Feedback on the new UI

There are some things I like, and some things which are clearly not done. 

Biggest  "huh?" was when trying to buy resources, if you dont have enough money, it wont let you buy as much as you can.   Is this intended? 

the buy and sell buttons seem a bit smaller, and given they are the most important buttons in the game and all... that hurts a bit as well.

And when alt tabbing to write this post, and going back to the game, the map is all black, rendering the game unplayable which is interesting too.  I doubt this is intended.

Great news! I'm really behind on this beta, so it's time to test it properly!

So far things I've found (partially covered during last stream - can't remember which one was it Mohawk's or Zultar's)

Bugs that need fixing:

1. No debt counter in reveal map - you found on blind (unless I am indeed blind and didn't see it somehow). 

2. No resource counter either - you can only see the icon but not how many resource tiles exist. 

3. When you tab out, the map focus is changed to something that looks like very far right bottom corner, so basically all you get is a black screen and you have to click on one of the HQ's in order to re-focus the UI.

4. No in-game log. 

5. Buildings can't be turned on/off. The buttons are just not there (IIRC they exist in dev build but not in public) and hotkeys don't work.

6. No tooltip when you click on buildings, so you can't see how profitable they are, how many resources stored etc.

7. Production upgrade (Research lab) status changes when you click on upgrade button and not when the upgrade is actually finished.

8. If tile auction takes place and you click on "View tile" once again the focus is way off - it shifts to the bottom left corner every time.

8. Turning unprofitable buildings off option is somewhat wonky. I am pretty sure that hydroponic farms in this screenshot were pretty profitable, yet they were turned off once I bought their owner (and couldn't be turned back on - see 5) 

http://i.imgur.com/j1bFwHO.jpg

9. The "Win" screen has a weird  "Button1" button, which takes you back to the map but there's no way go to post-game statistics. F1 doesn't work as well.

Things that might not to be bugs per se, but worked well before and I'd like to have them back:

1. As PB said, you can't buy less than 10/100 units when you click on buy/shift buy unless you have sufficient funds to buy the entire batch (10/100). Selling works fine, like it used to. 

2. Clicking on the primary resource doesn't focus on the best available tiles of that type. 

3. I'd like a higher visual contrast between buildings that can be built and those you can't afford.

4. Clicking on power building doesn't show power strength overlay anymore unless you have enough money/resources in order to build it. Which makes no sense, since you're not required to have a free claim. 

5. While in resource deficit it doesn't show how much money you lose per second, only how many units.

6. Clicking on special buildings at the top doesn't open their screen. It's only accessible via special buildings tabs. Not very convenient.

7. Speaking of special buildings, I'd really like to be able to build them without opening construction screen or using the hotkeys, i.e. having the icons available via main interface.

8. The red buyout button is no longer red! Wuuut?

And just two little aesthetic related things...

1. The auction window... That bright royal blue strip could use some recoloring... 

2. If IGN is too long, smaller font is used to display it. I know that's probably better than just trimming it, but it does look unprofessional, IMO.

I'll add to the list when and if I find more stuff. Also I'll provide more screenshots for further clarification if needed. 

I prefer the old one, but specific points below:

- The panels (player list on the right, resources on the right) looked far cleaner. I don't know if you're going for a more 'digital' type look, but I liked the previous version better and the text was easy to read.

- The big gap between the $ symbol and the number looks a bit weird. Bearing in mind I've never seen a resource go over $999 I don't need why there's a need for the space (which looks like it could support numbers up to $99999. The symbol itself is also out of vertical alignment with the text ($ slightly too high).

- Mines now looks worse than before. I'd say it was one of the less visually appealing buildings before and I couldn't tell you how to improve it, but it looks quite small and insignificant compared to the rest of the buildings now (although that's not specific to the new UI)

- Not sure what the bit at the bottom left is meant to show to the left of the 'claim plot' button, as mine just shows a grey rectangle with 6 red squares on it (can screenshot if necessary)

- On a similar note I think the info at the bottom left takes up too much room. There isn't really the need for a massive upgrade button which you only click 5 times in the game, nor do I need my HQ type shown in such massive letters! I also don't think the 'claim plot' button is needed, as with the old UI you could just click on the number of claims button.

- Text on the building popups when you go to build something is too big

- I preferred the plus / minus signs being next to each in the resources dialog. Saves you having to move the mouse if you've done something you didn't want to to do, or are trying to get a specific amount purchased (eg. buying 10 then taking away 2).

