I've been thinking alot about the UI setup, and would it help if the interface would "build" itself as the game progressed? Take all the buttons that arn't applicable until later in the game and hide them (UnitedPlanets, Trade, even the ForeignRelations button on the main screen.) Then, as the player gets to the point where each button is needed, a popup will alert them to its presence, its purpose, and the option of going to the respective screen. This way, the user isn't overwhelmed with options from the start.

Also, to add onto Myros' example...a while back (about 6 months) I showed my younger brother the game. He's a fan of the RTS, but had never played a turn based strategy game. I won't lie to you, he was quite confused as to what was going on. But since then, we've added tooltips, cleaned the interface visually, and added some screens. Then, last week I came home to fund he had been playing for about 3 hours. He had already won his first game on easy and had bumped up the difficulty for another round...without me sitting over his shoulder and telling him what to do.

peter: If there were 3 main things about the UI that you would change, what would those be. And be specific - "Move these buttons to here because...." or "Sharpen this image and add a box around it." helps much more than "Make the interface easier to understand". Eveybody else can chime in too...the more feedback, the better the game will be!

Everyone seems a bit wired. Not surprised as the produt must be tough to develop as it gets towards deadline date. The forum has more people on it (diverse) and the old stagers are getting passionate about content.

Re my post - I dont mind if all points are not responded to on the forum. I just assume they are being read and noted or disguarded - so no need for an FAQ wasting peoples time when they should be developing.

Wyrenn-
"It just seems weird when new player complain that this game is hard to get into "

I cant see anybody complaining about this anywhere on this thread - I do see me expressing a view that the slower pace of the new beta's suits me.

I assume the few bugs I have listed are noted.

steevo

"jpub:

1) You make a convincing case on this. I see wher eyou're coming from in that you want there to be more surprise on this. You'd like to have to guess at whether the Drengin are smart or not. Wheras if you just set them to random you may end up with an easy game or a hard game. You'd rather have the option to set the game to a difficulty level and it take care of the rest. I'll see what we have time to do."

Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say. I'd like to be able to choose from a range of dfficulty settings without knowing from the get-go that Race X will be geniuses and Race Y will be morons. I'd rather discover that as I play the game. I'm glad someone said it more clearly than I did.

The same thing goes with number of AI opponents. I'd like to have some influence over whether I'll meet just one or two major rivals or tons of them, but I don't want to know before the game begins the exact number there will be.

The reason isn't laziness; it's simply that I want there to be some surprises. Within the context of the game, it seems kinda silly to know exactly who is out there and how difficult an opponent they will be, before you've even encountered any alien races.

However, I understand the fact that working on one thing means you can't work on something else, and that time is running short for adding new features. If something like this can't be implemented before the game's release, perhaps it could be included in a post-release update. I'd be happy with that.

I kind of suspsect if the UI was a significant issue for people that it would have come up in the past several months of beta testing.

I think as strategy games go, GalCiv's UI IS quite intuitive. Not a single one of the people at the game mags who have previewed the game have had a problem figuring out how to play the game and they (due to an oversight by someone) didn't receive the user manual at all.

I'm comfortable with the game's UI. I think it's quite intuitive. There is nothing in the game that you can't get to through a mouse click on a button. The basic ways of playing the game are very straight forward.

In short Peter, I think your opinon is that of a very small minority. The UI has been the way it has been too long and shown to too many people over that period without complaints for it to be a significant issue.

Incidentally, Peter, I've been working on commercial PC games for about a decade now. You would make a much better case if you did not try to abscribe my resistance to some of these suggestions as emotional pride or something.

The Corporate Machine, for instance, was considerably more complex to learn (because it was such an unusual game) nd didn't have anywhere near the UI help that GalCiv has and UI was never an issue with its success.

There will always be a percentage of users who have difficulty learning how to play a given game without reading the manual. Our job is to conclude whether that percentage is high enough to warrant investing resources into lowering it to an acceptable level.

It is our belief that the things I've laready mentioned that we're going to add will be more than enough to make the game instantly understandable to virtually all new players.

Does that mean there will still be new players who find the UI "opaque"? Certainly. But that is unavoidable.

I agree that users are the final arbiter of whether a game is good or not. What we don't agree on is that your opinion is representative of a signifcant percentage of players. You seem to assume that your views are carried by most or even a large minority. There is no evidence at all to support that.

Honestly I think GalCiv has one of the nicest interfaces I've seen in a strategy game for a long time. I didn't have to check the manual to find out what does what as it is all pretty much self-explanitary. After my first couple of games I knew the interface by heart and was much more comfortable with it than I was with the interface in Civilization or MOO2.

I'm quite pleased with the intuitiveness of the interface as it is right now. I too am a software engineer and I don't think that there would be a large percentage of users who would find it unintuitive.

I would like to request, though, if you add the functionality to set a difficulty level and have the game choose the races and intelligence level that you don't remove the existing functionality. I like the way it works now.

Shadowgopher

In my view GalCiv has an aesthetically pleasing colour scheme, the layout is clean, crisp and clear and it is mostly intuitive with one or two rough edges that can be refined and no doubt will be.

Most things, as you read through the threads have already been pointed out to the developers previously. It has been noted that re-stating the same bugs is unhelpful.

So. perhaps we shoud:

a) wait for the next beta in about a week and/or
perhaps you guys could post the tweaks, bugfixes and developments being worked on for the next beta/release version?

That way we in the betatest community could all take stock on what is in and what is out and simply point out polishes that we think have perhaps been missed?

