Messages

1

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: January 24, 2014, 07:55:11 pm »

This is kinda what I was thinking as you saw before. I'd do one thing different though: I'd replace the "abort mission" button with the options button. That's what the ? button does (not "help"), it opens up the game pause menu. Abort Mission could be put in there.

That would be nice enough.

This is one thing I somewhat disagree with. Shortened, maybe, but I don't think the bars should be totally gone. It's pretty hard to estimate just how much of your soldier's health is left when it's just a number with no visual indication. Though for TUs it would be fine. Maybe it could display the total number next to it, so HP could show as "18 / 25" or so instead of just 18, if bars were to be totally cut.

If the bars can be shortened, that would be ideal IMHO.

Nice one, I hadn't actually considered this for level viewing. But what about move up/down? In your design, that's only one button. That can't wrap, especially because each move takes TUs. Does your button bring up a dialog that asks which way to move?

Yes, that was what I thought (tough I didn't mention).

Good point, having it as a single cycling button would work best. Mostly because html-radio-like callouts aren't implemented in Xcom in any sort of way. But it could use the OS to do that, I suppose.

I didn't meant an exact radio button, but rather something that behaves and looks similar, just to the user to have this feeling of "toggling between options"

Also, the crouch reserve button was separate because it works separately to the other ones (you could opt to reserve TUs for both shooting and then crouching after shooting, for example) It does take up space so it could be moved to long-pressing the regular crouch button (though this isn't quite as intuitive). I honestly never used it, so I wouldn't mind not having it (it wasn't there until TFTD anyhow)

Seems very unnatural. I never used it too.

Otherwise, your proposed layout is great. I really didn't like having to put buttons at the top of the screen...

Thanks, good to see it helped 

EDIT: So about the 'confirm shoot/move' button.

I was thinking  your Move Unit Up/Down button could be replaced with a 3-way control mode toggle, it'd have:

Move Mode: Move unit around.
Look Mode: Turn unit to face things.
Move Up/Down mode: Swipe unit up/down to move it up/down a level

That way the problems with having to tap the cursor to confirm a move/shoot could be avoided, and the button to the right of it could be replaced with a "Confirm" button.

That's a very clever solution, if it can be made I think it's the best one.

2

Builds & Ports / Re: Android Port

« on: January 13, 2014, 10:48:31 pm »

Hi,

I've been following you guys on this board because I love the project. When I saw you guys here discussing about doing the visual adaptations on OpenXCom to fit smaller screens I though I might have some to add, as a designer, just some suggestions, entirely open to be discussed:

- On smaller screens I think some UI elements will have to be out or subset in a menu, 'cos there's a lot on the screen now. A good start, in my opinion, is to match Apple design guidelines when they say to design for the 80% majority, which in this case means that commands used by 20% of the people could be put out. Viewing the main screen is always more important than having a non-standard option.

- For that above, I don't know if this was covered already, but the ideal case is to have a simpler version for smaller screens aside with a complete version for bigger screens. All good system/apps with multiple versions do so: the smaller the screen, the simpler the interface (simple in this case means 'with less features').

- Buttons like the "view all levels" and "help" could be cut out.

- The soldier stats and rank could be simplified or cut to open space. In the stats case, for the sake of briefness you could leave the numbers and cut the bars or, if possible, change the bars into something smaller.

- A clever idea is to eliminate all back and forth buttons (up and down too) that can be looped (level viewing, prev/next xcom operative).

- I don't think a toggle button with all four options (like the TU saving mode presented) is a good idea. People will try to press only the part they want, making it uneffective as a big button. Two ways to make it work: show only the current mode or don't use green background, but a html-radio-like above the options.
( I don't get why the crouch option have to be apart, but I must have bypassed it here... )

- Last, but not least, the soldier stats screen and the soldier ground screen could be called by pressing the soldier name/stats and both screens could have a button to call the other screen (stats/ground).

I made a quick screen of what I've been thinking, hope it helps somehow.

So that's it, keep up the great work guys