User Interface suggestions

[KyCygni]

Things I would like to see from the UI:

• When I turn on an overlay, I want to be able to drag around the map with RMB. Despite the tiny nature of this idea, it's at the top of my ONI wish list.
• Under Deconstruct, selecting "wires" should automatically bring up the power overlay. Liquid and Gas pipes should also bring up their respective overlays.
• I would really like to have an air-pressure overlay. F1 is not good enough - there is virtually no way for me to determine if an algae deoxidizer is going to have a max pressure issue, or if a plant's atmP is getting too low. I realize this may be asking a lot.

 

• Items that have a problem easily outlined in its respective overlay could have an overlay warning message when that problem occurs. For example, an overheated plant could say "Press F3 to show Temperature Overlay" immediately after its overheat message, or a suffocating dupe could say "Press F1 to show Oxygen Overlay" when you mouse over them, next to the approprate warning. I don't personally need this, but after watching some videos of people less meticulous about these things, a little push here would go a long way.
• Gas Permeable tiles don't list the surrounding gas and its amount in its hover tooltip. I'm assuming that there's gas still there, and that GPTiles don't just cause gas particles to quantum tunnel from one side to the other.
• Some items cease to function after certain environmental limits, but don't specify what that limit is in their information tab. For example, plants in Planter Boxes overheat at a certain temperature, and it's different per plant, but that temperature isn't shown unless the plant is already dying. Algae Deoxidizers don't tell you what their surrounding pressure is or how close that is to the max pressure. Algae Terrariums don't tell you light proximities or efficiency numbers and only provide oxygen output, which is also subject to a lack of materials.

 

• Could you just list the temperature ranges in the temp overlay in white text next to their colors so I don't have to mouse over them? This would allow me to mouse over the game area and see both relevant numbers at once.
• Clicking on a built object should show inputs/outputs just as they are when you are building one.
• Objects that work with "the surrounding area" have poorly defined inputs. It's unclear if an Air Deodorizer will recycle contaminated oxygen 1 tile above it, and it is also unclear where exactly a pump pulls gas or liquid from. If an item functions in a small area, a white dotted line could surround the relevant area when building (or clicking on one). If it's from a specific intake, like a pump (I assume, since a pump in very shallow water does not work), another green indicator would suffice.

 

• Unlocking new materials beyond the oxylite "safe" area causes those new materials to become the default for building several objects like tile, ladders, and pipes. This usually results in a baffling "not enough resources" error when you queue several of these builds in a row, despite having multiple orders of magnitude above the required resources. I'm not sure why you'd ever want anything to default to any material other than sandstone, especially if these rarer rocks/minerals gain specific uses in the future.
• After loading a game, all of the material headers (that you previously had expanded) annoyingly collapse. It also irritatingly resets all of your defaults to the latest-discovered material. In fact, the game takes a couple seconds to even recognize that you have food, power, or other amenities upon loading, which makes me think this is a different underlying problem entirely, one that's likely already on the to-do list.

 

• I don't think that queuing foundation-requiring structures in mid-air should be possible - it's too easy to errantly click 1 space upwards and create a useless floating red building queue. This is admittedly a small and perhaps pretentious request, but every time this happens, you have to press c, LMB, LMB the item from the build options again, and then LMB the correct place. This kind of thing adds up over a long playthrough - whenever you're fast tracking back and forth between the build categories in a small area with several different items, or whenever you'd like to fling your mouse across a landing to queue several adjacent builds, this prevalent error repeatedly costs you 4 lightly tedious actions.
• Pipe bridges, for the purposes of deconstruction, are oddly considered buildings instead of their liquid/gas counterparts. I imagine this causes erroneous bug reports: since pipes are usually built over other things you don't want to destroy, a player will select the whole thing under liquid/gas pipe to deconstruct (once it has fulfilled its purpose), see that the bridges aren't being selected, and think that the deconstruct tool isn't working on them. It is, just not intuitively.

 

• Harvest, sweep, and mop priorities aren't shown. These actions are usually the shortest, but it'd still be nice to see.
• If an item increases decor outside of the decor section, it should mention it, notably, Tile. Subsequently, since tile increases decor, other tiles, like Gas Permeable Tiles, should specifically mention that they decrease decor even though it is redundant. Watch some videos of ONI and you'll find players carving out and GPT'ing huge areas, only to have decor problems later and literally place paintings above GPT that they don't need. I guarantee you it's because they don't know that GPT decreases decor. On a flat surface, the air 1 space above it is subject to -15 decor given the 3 nearest GPTs, and conversely +15 decor given that those 3 tiles are plain Tile. This is a difference of +30, hilariously more than a masterpiece painting.

 

[scientas]

Agree with most of these. Can I add a repair overlay to the list? With more things now breaking would be good to see if they are all concentrated in one area.