a “more info” button next to the game mode in the server’s details (panel on the right) and we moved the Reset Filters button down into the list of filters (it’s at the top) and improved the feedback of when you have filters set to non-default values.

• History: The list of Recent Encounters got implemented! It allows you to see a list of players that you’ve met while playing DST and view their profile.

• Facelift! The whole frontend is more colorful and (hopefully) more aesthetically pleasing.

 

That about covers it. Check out that new UI! Let us know what you think and if you find bugs.

 

[Pyromailmann]

SETH? I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU LEFT!

[SethR]

SETH? I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU LEFT!

 

Today is my last day

[acemurdock]

Today is my last day

Thanks for all your hard work, dude.  Good luck in your future endeavours! 

[Silentdarkness1]

Today is my last day

 

You're gonna be missed, dude!

 

Seriously.

 

You've been a lot of help, and it hurts to see you go, man.

[Kzisor]

@SethR, just upgraded to this preview branch and 2 things.

1. Excellent job on the UI, it looks simply stunning.
2. It loads 100x faster than the old .exe file.

Wonderful job guys! I hope everything goes smoothly with your move back to the States SethR. 

[The Letter W]

*raises potato cup* We'll always remember our homie, Seth.

 

Now to check out this UI.

[MaybeBernie]

Only one server is showing. But everything is looking good so far.

 

 

 

1) Maybe every host has to upgrade in order for the servers to show up?

 

2) The looping sound of the portal's turning wheels is awful.

[ailailou]

Sorry for the offtopic, but Seth is leaving? As in leaving Klei? Why oh why?! 

[ToNiO55]

Only one server is showing. But everything is looking good so far.

 

Edit: Maybe every host has to upgrade in order for the servers to show up?

 

i think all admins of servers need to update on beta version of this New IU Preview Branch 143673

 

app_update <app_id> [-beta <betaname>] [-betapassword <password>] [validate]

 

because the lastest official version still is 142718

 

or maybe Klei going updated on the new version?

 

and thx you very much for your all works Sethr

[Kzisor]

@SethR, game mode mods no longer work now. When you enable a game mode mod it will not allow you to select it as a game mode.

 

Suggestion:

Create a third type of "mod" and make it "game modes" have game mode mods be loaded like client mods.

[Pyromailmann]

Today is my last day

Oh.

Well, we'll miss ya. We'll miss you and all your memories from the devcasts.  

[SethR]

Only one server is showing. But everything is looking good so far.

 

 

 

1) Maybe every host has to upgrade in order for the servers to show up?

 

2) The looping sound of the portal's turning wheels is awful.

 

Thanks for the feedback--I'll mention it to Mattesque. Out of curiosity, what are your sound settings (i.e. how high is the volume on sound effects, music, ambient)?

 

As for the server list: yeah, it'll only show you servers of people that are on that branch, so you won't see many games.

[SethR]

@SethR, game mode mods no longer work now. When you enable a game mode mod it will not allow you to select it as a game mode.

 

Suggestion:

Create a third type of "mod" and make it "game modes" have game mode mods be loaded like client mods.

 

 

Hmm, I think the bug there is that I'm not updating the spinner's data when a game mode mod gets enabled. Thanks for the report!

[SethR]

Sorry for the offtopic, but Seth is leaving? As in leaving Klei? Why oh why?! 

 

Indeed. My home country beckons to me. I'm sad to go, but it's the right thing for me at this point.

 

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and well-wishes! I really appreciate it. It's been an amazing 2 years at Klei and as part of this wonderful community.

[MaybeBernie]

Out of curiosity, what are your sound settings (i.e. how high is the volume on sound effects, music, ambient)?

 

 

Mea damned culpa.

 

 

 

Apparently my sound options got messed up, and I only had the Sound FX on, that's why I kept hearing the portal's turning wheels.

 

Cranked up the music volume, and it sounds wonderful.

[ToNiO55]

for all admin of servers want update on new UI Preview Branch:

+app_update 343050 -beta preview validate

 

 

@SethR, game mode mods no longer work now. When you enable a game mode mod it will not allow you to select it as a game mode.

 

Suggestion:

Create a third type of "mod" and make it "game modes" have game mode mods be loaded like client mods.

 

same problem for me

 

i have lot of mods on my server dedicated and i can't connect on my server

[Arcita]

Thank you Seth for the single greatest contribution to DST. 

[CaptainFun]

New UI and music are fantastic. 

 

Sad to see you go, Seth. Best of luck. 

[imsomony]

Indeed. My home country beckons to me. I'm sad to go, but it's the right thing for me at this point.

 

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and well-wishes! I really appreciate it. It's been an amazing 2 years at Klei and as part of this wonderful community.

 

Sorry to see you go Seth, thank you for all your hard work and diligence these past few years!

 

As a side note, you're moving to my neck of the woods   I apologize in advance for the horrendous traffic and lack of awareness of proper merging procedures. If you like Italian food, be sure to check out Benissimo's in Corte Madera, best I've had outside of New York.

[SethR]

Mea damned culpa.

 

 

 

Apparently my sound options got messed up, and I only had the Sound FX on, that's why I kept hearing the portal's turning wheels.

 

Cranked up the music volume, and it sounds wonderful.

 

Haha, no worries! Thanks for checking--glad it's better now

[SethR]

If you like Italian food, be sure to check out Benissimo's in Corte Madera, best I've had outside of New York.

 

Awesome, I'll check that out! That's actually where I'll be living for the first month or so. Italian food, here I come.

[UnionGaming]

Seth I like the derpson on the morgue for missing mod characters.

[Mattesque]

Mea damned culpa.

 

 

 

Apparently my sound options got messed up, and I only had the Sound FX on, that's why I kept hearing the portal's turning wheels.

 

Cranked up the music volume, and it sounds wonderful.

 

My work here is done

[GuyNamedChris]

@SethR Rhymes with Play will never be the same without you ;-;