Sir Diealot's LP

[ohartenstein23]

By 'new' you mean 'shorter?'  Groggy Bryn would work for me.

[Solarius Scorch]

Let's go all out. I'll be Morbid Death.

[CaptainCorkscrew]

By 'new' you mean 'shorter?'  Groggy Bryn would work for me.

By new I mean new, provided we don't want to reuse names (which we could).
I'm prepared, I recently refreshed my knowledge of roman literals, specifically C and D.

[CaptainCorkscrew]

Let's go all out. I'll be Morbid Death.

You have your gal as of Episode 5. It's a melee gal. Like almost everyone else so far...

[Meridian]

Here's the two-handed indicator in the inventory as requested.

To be honest tho, I don't like it. It feels out of place and can be easily confused with the stack number. So I made a new user option to turn it on and off. By default, it is turned off.

[tylor]

If you want it to look not like stack number, you can use just green and red dots

[Dioxine]

That'd be inconsistent, thus confusing.

[tylor]

Inconsistency is the soul of OXCE interface.People that know what red and green number mean, will figure what dots are the same two.

Or - make it a pair of dots everywhere.

[Meridian]

Inconsistency is the soul of OXCE interface.

Well, thanks, for throwing my year's work into a garbage can... nice xmas present.

[tylor]

What I meant is that when designing OXCE interface, it looks like when there was a choice between usability and consistence, choice usually was for usability. So, now game's UI is very powerful, once you learn all it's quirks (and thanks a lot for that), but one have to get used to the fact that, for example, middle click on item gives a Pedia entry on vessel equipment list, but omanufacturing usage in Fence list, and nothing in Vault and Black Marker. Or that U opens Pedia, but only in specific places, etc.

So, if previously usability was deemed more important than consistence, why change the policy now?

[Dioxine]

I wasn't being abstract. I meant this particular proposition makes no sense due to inconsistency with all other naming systems in place. Or, being more blunt, I don't like it and I think it sucks.

These specific examples you give are either
a) because m-click bringing up manufacturing IN item listings makes more sense than it bringing up the Pedia, and there are only 3 buttons, the middle being 'info' button;
b) because Meridian didn't add special clauses to bring up these menus in some obscure places of the game, for no one is paying him to do this job and cater to their every whim.

In general, sanity/ease of implementation is usually the 'hidden agenda', or 'policy' as you call it.

[Meridian]

What I meant is that when designing OXCE interface, it looks like when there was a choice between usability and consistence, choice usually was for usability. So, now game's UI is very powerful, once you learn all it's quirks (and thanks a lot for that), but one have to get used to the fact that, for example, middle click on item gives a Pedia entry on vessel equipment list, but omanufacturing usage in Fence list, and nothing in Vault and Black Marker. Or that U opens Pedia, but only in specific places, etc.

So, if previously usability was deemed more important than consistence, why change the policy now?

Well, if that is the definition of "consistent".... then vanilla is as inconsistent as OXCE. No difference.

Here's the same examples from vanilla:
- 50% of the time OK button is on the left, 50% of the time on the right side
- some battlescape buttons require a left click, some require a right click (for example "spend TUs" button)
- most (if not all) hotkeys work only on specific places, e.g. you cannot abort battle, end turn or show minimap when you're in the inventory... btw. you can open pedia when in the inventory, I guess by that logic I should remove it from there

And to answer the question: usability is not deemed more important than consistence. They are deemed equally important and I am trying to improve consistence constantly. If you have any good ideas for let's say the middle button in SELL screen, I am all ears...

[CaptainCorkscrew]

Here's the two-handed indicator in the inventory as requested.

To be honest tho, I don't like it. It feels out of place and can be easily confused with the stack number. So I made a new user option to turn it on and off. By default, it is turned off.

Thanks Meridian!
I think it will be a great help (once XPiratez uses the 3.5 branch). Having an option to turn it off does not hurt.

As for the discussion: The interface definitely requires some learning. You have to remember that it was designed in the 90s with a lot small screen resolutions (640x480 or 800x600 already?). It was OK for the time and the game.
Given the vast amount of screen estate we could use now the interface could be a lot better. However, that would mean a re-design and hence a lot of work. So far Meridian has tacked on bits and pieces to help with problems that occur mostly due to the nature of the mod. The original game had only a couple of weapons and it was for the most part as simple as "pistol=one handed" and "rifle=two handed". Now we have more research and items by several orders of magnitude, hence stuff like the handedness indicator, quicksearch, research tree and so on are very useful and I am thankful that Meridian implemented those things.
Do they require learning? Certainly, and as you can see from my LP this is a process for me, even though I have watched Meridians entire LP and some of Starving Poets. It's also the reason why I mention those non-obvious things very explicitly and multiple times, so that others can make use of those things more easily. I also mention stuff that could be improved in my opinion without too much work. That's pretty much the best we can do unless we want to do a complete re-design of the interface.

[Solarius Scorch]

(640x480 or 800x600 already?)

FYI: Actually, the original resolution is 320x200.

[karadoc]

I personally don't like the hands number when the item is on the ground (for the same reasons others have said). But I think I would like it on the 'pedia page.