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XPiratez / User Interface Redesign Ideas

« on: September 17, 2021, 02:43:26 am »

I truly adore this game, but you can sometimes hear the UI creak under the weight of the content. The sheer number of different armor, weapons, and items makes it difficult to keep track of everything as is, but it isn't helped by how the UI presents you with information.

First, a disclaimer. I'm not a programmer at all. So a lot of what I may suggest may be completely unrealistic given the current engine limitations. I am deeply indebted to the enormous amount of work this mod took to make it operate within the constraints in place, so my suggestions should only be interpreted as placed in good faith, and with a deep reverence for the gaming experience this mod provides. In putting together these concepts, I was mindful of the commitment that OpenXCOM has no intention of ever going beyond 320x240 resolution. I tried to work within that constraint.

I'm going to focus primarily on how information regarding armor presents itself, but obviously a lot of these suggestions can transfer elsewhere.

The two main issues with how information is presented is:
1. Inefficient layout makes information more hidden than necessary
2. Inconsistent formatting and placement makes information less immediately scrutable
3. Heavy reliance on written rather than visual information



I'm going to illustrate these issues by using two early game armors as an example: scale mail & warrior.

If you're a player trying to decide between these two, this is what you would encounter in trying to parse the information:



Issue #1 is immediately obvious. You can cycle between the two armors as much as possible, but the listing format requires you to scroll down to see the full entry of resistances. Once you do that, issue #2 also becomes evident, because when a resistance is at 100%, it does not get listed. So for example if you wanted to know how good scale mail's burn resistance compares to warrior's 80%, you might scroll through the list a few times before realizing it's not there, and finally concluding that it's worse than warrior's. The heavy reliance on verbose descriptions in issue #3 also plainly causes and exacerbates issue #1. Almost a third of the space devoted to text is dedicated to conveying just five numerical values (the armor values), far more than would be necessary. The lack of a line break between the item description and the additional information about the armor also increase the amount of reading necessary.

I think this necessarily affects how people play the game, because if there are obstacles in parsing information, players might be encouraged to just ignore it. This seems to come up often regarding the issue of armor values vs. armor resistances, where the latter is often far more consequential than the armor values, but it's easier to just glance at the top lines, because scrolling down takes too much work.

Focusing on just the armor resistances for a moment, I used icons and color-coding to create a mockup of how the same information can be conveyed visually.




You like?

I used icons from game-icons.net to convey the resistances. They're not always a perfect match but they are as follows (going down each column): charm, piercing, burn, concussive, laser, plasma, daze, cutting, chem, choking, anti-e511, bio, electric, EMP, warp, mind, stabbing, hot, cold.

In retyping this list, I did not need to consult the list of damage types in the game, because the icons were representative enough that I could tell just from looking at them. It becomes far more immediately legible where each piece of armor shines, just by quickly glancing at the relative values. If the information was laid out like this, you also would be able to switch back and forth between the two entries and readily compare, because each piece of information (e.g. charm resistance) would be in exactly the same place.

There's a reason icons are so prevalent within user interface design, because the human brain parses visual imagery far quicker than written information. You can go even further of course, and convey other pieces of information using icons as well.

The next example starts to get much more cluttered, but you can see much more information at a glance. You might be able to guess what most of the icons mean.



For the technical people out there, how feasible is any of this? My first thought is baking the icons into the background image, and just using clever use of spaces between characters to 'fake' a table layout (kind of like how the Codex bootypedia entry currently does it.) The pallette limitations of the game probably wouldn't allow color-coding based on value, but I'll leave that to the brainers here.

Setting aside the technical limitations, what do people think about the design generally and its ability to convey information? (For the sake of discussion, please don't focus too much on my aesthetic choices)

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XPiratez / Wonderful Gaming Experience

« on: June 07, 2018, 10:31:01 pm »

I finally "beat" this mod and it has been a glorious experience. It took about 200 hours but I also cheated to skip over what I thought was needless tedium (e.g. searching for the last non-surrendering enemy in a ramshackle village before hover armor).

