First of all, I want to say that due to my own time constraints I'm going to mostly focus on my negatives in order to just get them out there. With that said I wanted to say that overall I really like the game. I like the exploration/astronomy mechanic and in general I think the game does have its own niche within the genre. With that said... A NOTE ON GRAPHICS I won't spend much time going over the graphics, as this part is pretty obvious, but suffice to say that the best I can say is that they feel like a work in progress. But graphics are like frosting on the cake and I'm sure there are plenty of other folks that can do a better critique than me on this. USER INTERFACE My biggest gripes are all from the User Interface. The game's initial main menu is very simple, with a classic spinning planet view and an easy to understand and understated looking menu. The game creation menu is also easy to follow, which is great. And then you're dropped into the game's main interface and every part of the UI that's visible is filled with buttons, and readouts which I think will be overwhelming for some (and exciting to a small percent?). My initial reaction was "that looks complicated...". I would urge exploring ways of layering the information maybe with mouse-over fade-ins and fade-outs. A relatively cheap but I think effective means might be to create a "screenshot" of the UI with callouts that explain what everything is, which can be viewed when the player holds down the "F1" key or something along those lines. Just brainstorming, there are probably better ways. Number of clicks to action is overall too high. For example, colonizing a planet takes too many clicks. First of all I can't figure out a way of colonizing a planet when you're in system view actually looking at the planets. It seems you have to back out into the starmap (1 click) then click on the tiny icon for the fleet around the planet (2 clicks) then select the colony ship (3 clicks), select the "colonize button" (4 clicks) and then finally select the planet (5 clicks). I'd suggest adding a colonize button at the solar system view that is turned on when it's possible to colonize a planet, and is turned off and explains why you can't colonize it otherwise (no ship in system, not enough tech, etc). I'd like the ability to turn-off confirmation dialogs. The first few play-throughs they can be useful to remind you of how the game works, but after the 100th time confirming your space culture selection it gets slightly annoying. OPTIONS * Borderless window setting would be nice to have on this title. Those are some initial thoughts, I'll post more when I get the chance.
Thanks for your feedback. Let's go through the negatives so far then. Could you elaborate on this providing as many details as possible as of why you think it's "pretty obvious" that the graphics "feel like a work in progress"? I know it isn't an easy thing to do and elaborate on, as much stems from a feeling rather than an obvious flaw. However, I really need this feedback plain and hard because we (the devs) are in this too much now and we cannot see the most obvious flaws. We do plan on improving the overall polish of the UI, the colony view and we'll have cutscenes, however it would be critical to know at this stage what are the most glaring issues on graphics in your view. Everyone is invited to participate with their own suggestions, of course, and can use this thread or create a new one if you wish. There is no tutorial at the moment but we plan on adding one for the release. Do you think the lack of a tutorial is a big part of your initial sentiment on the UI? A kind of tutorial, you propose. If that's so that is in the works and will be provided at release. Or do you have anything more specific in mind? Ok, I see the colonization effort, its unintuitive process, number of required clicks has put you off. We have a task in our TODO list to allow colonizing from the system view (this was also reported by others). We will give more priority to that task. Perhaps that will help here. We could definitely think in making it optional. I can see it becoming annoying to experienced players. This is one example of a thing we never thought about, and that's why having your first impressions feedback is so important. We have windowed mode, if you don't want to play fullscreen. Sorry my unfamiliarity with the term, as I always play my games full screen. You mean, a way to play in Windowed mode but without the windows border? Ok, great. Looking forward for more negative thoughts
For me, the graphics of the UI elements are nice. Clear, crisp, etc. I like the new system view as well, and if it gets more functionality (e.g. colonize button) it would be better. My biggest concern graphically is with the overall galaxy view, and as Dimuyen mentioned it does come across as kind of unpolished feeling. I really don't know if this is close to it's final form or if you are planning other improvements or not. Here are a few specific critiques on the galaxy map: Fuel range, scan range, and territory are all important map overlays. They way they overlap as a series of transparent fill layers doesn't look very refined and it also gets confusing. I'd consider having at most two levels of fill overlay (e.g. a darker shade for territory and lighter area for scan coverage outside of your territory) and the third element (e.g. fuel range) as a dashed line or something. Or the territory could be one type of line (thicker solid line), scan range a solid fill, and fuel range a thinner dashed line. The nebula effects look grainy and muddled, and they are hard to read while not adding much spice or life to the galaxy view. The fleet icons (and other icons around the systems) are pretty dull and also not dynamic. What if icons scaled to the size + style of the biggest ship in the fleet? Or scaled based on the number of ships. What if when you zoom in the icon fades out and you see an actual ship model in its place. Similar criticism applies to the fleet icons on the system view - they aren't too engaging and feel like a place holder. Again, I don't know if any of this is a placeholder or not. I think we should be able to zoom in even more on the galaxy map so that it feels like a smoother transition between system and galaxy view. I would consider having the actual icons scale a bit depending zoom scale. right now, whether zoomed out fully or all the way in, the icons seem to occupy the same % of the screen size. Just a few idea. Thanks,
Yes, we'll have the ability to colonize from the system view. Yes, the layers are a work in progress and that may help to the unpolished feel @Dimuyen and others are reporting. This is an old issue that received several suggestions for improvement, including from yourself. So, we'll take this additional feedback into consideration for when we rework the layers. Agreed. We're not totally happy with the current Nebulae graphics either. They don't seem to gell very well at the moment. This is something that will also need to be improved, and another reason Dimuyen and others may feel the UI/graphics seem unpolished. Great suggestions, you're right. Having different sizes for the icons depending on the number of ships is a great idea. Also, having fleet icons turn into a real ship model in the higher zoom levels is also an interesting thought. We'll see what we can do. We can see about the possibility of adding another zoom level to see systems even closer. However, there are technical considerations to take into account, and I'm not sure what exactly we would win with another zoom level between the system view and the current highest zoom level. So, I'm not sure it justifies the effort. As for the icon scalling and occupying about the same % of screen size, that was on purpose, because either you're in or out, you should be able to see things more or less at about the same size. However, we'll give it a bit more thought. These were great ideas Mezmorki, thanks a lot!
Do you intend to reconcile this suggestion with scanning tech at all? Right now, at the basic level, you get zero information on ships, even when they are in the same system. You don't know how many there are, and have no clue as to their size. Will you then introduce this after a certain scanning level has been achieved, or alter the basic model?
Good points. And this is why you always need to take everything into consideration when making a change, even if at first glance things look like great ideas, everything needs to be considered.
I put some more thought into the graphics and posted a powerpoint with them. Again, I'm not a professional art director or anything like that, so I hope it's of some use. I did find that most of my observations were on the game creation screen. As for the tutorial thoughts I think it would definitely help. I worry that the transition from the simple menu to the complexity of the main game view may turn off some players upon their initial viewing of it.
Oh right...borderless window. Usually this is a window that doesn't contain the standard window border yes. It usually defaults to the resolution of the desktop. That way it looks like fullscreen but one can tab out and such without losing the game view. Some games force the window to be on top, which is a bit annoying but I expect they have some reason for doing that.
Hi Dimuyen. This is great stuff. The majority of the remarks you've made are in the todo list for the UI and Light polishment phase. We've created an internal ticket with this ppt attached. We will address all of these issues. Thanks!
The main issue I see is trying to display the data from multiple layers at once without too many clicks. This is quite a bit of a challenge, as a novice user would have to go through the different layers at once. For us, it's less of an issue since we've played for some time, but I could see this being an issue. So what I think there needs to be is a sort of better "Combined" layer than what is currently there that displays information from the many layers from top to bottom.
