Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

[bramcor]

Perhaps it is a cop out to not have it, excuse the pun "in black and white" off the bat but you would only need to decipher the colour code once, instead of "Murphely Lawely" guessing the wrong savegame every time.

From experience, I can assure you, that if a player has the slightest possibility of misinterpreting a situation it will happen - and usually not just once. Its not that they are ignorant or stupid - they are just paying attention to something else (the game!) and expect auxiliary functionality such as saving to "just work" and "make sense"...

[bramcor]

... what if some of your users are colourblind?

Dammit - I wish I had thought of that

However it is a very difficult problem to embrace, as it would most optimally happen as early as concept development, when different color scales are picked out for the tone of a game. During development or even now, as the game is being remade, it is excessively difficult to implement changes to the graphics that are functional (aka usability-focused & colorblind-friendly) as well as pretty (aka following the vision/tone of the graphic design).

From a holistic point of view there seem to be few "good" solutions to such problems.

[SupSuper]

Actually there's a much better reason to not have different colors, and that's because they're not in the game palette.

Besides, why stop at a mere tag when you can do so much more?

[pmprog]

Like the idea!

I'm assuming that you have to click the game to see those details, and double click(?) to actually load the game? Think you'd need a proper load button IMO, just to make it obvious. I can imagine people clicking the game to load, and waiting  

During development or even now, as the game is being remade, it is excessively difficult to implement changes to the graphics that are functional (aka usability-focused & colorblind-friendly) as well as pretty (aka following the vision/tone of the graphic design).

Yeah, from a remake, you don't have the luxary of design. You have to make do.

It should be possible, actually, to create a high contrast graphics pack by replacing the palette and some of the images

[SupSuper]

Like the idea!

I'm assuming that you have to click the game to see those details, and double click(?) to actually load the game? Think you'd need a proper load button IMO, just to make it obvious. I can imagine people clicking the game to load, and waiting 

Well I was thinking hover to see the details and click to load/save, to keep it consistent with the original. It's nothing final, but I like having fun conceptualizing too. Maybe add a save thumbnail and some other touches...

[Dentrassi_BBQ]

Red Text Tactical mission, blue text geoscape view?!?

+1

Is it practical to display a tooltip when the cursor hovers over a savefile?

[j6cubic]

Well I was thinking hover to see the details and click to load/save, to keep it consistent with the original. It's nothing final, but I like having fun conceptualizing too. Maybe add a save thumbnail and some other touches...

Note that some people are already playing OpenXcom on touchscreen devices (e.g. the Dingoo). Hovering doesn't work on touch devices so there should be an alternate codepath for touch devices or an option to toggle what a click does.

[pmprog]

Then "Click to Select", and selecting displays the game details and creates a load button, which when clicked loads the game. 

[SupSuper]

Then "Click to Select", and selecting displays the game details and creates a load button, which when clicked loads the game. 

But but what about the precious purity??? That's not how the original worked!

[Volutar]

SupSuper, shyeah!!! Menu of loading and saving games is untouchable part of The Gameplay!!
Totally agreed.

[moriarty]

@SupSuper: oooh, shiny pretty new load screen functions, I like them!

Then "Click to Select", and selecting displays the game details and creates a load button, which when clicked loads the game. 

this. 

[pmprog]

@SupSuper: oooh, shiny pretty new load screen functions, I like them!

Urm, this thread is nearly 2 years old, "new" isn't the word 

[moriarty]

"new" as in "not in the original".   


and Volutar necro-ed this thread, I just jumped on the wagon after him

[Volutar]

moriarty, I don't have a habit to look onto timestamps Dude made a link to this thread so I've sent my msg here

[moriarty]

Volutar, me neither. I never noticed that this was old until pmprog remarked on it. and well, it may be old, but it's kind of interesting right now, isn't it?