This is generalized feedback on the balance and overall experience.

Mint isn't very worthwhile and just adds busy work; you make almost as much money with selling chemicals and the like with the added bonus that you don't have to create the raw ingredients. Mints don't make any money while you're creating the raw 'ingredients' in the form of lower tier chips. Perhaps their numbers need to be tweaked to replace the battletank manufacturing? As a criminal enterprise, counterfeiting seems to make more sense lore-wise than manufacturing high-end military hardware. I'm confused by the extensive list of hellerium extraction recipes for ammo given that many require a superconductive wire and hellerium is buyable every early on in the game. I suppose it provides an efficiency gain but for the sake of everyone's sanity, why not just raise selling price? I also don't understand the need for extraction recipes like the money purse. It adds busy work without providing any other benefits. How I wish you could adjust engineer count from the main screen instead of clicking through each entry. Or for missing ingredients to be highlighted in the list. This is another way the 320x240 limitation for the engineering screen is so crippling.

This is more OXC feedback, but I wish Bootypedia entries were more detailed. Some weapons would be listed as 0 damage and you'd have to break out the calculator to figure out if it was worthwhile at all. The advice that you should try out each weapon in the battlefield (unsure if that was serious) is unrealistic given the "research > build > supply with ammo > use by someone capable > deploy against something vulnerable" chain that you have to travel. 320x240 is just way too small of a resolution for conveying weapon and armor information in the current entries. This is yet another hurdle to competently using VooDoo powers; they're too much of a headache to decipher.

If there was one feature I could request, it would be real-time on-screen damage indicators. I would love love love to be able to know if my hits connected, what they damaged (shields? armor? other?), and how much they damaged. This is important from an accessibility issue because currently the only hint you have is a sound cue. There is the CTRL+H screen but this is kept vague (perhaps deliberately) but is completely inaccessible if the enemy gets a reaction fire. I ended up using copious amounts of debug mode to test out weapons because otherwise the systems were too opaque. This is especially so when considering the daze mechanic since the CTRL+H screen and the ALT key typically lists damage as 0.

I'm genuinely and seriously impressed at how thematically consistent the whole experience is given all the different parts it's built from. Of course there's a nurse outfit and of course there's a seductress outfit. I couldn't get over how hilariously logical that the best off-hand weapon for a seductress to hold is a canteen of refreshment. I just imagined someone desperately quenching their thirst after a round of "seducing". I loved the bandit town and ratmen missions for their blatant hypocrisy; a bunch of inner city folks minding their business in run-down surroundings getting blown apart by highly-trained and well-equipped uber soldiers. Even the hunting missions being completely trivialized by hover armors makes perfect sense and (intentional or not) acts as a commentary on technology and hunting. Something else which impressed me is the quality of the writing throughout. Very consistent voice and generally very precise language.

I used a crew of 12 soldiers (+ HMP) most missions and never really had to reload magazines except for base assaults and the siberia mission. Similarly, despite casualty chains, the only time I remember losing a soldier to panic was during a Star Gods base assault and I didn't really pay attention to combat stress as a mechanic. Once I got lasguns, I didn't see a reason to use anything else for most missions. Custom lasguns with AP ammo are almost game-breakingly good. Autolasers wrecked any big targets (e.g. tanks and sectopods) while Heavy lasers and portable lascannons were too slow which meant a miss was catastrophic. Gauss weapons (except heavy gauss) were generally too slow to be worthwhile. With the exception of the Commando Rifle for quick long-range reaction shots, master weapons were not worthwhile once you have lasguns.

I'm sure Dioxine is tired of hearing this but there are way too many weapons that are useless and way too little difference between the rest. Especially since mechanics encourage you to use the same type of ammo (since totals of the same type get tallied up). End game gets dragged out with research specific people (e.g. mercenary engineer, and belter??) and I'm grateful that there's VIP kidnapping at least.

