GUI (and some General) Feedback

[clickrush]

Hi, I'am a huge fan of ONI and I congratulate you for making such a great game (again). It reminds me of some of the first games I played as a child (which was a long time ago I have to admit), such as Creatures, Caesar 2, Dungeon Keeper etc. but it's goes way beyound those games. I could go on and on about how awesome the game is, but the best example is the upcomming automation update: every time I think of somethig that could make the game better you guys are already working on it. Kudos.

Now in terms of criticism I feel like some things could be done to improve the user experience in the control/gui section of the game. Please correct me if I oversaw something that already solves these issues.

The controls are pretty extensive which is a huge bonus. I'am a fan of UIs that only force you to use the mouse where nessecairy, which is selecting things that are geographically in the map in ONI. However I have two minor nitpicks.

For one I can choose which type of item I want to build (0-9) but I then have to select the thing with the mouse (and its material). I feel like this could be solved somehow, for example by giving us a directional navigation inside the selection grid.

Another minor one is the priority selection. Changeing priorities is quick and nice, because I can press P and then the priority number I want to assign. But using a preset building/job priority from the start cannot be done purely with the keyboard, so I have to move the mouse back and forth over the screen.

I know these things sound very nitpicky but I feel like you are on the verge of having a perfect control UI, it's just not there yet. Maybe a complete different variant that is text search based would be even better (I'am personally super fond of them).

A different UI related suggestion: it would be awesome if you added an ingame calculator, preferably with contextual capabilities. I generally dislike when a game forces me to tab out and ONI unfortunately does this some times. I'am very bad at mental calculation and I'am lazy. So what I have to do is open a spreadsheet and type in the values and formulas there, not in the ONI screen. You already have some things that help me in this regard, for example wires always show the current and max wattage. But when making a new system the game doesn't help me to add up things. Especially pressure, mass and heat are things that force me to open a spreadsheet. I'd rather look at your game than at a spreadsheet. It would be pure heaven if you had a seperate, blue print type screen where one could clob together devices regarding their I/O in terms of generated/converted matierials, wattage consumption/production, heat, pressure etc.

That's it for now except please never change the starting "oh no!" message! Something about the picture and the sound it makes cracks me up every time.