- The plus / minus buttons when buying stock are a bit dark when enabled, along with the already mentioned point that it doesn't go red when you buy out

- Minor point, but when you win I liked the old version where it zoomed into your HQ and some fireworks when off!

- I DO like the new buttons for switching between special building abilities

- I DO like the notifications that pop up at the top right, it's better than having it in the chat window.

- The UI in general seems far more responsive, which is good

Bugs:

- Nothing happens when I click on a building, so I can't turn it off or auto supply it. Same applies with special buildings (I know I could use the new buttons at the bottom left, but I'm used to clicking on them to use their tools)

- No numbers come up to tell me what resource I'll be getting off a tile when I place a building on it. So for example the '+2' I'd seen when placing a geotherm doesn't appear. Same with the text that shows (for example) 50% bonus.

- When exploring the map you get the box at the top which shows you how many tiles of each resource have appeared. The box is there and I can click on the resources to jump to them, but no numbers are shown. Additionally if I however over that box it doesn't show me the breakdown of high, medium and low tiles available.

- When I go to build a farm I however over it on the left and the box to click to build the building comes up to the right of it, but it's in white. Same with the reactor, steel mill, chems, glass and electronics

- When you win it says 'Button 1' at the bottom

Played a bit more:

- After resuming a 1v1 skirmish game it said 'Player Name' instead of 'Mrs Production', and showed her as having 5 of each of the special buildings. Worked fine when I switched over to the old UI, but broken straight away when I went back. Haven't been able to recreate this one after restarting the game, but I do have a screenshot.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691654839291812905/12860B037E6044D4D25DF241BDECFA5CC996A77D/

- The problem I had with white building icons being white is intermittent. Whilst trying to recreate the above problem this wasn't happening, then happened again!

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691654839291812255/9B5C3F0598715BC2F841C5A788FE0A9C540F7382/

Additional minor issues:

You can't see how many bonus resources you get if you found on top of them. 

I'm ok with the looks of new mines, but I'd like to see deposit level in addition to its type.

Got occasional "White button" glitch as well.

I'm on the fence re how new tile protection works and public research announcements. But it's probably just me being conservative.  

AI seems more competent.

Hey everybody,

First, thank you so much for all your feedback about the new UI. It has highlighted a number of problems we've missed internally and highlight the features that you guys want.

Second, we put a new version of the game with lots of UI fixes up in next version. We haven't fixed everything you have found, but we've fixed a lot and we really want your feedback on that. The more iterations we're able to make, the more solid beta 7 will be and the better the game will be.

If you haven't gotten the next version before, here's what you need to do:

1. Right-Click “Offworld Trading Company” and select Properties->Betas

2. Check Code: MohicanSun2015

1. Select the “next_version” beta from the dropdown (this may require restarting Steam)

Warning - the new UI is the default in the next_version and we modified the option settings, so there may be some strangeness when switching between versions. I strongly suggest that whenever you change versions, make sure you go to settings and make sure they are set to what you want.

Please don't give feedback in this thread unless you're running the next version because otherwise things will get really confusing for us.

Thank you so much for your help! We're working hard to make the new UI great!

-Scott-

Had a look at the update:

-Building tooltips have come back, however they're broken. Looks like it's just a generic popup rather than being passed the data for the building you're on -

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691655474782771216/31467DC14FBAB6C1B9230BB49AD2C1565C34FAB2/

- Minor point, however the little radar icon when scanning the map is white rather than the circles you used to get -

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691655474782771420/352B376EFD48D7DB81881F4C1F123C646258ADB2/

- The patent lab text size is inconsistent, all the percentage symbols are doubled up and energy vault has a random <br> tag in the description -

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691655474782771770/5CA52B16DBC4B3CBBCCA63F6597B1F5B16F1030B/

- The number of resource tiles available on the map is now visible (although if you hover over it still doesn't show the split of low/med/high, however the overall box needs widening as it looks a bit weird -

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/691655474782771643/EB87C32D866324E0DE4D008B64D36C8B20FC945F/

- Previously when you hovered over the different HQ types before founding it showed you a summary of what bonus's they got (eg. 50% less steal for expansive), but now nothing appears

- The buttons to turn a building off / ship / auto supply and delete are back again

Might sound like a lot of complains but nice job getting out some fixes so fast

I accidentally did some testing (cause I forgot to switch out of next_beta) too:

Hovering over unscanned terrain does not reveal the the terrain type (I was testing while sitting in the QM queue; this s irrelevant if reveal map is on; also, maybe this is intended?)

Hovering over resources before found does not reveal the amount that you are going to get.

