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Messages - bouchacha

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XPiratez / Re: User Interface Redesign Ideas
« on: September 18, 2021, 11:47:12 pm »
Wow ... To me that screen screams "information overflow".

Guess each person has it's own preferences though :)

The second picture is meant to be the worst-case scenario, meant to show just how much information could potentially be shown at a glance. Otherwise, the Warrior mockup is literally the same amount of information, but just not hidden behind a scrollbar.

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XPiratez / Re: User Interface Redesign Ideas
« on: September 18, 2021, 08:20:44 pm »
Didn't attach this one (also by Chronocide Commando)

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XPiratez / Re: User Interface Redesign Ideas
« on: September 18, 2021, 08:19:55 pm »
Chronocide Commando made some really great mockups on the Discord (attached)

The limitations on icons will be at 8x8 at minimum, but we could also use 12x8 for more room without messing with the number of lines. Using icons (provided they can be easily legible) saves a ton of space, and would allow us to potentially have way more information (e.g. NV, ThV, weight, etc) displayed. No scroll bar would be necessary.

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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 / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: September 08, 2021, 07:29:48 pm »
Avoid ships that have a circle around them. And while the equipment is lost, your hands are not, but they need a couple days to get home. I think.

Is this hinted at anywhere? Curious because it seems like a catastrophic event anyone could accidentally run into.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: September 04, 2021, 08:10:11 pm »
Early on, I keep encountering a brown ship that engages in an unavoidable "ramming" maneuver against my puny airbus. The ramming is inescapable and results in the complete destruction of every hand and equipment on the ship. There doesn't seem to be a way to know exactly what ship does this. Is this really intended behavior or is this a bug? How would someone playing on Ironman supposed to identify and deal with this?

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: August 29, 2021, 07:08:57 pm »
When you sort research by cost, what order is it in? I can't tell if the most expensive is at the top or bottom of the list.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: August 25, 2021, 05:00:56 am »
Does the StatStrings mod by ivandogovich still work? The last time it was updated was in 2018 for version 99J1

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6311.msg97212.html

If not, how do you enable statstrings for XPZ?

9
You can define two waypoints and force a Minigun (or the like) to split its Auto shots between them, saturating the whole predefined area with high velocity lead.
Oh my god this significantly upgrades the utility of machine guns

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XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions
« on: July 15, 2018, 11:02:08 am »
Can`t destroy that droid infront of that building. Thought, melee weapons would do it. But NO!

You really should look at the resolution options for this game. Playing it 'zoomed' in that far is going to be seriously painful as the game progresses.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99J3 - 7 Jul - Harvest Moon
« on: July 15, 2018, 10:51:49 am »
What is 'zero policy'?

12
Yeah, guess maybe given such variety, using rules of thumb like "looks good for high str" instead of precise math would be a better idea in the first place.
Though then guess one should also trust that mod doesn't have like 10x variance in weapon effectiveness, to not blindly equip something rather useless.

Seconding this. Ideally you could just rely on heuristics for "good enough" outfitting but there is indeed a huge variance in damage and effectiveness so it ends up feeling very frustrating when you don't do it properly. Especially since the latest version hid the (very significant) stat bonuses under the ANAL tab. I completely understand why that had to happen but it got rid of some very important guidance.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: June 17, 2018, 06:27:18 am »
That does bring up another question, though.  Can melee reaction attacks be done with items with secondary melee options (like the aye-phone or flintlock pistol, preferably unloaded so you don't shoot instead)?
Yes, this does happen. Although I don't know how the game prioritizes which weapon and which attack type.

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Thank you Eddie for correcting my misinformation. I edited my post.

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I think I was careful with my words. I didn't say that research was not important, I said it wasn't as important as vanilla XCOM. In that game, it wasn't unusual to quickly expand to a 200 scientist laboratory to burn through the research tree. That is neither an optimal strategy or even a good idea in X-Piratez. Given that many X-Piratez players are steeped in Vanilla XCOM habits, it's important to dispel that a default strategy in vanilla will not necessarily help in this mod.

Unless the latest version changed it, armor worn by Church enemies are resistant to laser.
I don't remember seeing this but I could be wrong. The exception is that Type 1 shields (personal refractors) are indeed resistant to lasers while most other damage goes right through them. Is that what you mean?

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