Some equipment I'm still unsure how to use. The destructor outfit is quite expensive to make and requires good voodoo stats but the ball of annihilation is quite lackluster (tested it against mercs). A lot of VooDoo equipment is way too situational and lackluster to be useful; especially considering how fragile VooDoo gals are and how much you have to invest in their training. I'm happy to get corrected on this. The Assassin outfit gives a tremendous bonus to firing, but its lack of a jetpack seriously limits the number of long-range shots it can even attempt during a mission. Dragonfly was a fantastic armor for snipers *if only* because the line of sight advantage from boosting up was so valuable. I felt the same about advanced power armor; way too slow to be of use as a frontline tank.

I picked Red Codex and mostly regretted it. Early game chainmail is amazing but the blood ax is annoying to build and is comparable to the slightly faster electro-sword.

I didn't like base defense missions as a mechanic. They don't come with much specific warning (hyperwave give you a hint of what, but not where) and the consequences primarily serve to set you back and add to an already lengthy gaming experience. It also added the logistical headache of requiring a crack team with good equipment parked at every base JUST IN CASE. I would love it if you could reclaim a lost base by invading it back! Similarly, I never was able to shoot anything down with base defense even though I had 4000+ defense rating. It would be cool if damage imposed would at least reduce the number of spawns; otherwise base defense facilities serve absolutely no purpose if they can't meet the hit point hurdle.

Big props to ivandogovich for his QOL mods. I can't imagine playing without streamlined armor manufacturing and I'm not sure why Dioxine doesn't implement that mod by default.

Overall, this was an awe-inspiring mod and easily my favorite gaming experience of the past year. I'm even considering playing through again although at over 200+ hours I am definitely not doing it without cheating in brainers and money. I am so jealous of your talents Dioxine! I gladly donated!

If I was to give advice to new players feeling overwhelmed, it would be:
1. Sell all your chips and ignore the mint
2. Melee is both satisfying and highly effective!!
3. You can pretty much safely ignore VooDoo if you want
4. Stay clear of mercs and star gods and their vessels until much later
5. Siberia mission is a pain but so worthwhile because AP laser ammo is the greatest
6. Keep your infamy up by shooting down shipping; even if you don't have the gals to pillage
7. No matter how tempting, don't sell optronics, integrated devices, or force circuitry

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XPiratez / Mission Specific Vessel Roles

« on: May 28, 2018, 12:11:52 am »

I noticed that some missions allow only certain vessels to be used. The problem is the missions disappear soon after and there doesn't seem to be a clear indication (as far as I can tell) on which ones are good to keep around for the future. The only notice you get is when a mission is flashing. Is there a list of which 'roles' each vessels fall under?

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XPiratez / Man after Man, an Anthropology of the Future

« on: May 15, 2018, 10:45:46 pm »

I read this book as a teenager and it has stayed with me ever since. I was so excited to find it again: http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_3/01_en.htm

Basically, it envisions how humans could look like after x number of years with evolution and genetic engineering. The tone and setting reminds me a LOT of X-Piratez and the original XCOM's concept art. Maybe Dioxine can't make use of the concept art contained. It's written by an anthropologist after all.

Sample:

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XPiratez / 1-tile "Melee"

« on: April 20, 2018, 11:27:38 am »

How exactly do 1-tile "melee" weapons work? I know with traditional melee it's advantageous to strike from behind/flank to reduce enemy evasion; do 1-tile weapons have the same advantage? Also, how is accuracy calculated? Most of the guides I read seem to claim that misses should almost never happen but this has not been my experience. I have not done extensive testing but it definitely seems like an ax is much more reliable than a ripper or auto-ax. Even when a ripper claims to have 135% accuracy, I still get my gals "shooting" the ground when attacking. I also get messages at the bottom claiming that the enemy evaded my attack.

So:
1. Does melee evasion apply to 1-tile weapons?
2. Is the accuracy rating comparable between the two types of melee weapons?