I didn't keep a screenshot unfortunately but I believe I saw the case when it showed that I am not consuming any power when I clearly had buildings working and wasn't producing power.. I'll double-check this one later.

Here's 4 screenshots I did keep:

http://imgur.com/dk5FOuG,2dxhlnp,YwqKohW,nfyytHy#0

The first one is an auction. I don't mind as much the description as the tile that actually got auctioned. You can tell I got nothing out of that auction (and for 32k I think, so the AI was bidding quite hard)

The second one is what Bertiee had pointed out, except this is what happens when you actually buy the guy: his HQ shows up as your colour (which is mildly confusing) and he does not disappear from the player list. This was after loading the game.

The third one is what every single building shows up as when you hover over it at.

The fourth one is probably not a bug because you can only see 9 stocks on the screen, I assume the last one, the one owned by green just doesn't fit in.

Also, as mentioned before, a good chunk of hotkeys doesn't work, like shift+ctrl to turn all the buildings of a kind off, changing the gamespeed (including pausing) and if I recall correctly b for bidding on auctions.

Edit: One more thing I forgot; in the old UI, clicking on a resource on the market tab centers the screen on the highest available source on the map, the way it works before founding. Well, this doesn't work in the new one yet

I agree with most of what Bertiee said up here. I will also put my vote in for the old UI being my preference by a long shot. You guys got it right the first time with the simple, clean, and easy to use interface!

Things I like about the new UI:

• auction warning. i'm not always paying attention and occasionally boost some tiles right before an auction comes up which gives your opponent time to look around the map and buy that EMP to shut you down. having a visual warning that an auction is coming up is really nice
• applying goon squad to tiles. having that arrow that points to the tile you're trying to goon is great. it makes it quicker to know you're hitting the right tile
• seeing the resource prices for offworld market all in one place vs the old hovering method
• i liked being able to right click to cancel out of some of the menus for things like the offworld market (not sure if that was new or not)
• i've heard from some people that it responds quicker than the old UI (I didn't notice a difference myself but never had issues before)
• the offworld countdown clock. I'd like to see it go a step further and put a small digital display overlay with how long until the next launch goes off
• debt is now colored in red which makes it more apparent. i'd still prefer it in the horizontal configuration like before and not stacked on top of each other

Things I don't like about the new UI:

• it looks incredibly busy and very distracting. playing a single game on applicant level i had to fight the urge to quit the game over and over. it was sensory overload and it seemed like the UI was designed to look futuristic and fancy rather than for maximum functionality (i apologize if that comes across too harsh).
• fonts for the resource prices are still too hard to read quickly. even though it makes it look futuristic i'm not a fan of the little dot in the zero for the chosen font. bring back the old font! it was very easy to read at a glance.
• i understand what the goal is with plotting the price of a resource but having it behind the price of the resource is very distracting. if you move it somewhere else that would be better (or eliminate it). you need to be able to see resource prices quickly and clearly.
• as Bertiee said the bottom left corner is way too big especially for what role it plays in the game. the upgrade button and special buildings buttons are a small part of the game. The single most important display in the game is the resource prices and they should take up almost the entire left side like they did before. I think you had the sizing, spacing, and placement right with the first UI.
• this is a minor issue but i realized comparing back to back what i liked about the old UI that i didn't even know i liked. The $ sign in the stock price was a muted color and smaller than the stock price numbers in the old UI. When you look at it you can tell exactly what the price is because it's only a number. with the new UI having a dollar sign that's the same size/bigger than the numbers it makes it look like a number itself and takes you that extra second to decipher
• Buttons for buying and selling resources need to be right next to each other (i liked the vertical format). very easy to sell and buy resources quickly to get the right amount
• buttons for speeding and slowing the game should be smaller as i'd imagine they are not used that frequently. meanwhile buttons for buying and selling stock should be a little larger IMO.
• when you click to bring up the menu for the offworld market it blocks too much of the screen up with a visual of the offworld market
• before found- we need the resource distribution of high medium and low and the quantities back as Bertiee said. played a game and had to idea what HQ to found without it

Other suggestions for the new UI:

