Concerning X4

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rrfarmer
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Concerning X4

Post by rrfarmer » Thu, 16. Feb 17, 18:33

Someone please send Egosoft this book, so they can make good menus for X4

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think- ... 0321965515

<3

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Post by Toramo » Fri, 17. Feb 17, 12:44

:lol:
I agree :)

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Post by Graaf » Fri, 17. Feb 17, 19:11

Trade Fight Build DontMakeMeThink?

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Post by ShoC » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 15:49

I don't like the rebirth gui but certainly do like x3ap gui

We must remember there is so many functions we can perform that sort of gui is best placed.
My personal opinion however. I'd like a return to it
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Post by FlightJunkie » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 20:49

Oh snap :o
this is not a xenon-> :xenon: its a Borg

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Post by gbjbaanb » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 21:16

ShoC wrote:I don't like the rebirth gui but certainly do like x3ap gui

We must remember there is so many functions we can perform that sort of gui is best placed.
My personal opinion however. I'd like a return to it
or an improvement on the X3AP GUI - which although is better than the twitch-gamer UI of Rebirth, could have been improved with a bit of consistency, speed and alternative ways of accessing it - so sidebars for the ships that are selected, group selection of ships and apply menus to them, maybe reassign menu commands to a short-cut menu that's bound to the function keys or similar.

The complexity of what many people are asking for in X4 suggests that we need the old menu-driven UI in order to have the wealth of commands to apply to our in-game assets.

Cucumber King
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Post by Cucumber King » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 02:46

I wish they'd make the menus feel as responsive as those in your OS of choice.

I'm quite sure that the tempation is there to have those 3D floating menus and lots of glitter but I'd urge EGOSOFT to consider a minimalist approach, with design languages such as material design for Android serving as inspiration.

Especially as more and more data becomes available to the player, a cleaner interface can decrease the perceived overwhelming nature of it. Sorting and searching could play a role here... Let players type!

Let's hope EGOSOFT have ditched the "controller first" mentality by now.

Mouse and keyboard allow for much more efficient input when handling what will hopefully be the scalable complexity of X4.

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Général Grievous
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Post by Général Grievous » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 13:05

The best way i think is to make a tree (like Nexus: The jupiter incident), on the left side of your screen
A strategical map, like we can find on Homeworld or on the new "Avorion" game could be a very good thing too.

This way you can easely manage all your proprieties as fast and as simply as possible.

Anyway it is clear that the GUI of X3 was better than X Rebirth one.
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Post by carran » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 14:12

At least with X3 I knew what I was doing and more importantly, why I was doing it

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Post by Cucumber King » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 09:20

Has there been any news on an RTS like interface a la Limit Theory?

It could help fleet management immensely if you could just drag and click to send and have a strategic 3D in-game overview of the sector.

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spankahontis
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Post by spankahontis » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 23:29

Not had a problem with the interface of Rebirth, 4.0 is way better than the 1.0.
I found Reunion to AP to be more difficult to understand at first, minimal is good but too minimal needs to be avoided.
I found Rebirth cleaned up allot of the complexity of the UI, and numerical systems for choosing modes, hubs, etc. on the keyboard made things smoother for me.

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Post by deadmoomin » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 05:32

The dilemma is: do you want a game which enables the player to have fine grain control? or do you want a simple, shallow game where the player has very little control?

The level of control in X3 required a fairly complex UI. After getting over the initial learning curve, I actually found X3's UI to be extremely logical and flexible.

There comes a point where you can't reduce the requirement of thought in a game without first reducing the complexity of the game. I love X3 for its complexity and its UI was fit for purpose.

linolafett
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Post by linolafett » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 11:32

I got the lovely task of taking care of the UI in X4 and hope it will be useful for you as a user. There were quie a few threads already in the forum regarding UI behaviour: These threads are not wasted, i try to keep feedback in my mind when doing stuff.

I cant really say a lot regarding details, but some general things probably wont change anymore.

Main focus for me is to reduce the amount of clicks to do actions.
Buying a capital ship in XR with full equipment could take about 50 clicks. This was caused by layers, of layers of ui (sliders could not be inside a table, and had to be done in a new seperated menu).
We added this functionality now for X4. proper slider elements inside a table where you can also type in numbers (e.g for trading).
That was a must to condense the Menus massively.

Of course sometimes saving a click here and there will be problematic, so compromises have to be made to keep the overall behaviour of the Ui coherent.

In addition to that, i try to have often used interactions more prominent and the "hardcore" player functionalty not always directly exposed, to keep the Ui a bit easier to read and understand.
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Caldazar
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Post by Caldazar » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 12:37

Thank you for the response, lino. Always interesting to get some insight into the development process.
linolafett wrote:Main focus for me is to reduce the amount of clicks to do actions.
Buying a capital ship in XR with full equipment could take about 50 clicks. This was caused by layers, of layers of ui (sliders could not be inside a table, and had to be done in a new seperated menu).
Ah, I've always wondered why that was done in a sub menu.
linolafett wrote:We added this functionality now for X4. proper slider elements inside a table where you can also type in numbers (e.g for trading).
That was a must to condense the Menus massively.
That is very nice to hear. Will there also be keyboard shortcuts to set to min/max?
linolafett wrote:I try to keep feedback in my mind when doing stuff.
Then I'd like to use the opportunity to mention my personal pet peeve with the UI in the newer X-Games: I'd really love to have a complete and consistent set of keyboard commands. Read: I do not have to use the mouse and the same button usually does the same thing.

