UI Suggestions

[Capitainefada]

I love your game. I have more than 200 hours on it and I want more! Here is a small list of things I would like to see in the UI:

 I) Facilitate the laying of pipes (liquid, gas)

a) It's silly, but after 200 hours of play, I'm still reversing the direction of the pipes. A simple thing that would help me a lot is to position the input / output arrows in the flow direction. For example:

b) Display in red the dead circuits (as for power)

c) Remove pipes when installing a valve

When installing a valve on an existing pipe, the pipe below is not removed. if you close the valve, the liquid continues to flow, since the pipe below is still there!

Personally, I have long believed at a bug!

 

II) Keyboard shortcuts to move the view from one point to another easily

It may already exist, but i have not found it. This is a basic function on most strategy games.

1) Ctr-1, 2 ... saves the current position of the window.

2) 1, 2 ... automatically moves the window to that location.

 

III) Best UI in construction mode (power, liquid, gas, automation)

When working on a network, we put pipes. But sometimes, we have to lift one or cancel a building. And every time, after doing that, we have to reopen the build menu, and take the pipe on which we work: it's unpleasant

- Right Click re-opens the building menu that was just closed and selects the last object that was being placed.

- Overlays automatically open the corresponding build menu.

 

IV) Best mouse movements for laying walls / ladders

There is a great thing when you have an electrical network: you have not released the mouse button, a back movement erases the construction project.

Can you take this mechanism for laying down walls, ladders and fire poles?

 

V) Automation

- visually display the transmitted signal when the condition is activated.

 - Could timer gauge show hours rather than percentages?

For example :

 

and why not, could we say to the timer that we want to reset to 24h, but also to 12h and 6h?

 

--

I love your game. Thank !

[AlexRou]

5 hours ago, Capitainefada said:

a) It's silly, but after 200 hours of play, I'm still reversing the direction of the pipes. A simple thing that would help me a lot is to position the input / output arrows in the flow direction. For example:

You can pipe things in from 4 directions, I don't see how that makes more sense? In your picture the horizontal bridges, if you pipe in from the top or bottom it then makes as much as as it was before and you piping in from the side.

As for the building, that only makes sense if you're piping in left to right, what about people who pipe in from top to bottom or vice versa?

Sure you can think this would be better for you, but that's the problem, it's better for you and not everyone in every situation. So I don't think this is a good idea.

[alficles]

I think he's envisioning the arrows rotating with the bridges. So if you flip it around, the arrows will still point the right way. This isn't how any of the current buildings behave, but I still think it's a strong improvement. I'm 100% on board with this one.

For the pipes, I totally thought that valves were busted! What he describes should be default behavior. This is basically never what you want. And if, for some strange reason, it was, you could manually connect them after install.

All this stuff is really, really good. I see no changes listed that wouldn't markedly improve the game.

[sadovsf]

Maybe instead of right mouse button to reopen last, you could middle mouse to "sample" Object and that will be set as current building to construct. (In minecraft for example you can select cubes in your inventory to hand and build quite quickly utilizing it).

[Capitainefada]

8 hours ago, alficles said:

I think he's envisioning the arrows rotating with the bridges. So if you flip it around, the arrows will still point the right way. This isn't how any of the current buildings behave, but I still think it's a strong improvement. I'm 100% on board with this one.

 

That's right ! who did not destroy a bridge because he was mistaken?

[AlexRou]

30 minutes ago, Capitainefada said:

That's right ! who did not destroy a bridge because he was mistaken?

You are the one mistaken, I knew you meant the arrows rotate with the bridges. What I am trying to say is that your arrows only makes sense to me if the pipe connects in the same direction as the arrow.

 

This looks ok:

 

This looks weird and doesn't make sense:

 

And what about this?

[sadovsf]

Maybe simply change it to:
IN
OUT

Done  arrows are correct even now. If you have a closer look they point from and into device (partial box on icon). Not saying i did not missplaced it though. Just saying that arrows generally are not good way of visualizing it especially if you can connect to them from any direction

[alficles]

1 hour ago, AlexRou said:

And what about this?

You are right, this is the least visually grokable of the set. But even here, the standard arrows don't make any more sense than these. I still feel like the image you're showing is an improvement over the existing functionality.

[AlexRou]

17 minutes ago, alficles said:

You are right, this is the least visually grokable of the set. But even here, the standard arrows don't make any more sense than these. I still feel like the image you're showing is an improvement over the existing functionality.

At least the standard arrows are static, that way you can at least treat them as icons instead of flow directions. And if it don't make any more sense than the old ones then why bother changing.

btw I've posted in the past on the arrows a long time ago (can't find the thread anymore), back then I wanted 4 arrows.

Kinda like:

[alficles]

I like the 4-way arrows for machines. But the common case for pipes is a specific flow direction. I think optimizing for the common case makes a lot of sense.

[AlexRou]

9 minutes ago, alficles said:

I like the 4-way arrows for machines. But the common case for pipes is a specific flow direction. I think optimizing for the common case makes a lot of sense.

Got that covered back then too, since the arrows are now on the edges of the box, we can show only one arrow per connected direction.

This way, if for some reason you have the pipes like this, you would know whats connected and what's not.

[alficles]

Heh, that might accomplish roughly the same thing as directional arrows. I like it.

[Neotix]

Everyone want optimization and still propose more and more complex solutions.

I think that actual symbols are accurate because they're the most similar to actual symbols od input/output used in real world. They don't show connection direction because it's not needed.

Real symbols are the rotated ones like in Capitainefada proposition.

[Capitainefada]

You are right. Ideally, the arrow should take the position of the pipe just connected.
In this graphics, I visualized the direction of the flow desired by the player.

Currently we have this:

With my initial proposal we would have had:

I think it's a progress in understanding: the player visualizes the flow in the bridge.

But yours:

Is much better!

Arrows orienting themselves to laying pipes. 

It remains the case of the pose of the pipe (or the building) before the laying of the pipes, and in this case my suggestion seems to me better than the initial situation.
 

[Neotix]

1 hour ago, Capitainefada said:

But yours:

Is much better!

What about multiple pipes on input and output?

For example:

 

[Michi01]

7 hours ago, AlexRou said:

You are the one mistaken, I knew you meant the arrows rotate with the bridges. What I am trying to say is that your arrows only makes sense to me if the pipe connects in the same direction as the arrow.

I wouldn't say that it's enough to consider it less confusing, but with the system suggested here, the input slot always points into the building and the output slot always points away from the building.

[AlexRou]

5 hours ago, Neotix said:

What about multiple pipes on input and output?

For example:

 

That is why I suggested 4 arrows that appear according to how many pipes you have connected,

10 hours ago, AlexRou said:

Got that covered back then too, since the arrows are now on the edges of the box, we can show only one arrow per connected direction.

This way, if for some reason you have the pipes like this, you would know whats connected and what's not.