Hi all,

first of all let me thank Stardok for this great game.
During the game play i noticed several UI glitches and problems which i would like to present in order to help fixing these kind of issues in the future lifecycle of the game/bugfixing.

This Post is only about UI Problems.

I found problems belonging in following categories of UI Problems:
1) UI Design : Conceptual misplaced buttons, Background "Decorations" in the same design as buttons, intuitive selections, continuity
2) UI glitches: Missing graphics
3) Same functionality different tool-tips/help
4) Side-Bar functionality
5) Structure of Options

1) UI Design

Conceptual misplaced button

Following example shows the "Done" button placed right above a "Turn" button.
As both buttons are related to a "confirmation" the user can easily press the wrong button (in this case: turn) and will have no option to revert this decision.
Placing two kind of different Confirmations and leaving both active for user input should be usually avoided.[BR][BR]






Background "Decorations" in the same design as buttons

Decorations in the game information screens are often drawn in the same style as the used 2d buttons. It is not intuitively understandable for the user which is a real button and which not. Some examples:



and



active 2d button ready to be pressed





a 2d decoration in the same style




2d decoration and 2d button on the same screen. Is it intuitively understandable for the user which one is connected to an action ?



Intuitive selections

In the following screen i tested with multiple persons how they would try to switch between the races. There is the stardock defined "left/right" arrows on the left part of the screen, and the big race icons featuring a circle around the currently selected race in the middle of the screen.
The testers were trying first to select the specific race by the icons in the middle of the screen. After this was not possible they noticed the arrows.





Continuity

The set-destination mini-icon is located in different places for a selected ship and a fleet. When the user is going through his fleet using "Find", SPACE or TAB assigning the ships to different waypoint he has to move the mouse for the same functionality to two different places if he uses only the graphical UI (and no hotkeys):








2) UI glitches

Missing graphics

Using the rename function in order to rename a Planet, Fleet or Ship brings up a predefined window.
While for planets it looks OK:




it is not persuading for ship-renaming. The ship model is missing:





3) Same functionality different tool-tips/help

Enabling users to understand quickly the extensive options of a strategy game is always a challange. GC2 implements different ways to inform a user about the actual selection or function.
- Tooltips on mouse-over
- Rightclick bringing up informations about a specific item
- Specific part of the screen informing about the benefits/details of a selection.

First of all some tooltips are missing like in this case for "i".
Second issue with the same screen is that the whole bar has a rename function bound to it as well as the top right button. They have differen tooltip informations bound to it though:




From the negotiation window the user knows that right-click an item will bring additional information on the screen:




It should be also made available in the Tech tree once the user is expanding the Tech tree to the complete window.
While the fullscreen Tech tree may offer the user a good overview about his tech state he can not get in the same screen also informations about the benefits of the specific technology:






4) Sidebar functionality

While using a mouse with scroll-wheel allows the up and down scrolling without problem, the direct usage of the scrollbar has two issues.
Long press the graphical arrow keys (up/down) results only in one move with no difference to a short press. This is not conform to the behavior the user is used from his usual environment/OS.
Clicking on the bar, holding the mouse pressed and moving the sidebar up and down allows scrolling in one direction but than the scroll operation is discontinued, even if the user did not abort the original operation.
iE: He moves the sidebar slider down to see if a save game is existing. He notices that this game was overwritten long ago and decides to move the sidebar slider back on top in order to select an actual save-game.
The behavior not only in the savegame screen present but everywhere the blue sidebar is implemented in the game.




5) Structure of Options

The option menues are not well/enough structurized. It is making it unnecessary hard for the user to actually find a specific setting.
Is it necessary to draw a box around every option ? Cant a bigger box be drawn around settings in the same categoriy (example: brightness,contrast, ambient light)





Background Information:
System Setup:
AMD x2 4800
2gb ram
Nforce 4 Ultra
8-Channel VIA Envy24PT
Nvidia GeForce 7800GT, 256MB

Sofware:
WinXP SP2
Nvidia 91.31
ADM Driver 1.2.20
Nforce 6.70

Screenshot Software:
Snagit