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Some Suggestions for OTC's User Iterface

Published on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 By chaosmonger231 In Offworld Feedback

The game is fantastic for an alpha build. That being said, the developers MUST improve the User Interface especially on campaign. While I'm confident that the developers will do a good job in making both campaign and muiltiplayer interesting, I am worried that there will be lack of time and resource spent on improving the UI.

Here is an example 

Example No.1

If you look at the top right corner of the picture, you can see that square icons are blocking the pause button, disabling the player to continue the game. I got into this situation when I bought an AI run company and quickly pause the game. Most of the buildings were turned off.

I spent a considerable amount of time hovering my mouse pointer around that area in hope that I can click on it but alas, I only wasted my time. I did try fixing it by changing the settings.

Here's the list of all the ideas that failed: 

  • I tried toggling fullscreen on and off
  • I tried changing the resolution
  • I tried mixing up both resolution and fullscreen
  • I pressed escape and tried to click on pause button at lighting speed
  • I tried to hover my mouse pointer around the area
  • I tried to click (LMC and RMC) on the square icons
  • I tried to google for a solution
  • I tried scraping the building (big mistake)
  • I tried to build something on an empty hex (doesn't do anything)
The only way I know that fixes it (or remove the square icons) is to turn on all the buildings and have a building on all hexes. Of course this only works IF the game is unpause.  

Problem No. 2
 
Problem no. 2 is basically like example no. 1 where an icon is on top of a text/button. This is only problem when playing a single player campaign. It's not really a game breaking problem but rather its just annoying that I believe that the devs can fix with ease.
 
So in campaign mode, you get a visual (in a form of text) of the situation of the colony on the top left corner right by the claims icon. This information tells the player if the population is dwindling or not, or which resources are way too expensive for the colony. In early part of the game, everything is perfect. The problem occurs when you own any of the following: Hacker Array, Offworld ship, Patent Lab, Engineering.
It becomes problem because an Icon of those buildings shows up on the top left where the information is located. I tried everything but you can't move the icons or hide it. The only way I know to get the info is to click the escape button until menu buttons shows up (Resume Game, Settings, etc etc). Doing so will hide all the icons but the information stays. 

Suggested Solutions:

  1. One good way to fix all of the problems above is to create a movable UI. If you need more examples, check out Tera Online's ingenious UI system.
  2. Create a keyboard shortcut (unless there's one already) for the pause button. 
  3. Create a system where you have the ability to toggle Icons. An example would be to group up all the icons for Advance building into one button, one button for empty plots, one button for buildings that are off. 
  4. Postion the Icons somewhere else
Please let me know if I wasted my time writing this and that there is a fix to all this problems already. Thanks