Steve

I am with those that like the UI thus far, with the expectation of some of the improvements that have already been mentioned here and in other threads (accelerator keys, tool tips, and other details) will appear before release date. I think Peterb12 is way off the mark with his comments about the UI.

I would like to point out that there have been many treads on this forum from time to time that show a need for a better aid to those who have never played GC before. Although the Encyclopedia contains some very broad hints about how to succeed in the game, the hints seem to be so broad and subtle that many newbees miss them entirely. If some of the posts of hints for success were gleaned from this forum and put into an entry in the encyclopedia, and then put into a section of the manual (perhaps called "some useful hits for successfully playing GC") I think it would enhance a new player's chances of new users enjoying the game from the start, and make it easier for the rest of us to point them at those hints. As to "walk them through" tutorials, I find them too cut and dried, and often too short on fulfilling their purpose. Since they tend to be built into the code it is too difficult to change. Something in the encyclopedia would be easier to change and make available to everyone.

I am a retired systems development programmer, with years of experience in service before I went into development, and as a developer I had a lot of contact with the service programmers. I can relate how frustrating it is for the development community to try to build the best aids possible to help a new user with the product, only to have them iignore those aids. "Why can't we get them to RTFM?" was a common complaint from service. I don't hold with the expectation that everyone will be able to "hack" their way into playing any game, even though Stardock is trying to make GC as intuitive as possible. There will ALWAYS be someone that does not see what is right before their eyes. And, don't forget, what is intuitive is more based on common experience than it is on any thing else. Why is F1 more often used for help functions? Because that is what is more commonly used as the help key within the PC community. (Guess what. In the mainframe world, it is the PF3 key.)

The UI is fine. It's at least good enough that I can't remember having any problems with figuring it out when I first started playing. It all seems pretty intuitive and easy to figure out.

About the tutorial thing: I never use them. Most people I know never use them. They're too slow and boring for me. When I get a game, I usually dive right in. I don't usually sit down and read the manual before hand (except the backstory). I keep the manual by the computer while playing, and use it whenever I find something that seems confusing or that I want more information on. I know a lot of people do the same thing.

The only thing that tires me out is when I control a large number of planets.

It takes too long between turns.

It takes too much of my time micro managing planets.

To explain in a little more detail. Late is the game I sometimes get 10-15 planets where either a social or military project has been completed.

I have to go into each planet and tell it what ship to build next or manually pick the next social project.

Even worse I somethings complete a Galatic Wonder and find dozens of planets building no social project and I have to go through all the planets and assign projects.

This wastes to mch of my time.

When a Miltary project is complete it should just procede on with the next ship.

When a social project is done there should be a general rule to pick the next project.
I would like to tell all planets rated under 30 to pick the next least expensive social project, If a planet is over 30 pick the next available cheapest wonder if available or pick the next cheapest social project.

Do not waste our time going to each planet.

Present only one screen, a list of planets
with completed military projects, social projects and unhappy planets. Then if you want further micro-management click on the planet in the list and jump to it to override the default pick.

Do you play with Auto-build enabled? That keeps building the same ship that you picked until you change it.

It sounds like you are not using the governor screen, either. You can create a queue of social projects. You can't add wonders or achievements to the list, but those you can set on individual planets and then the governor will assign the social project highest in the queue after the improvement is done.

The Planet list will have the ability to change the social and military projects directly from the list.

The UI is fine.....gameplay balance seems to be fine.....techtree depth seems to be ok......galaxy layout is very good......

It does need some more depth.......it would be nice to have more espionage functions, such as targeting specific planets/social/military projects, even influencing ships to join your side......perhaps creating/supporting third columns/terroist groups to do your dirty work for you.

Trading ships to another power should have diplomatic consequences if they are military ships and the power is at war with another empire. You could require payment to deliver the ships secretly.

more colonization events.......even have those events come back mid-game and affect the civ later. Such as leaving ruins undestroyed winds up giving you a tech bonus later.....or byproduct from planet worms is turned into a product that improves morale.....

Stronger minor races......they should be much harder to kill........give them a high soldiering rate and perhaps a high defend bonus.....

The UI is fine, but I find the "neutral" UI the most
intuitive. The evil and good UI are not as clear, but
it is not a problem, since players will be used to the position of the buttons by then.

'more colonization events.......even have those events come back mid-game and affect the civ later. Such as leaving ruins undestroyed winds up giving you a tech bonus later.....or byproduct from planet worms is turned into a product that improves morale.....'

I suspect something of the sort is already planned, because the results of those events are stored in a file seperate from the rest of the planet and colony data.

Cari,
I think you've missed technician's point. Even with autobuild and governor you still have to click through each planet screen. They may have decided to build perfectly good items and you not have to change anything, but you still need to click through them!

I would agree (as stated before) that something needs to be done to streamline the new turn info. As mentioned when a new turn starts you firstly get a GSN report listing everything built on which planets, you then have to click through every planet, and finally you have to re-click through every planet to clear your event window. Too long and tedious later in the game when lots of things happen each turn.

paul.

Thanks Solitair.

You know when you loose control of the Senate could it be made possible when you are playing evil to assinate the opposition or bribe the opposition and get control of the senate once again ?

When I play evil I never change my government in the first place...

A possible answer to technitian's comment about having to deal with ALL of the planet completions would be the oft asked for completion display filter. I don't remember whether it was promised or not, but it may be too much to put into the first release. But I would hope it could be included in a point release soon after.