• i personally don't like how large the notices are when something happens to a player. it takes up too much of the screen and it's distracting seeing something flash in the corner of your eye all the time. proposed solution: if someone hits themselves with an adrenaline boost just show the symbol of the adrenaline boost with a plus sign and have a green plus sign next to it. So Mr Patent uses an adrenaline boost just show +AB next to their name and make some part of it green to show that it's good. If they're hit with an EMP show - EMP symbol and give a visual clue of it being bad (so make some part red). just a thought.
• it would be nice if there was a small visual to show how many of the black market items have been claimed thus far (at least for early game). since the black market prices vary based on the number of participants in the game i always have to do a quick sanity check vs other prices to see if anything has been purchased yet. so if i could look over and see someone purchased an EMP i would know i need to go get a goon squad fast. doesn't have to tell you who bought it or whether it's been used yet or not....just that one has been purchased at some point in time (feel free to ignore this one if it doesn't fit with what you're going for)
• need some explanations as to what the 2 columns of numbers are for when you bring up the offworld prices
• I'd like to see the notifications go away for things like "Mr. Patent built the first hydroponic farm." I think of this kind of like the old quarterly reports from early betas. It doesn't really help me and takes up space with something that's not really all that important. You're constantly scanning territory to see other people's HQ's anyway so you'd know they built a farm.
  
  

A few more little things:

• I'm not sure prices changing colors adds much. In some sense, sure, you might want to avoid markets with falling prices and enter those with rising prices, but given how easily prices can be manipulated, that could be a trap. I think I preferred the plain text, which made cross-price comparison quicker and was less information to decipher.
• Engineering labs have been touched on earlier, in terms of them showing the max upgrade level queued rather than achieved, but my issue with them is that the research progress is generally less clear. Part of it is that I never had to pay attention to the text description for any upgrade level, but descriptors like advanced were less useful than seeing 2/4 bars (or whatever the equivalent is). 
• Patent labs have also lost some clarity. It's no longer easy to tell at a glance which patents have been researched and who owns them. The button being darker does give an indication of being unable to research a patent, but it's more subtle (and I believe not being to afford a patent shows up the same way?). Some sort of return to the idea of patent names color-coded by owner would be nice.
• The buyout button doesn't stand out in any way anymore, being just another + on the list. The flashing red button from before was really attention-grabbing, which was a good thing.

Otherwise, I'm one of the ones seeing large performance improvements and I'm looking forward to the new UI being ironed out. 

Stock ticker info stays popped up after mousing over.
mouseover info is made up of useless placeholder stuff.
I'd like an auto-sell switch in the production menu that auto-sells everything of specific resources until switched off again.
The font in many places is so big and the space in rows so little in some places that it takes 2 rows to show 100 / 100 water in the offworld launching overview, for example.
Cant stop auto selling power, the button isn't there like it was in old UI.
Mouseover info for structures in the left hand resource overview remains even after you stop mousing over.
"Mars Plot" auction shows code instead of text.
There are no breakdowns anymore of what consumes or produces which resource, how much and many of each unit and structure are interacing with that resource, as there used to be.
There are no post-game statistics.
Adrenaline Boost should speed up the construction and offworld launching animations.

Thanks for all the excellent feedback! Keep it coming!

-Scott-

Evidently the new UI still needs some work. But on my E8400 GTX470 the UI is now a lot and I mean a lot more responsive. I was suffering from UI lag between 0.5 seconds to 4+ seconds as the game went on. But with the new UI the game is totally playable!

Once this UI is more polished I will be playing this game a lot more. Keep up the good work.

I didn't have much time to further test the current built, but there were a couple of issues I stumbled upon in 1.5 games I had.

1. I'll start with quite a huge one: the buyout percentage is just not there! I suppose you won't notice that on manager, but try playing on CEO and you will.

2. At some point I couldn't place buildings despite the fact I had the resources/cash and also claims:

http://i.imgur.com/BO0IjR7.jpg

I was completely stuck (and so was Mrs, Patent's notification) until I reloaded the match. Unfortunately, I rewrote the replay by mistake. 

3. Almost every single building can't be built by clicking on the icon and placing it, you have to do that twice or three times. The game does not 'remember' your choice very well. 

4. No tooltip with amount of cash you need when trying to place a building you can't afford. This is very inconvenient. 

As mentioned previously: 

1. Plot auction window includes the code instead of the icon. Same with the tooltip for upgrade button. "View plot" still centers the screen on bottom left corner of the map instead of the actual tile.

2. No color coding of the patents that already taken, no red buyout button, no breakdown of consumption/production neither for buildings nor for resources. 

3. The hotkeys are still only half working. 

4. No proper win/loss screen nor game stats. 

Hi everyone!

Thank you for all your feedback! We've posted another build in next_version and would love to have your feedback. Beta 7 is coming quickly and we want to have everything ready for you when it hits.

First thing I've noticed - if you didn't have enough money to place a building before it used to say 'Must have $xxxx to construct', but now it doesn't.

Great catch, Bertiee. Added to the list.