For example, I would like to dock my ship without fiddling with my mouse until I manage to click a small icon that moves relative to my ship.

I'm aware that this is probably not a mainstream concern, but I still want to ask: Where are good keyboard shortcuts on the priority list for X4?

linolafett
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Post by linolafett » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 13:33

Caldazar wrote: Then I'd like to use the opportunity to mention my personal pet peeve with the UI in the newer X-Games: I'd really love to have a complete and consistent set of keyboard commands. Read: I do not have to use the mouse and the same button usually does the same thing.
As i am currently doing a UI for mouse input, the keyboard input is by far not optimal.
Cases like having seperated tables and buttons on screen are an issue. Its difficult to get with ease in a different area of the ui without the mouse.
I am aware of it, but did not work on this behaviour so far.
It is neccessary to "fix" these cases for later controller input. I would like for joystick players and console controller to also be able to use the ui.
As the mouse/keyboard is the main input, expect a slower naviagation without a mouse.
Caldazar wrote: For example, I would like to dock my ship without fiddling with my mouse until I manage to click a small icon that moves relative to my ship.
Shift+D makes you dock, if you have the docking software installed and are nearby the dockarea.
Shift+D again to undock.
Caldazar wrote: I'm aware that this is probably not a mainstream concern, but I still want to ask: Where are good keyboard shortcuts on the priority list for X4?
Shortcuts are not my area of work. I cant really comment on this.
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Ketraar
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Post by Ketraar » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 16:34

Général Grievous wrote:The best way i think is to make a tree (like Nexus: The jupiter incident), on the left side of your screen
A strategical map, like we can find on Homeworld or on the new "Avorion" game could be a very good thing too.
I understand where you are coming from and I agree for those games, the UI was pretty good. But for the love of Nopileus, please dont!

The UI in a space game should be immersive and I would like to have the notion of being the pilot of a space ship, not a GoD entity that controls things from afar.

For RTS style games, like the ones mentioned, sure it make sense, but unless its in a nested menu, or some sort of "VR control room", I would like my cockpit view to stay as clean as possible and any functionality would need to be integrated into it and not feel like its just floating about. I know its a game, but I dont need to be reminded of it all the time by the Cockpit UI.

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mr.WHO
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Post by mr.WHO » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 18:28

@linolafett
Can you also keep in mind the combat when designing the GUI?
I mean some way to quickly issue commands when in dogfight.
I threw some ideas at ideas forum:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=387732


Also an idea to improve/expand Combat HUD without the need to redesign every single cokpit model:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=389072

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Post by Caldazar » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 20:12

Thanks for the response, lino.

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Post by Meme Turtle » Thu, 30. Mar 17, 20:18

@linolafett
It is good to know that you are looking into improving UI for X series. Every X game I have played has problems in providing convenient access to data hierarchies. While people suggest other games as examples for UI improvements, I propose to have a closer look at a desktop app you use daily: file explorer. Specifically:

- General goto is to have no more than 3-4 clicks to get to any place in hierarchy. If it takes more it might be a problem of UI not providing quick access to data or data organization itself. Sometimes, instead of having long hierarchies it is better to organize all data on one level and group it depending on some property. Think about sorting files in a folder based on file extension as one way of grouping data on the same hierarchy level.

- Mass select with a mouse is a must. Having 3 clicks is no good if I have to do it for every asset. Drag&Select and Shift&Select should be supported by UI. Best case example that new UI should improve is changing DO behaviour for multiple ships at the same time. Once I select all ships, changing that property must be the same as changing property for one ship in terms of clicks.

- RMB mouse. Consider using RMB to draw a small context-based sub-menu for selected entries. To me managing ships/stations is no different from managing files/folders on my hard drive. Once I select some files I can press RMB to call a menu where I can chose to issue a command for all files like copy/delete or chose to adjust their similar properties, which is essentially going one level below in data hierarchy(file->property) and applying changes to multiple entries. Again, example with DO behaviour, select multiple ships and select properties to adjust DO stance.

- User shortcuts. If it is not possible to have short hierarchies then provide user with shortcuts to navigate to any level quickly. Example, home folder shortcut in file browser. Why not let user customize RMB sub-menu to quickly navigate to turret properties of a ship?

- Address bar. In a file browser address bar quickly tells user on which level of hierarchy he is now and lets him navigate to any level above. Same idea can be applied to UI in X4. Instead of remembering how many times I need to hit esc to go above, there should be a ribbon which tells me that location in data hierarchy and allows me to navigate it.

This is regarding player assets management UI. As for RTS-like management of ships, a lot of ideas and examples have been provided already. All I can add is that RMB sub-menu and mass select points can be applied to this UI layer as well.

I hope my ideas prove to be of any use.

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Post by birdtable » Fri, 31. Mar 17, 05:17

Best of luck Linolafett ,, you need to be a cross between a rhinoceros and a tuberous bushcricket ... :)

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