After a quick glance I noticed several game breaking issues:

1. Still no buyout percentage. 

2. In reveal map mode the debt is frozen, there's no countdown. Your only option is to found with 150k debt.

3. In scanning mode there's no scan limits. The number of scans available is stuck on 0 but you can scan as much as you want without any cooldown.

4. No stop/resume auto-selling of power.

5. Hotkeys for turning buildings on/off, shipment, game speed etc still not working. Buildings seem to work fine though.

6. Still no in-game log. You have to scan the entire map to figure out who was hit with what BM effect, 

Less game breaking but still frustrating:

1. No breakdown of consumption/production if you mouseover resources in resource list. 

2. SP games aren't saved. Or at least can't be resumed after you save them.

3. When using UI instead of hotkeys, you might need to click several times on building icon in order to place that building.

4. Occasionally notifications get stuck next to player list.  

5. When placing a building you can't see how much of the resource you're gonna get, nor how much cash you need if you can't afford it yet. 

6. Construction progress available only for certain buildings (for example, steel mills have it, farms don't).

7. You can't change replay speed, because the hotkeys don't work and there's no UI button in replay mode to do that. 

8. The red button is not red. And in general I'd like even more visual distinction between things that are possible (buying stock, constructing buildings etc) and things that you can't afford. Red/green text was very convenient in my opinion. White is just confusing.

9. Overall, I noticed a significant slowdown in UI functioning compared to the previous build. But there's always a possibility the lag is on my end. Since my end is indeed very laggy.

I also noticed that Majority + Destroy Buyouts are default. Not sure if that was intentional. In addition, the default difficulty in SP is now set on intern. Which, in my opinion, is pretty cruel towards new players who might consider it to be the 'normal' difficulty, They will be unpleasantly surprised if they happen to try multiplayer. Granted, they will be surprised anyways, even if they get used to Executive, let's say. But this way the blow will be so much harder... 

That's it for now, but more to come, hopefully.

Btw, the scanning thing is actually a new gameplay thing. Basically, in single-player only, the game is in turn-based mode while in scanning. The game only moves forward everytime you scan, so you can go as quickly or as slowly as you like.

Hey InSyncOTC,

Thanks for the feedback! This is great stuff!

This should be fixed in the next version.

Buildings with construction animations play their construction animation, those without it show the seconds. Whether or not we want this is to be decided.

Fixed the first part. Need to dig into the replay to see what's going on.

Quoting InSyncOTC, reply 18

9. Overall, I noticed a significant slowdown in UI functioning compared to the previous build. But there's always a possibility the lag is on my end. Since my end is indeed very laggy.

Hm. Is this throughout the game or does it get worse as you play?

Some more small things:

• You get the scanning tool and can trigger the scanning animation even with reveal map on. Also, what InSync said about debt sticking at 150k and not moving at all
• The middle two bars for the engineering lab have no space between them. Queuing research highlights the bars correctly, but it's a bit disconcerting to only see only three bars (one of which is double-length)
• Adding on to what InSync said about replay speed, it seems to just mirror game speed. I also seem to be locked into my own perspective as well; at least I couldn't switch to an AI perspective
• Buildings with carbon scrubbing still show as consuming carbon (though the carbon balance on the resources bar is correct).
• I tried to buyout my own stock using both a regular click and shift-click and it wouldn't let me, despite having more than the required amount. 
• Like InSync, I am also experiencing less of a performance improvement from this UI build, to the point where I'm not sure it's significantly better performance-wise than the current UI

Oh, this is cool! Any plans on implementing something like that in MP as well? Believe it or not, I heard people saying they loved scanning and hated reveal map. 

I see. Personally, I like the timer. Or an option to allow it in addition to animation, But that's such a minor luxury...

One more thing: tiles that are claimed, but unused, no longer have an indicator in the top area

The Alpha/AA doesn't appear to be rendering correctly on OSX, both for UI elements and text, which makes it quite difficult to read.

I've included a few pictures of the issue, along with half a dozen other issues. The Annotated folder contains annotated images, with comments highlighting the specific issues,

Most of these are UI related, but there a couple of spots where the AA goes slightly off as well. 

I hope thats helpful?

You still can't see cooldown numbers when someone founds which I think it an extremely important addition. This needs to be visible to prevent players (especially new players) from founding and getting stuck. I founded close to an existing colony and had no idea how long i had to wait to claim the important tiles near my HQ.

*EDIT*- played on beta 7 and noticed the numbers are a little better and slightly easier to read. The black market and the font for the black market however are still too small. i have to squint to see what values they are. Same problem with the auctions that come up.