Clunky User Interface - some suggestions

[robin]

Hello all. First post here. I just downloaded Star Traders Elite for my iPad the other day and am really enjoying it. I'm also really impressed with the amount of support the creators are still putting into this great game.

But honestly, the user interface is pretty bad. Way too many button taps are required to do almost anything. Practically half the game is spent tapping the 'back' button.

This game is in desperate need of a more streamlined interface. A 'Main Screen' button available on every single game screen would be good. The 'Main Screen' could have buttons directly linking to the most commonly used screens in the game, such as the 'Star Map', 'Exchange', 'Star Dock', 'Palace', and 'Spice Hall' screens. This would greatly reduce the excessive amount of annoying button taps.

Also, on the 'exchange' screen, a 'buy max' or 'sell max' button next to each item would really help. Same for the 'explore' screen- 'take max' or 'leave max'. Also, a 'sell all' button on the exchange screen that sells everything in the ship's hold at once, except for 'water'.



And a few more suggestions:

- add laser and rocket sounds to the ship combat screen that play each time a weapon is fired (button tapped).

- add spaceship engine sound while the ship is traveling on the main star map.

- make 'notify' messages much longer, bigger, and in the middle of the screen. Maybe even an audio alert could play when it pops up. As of now, they are just too short, too small, and too easy to miss.

- fix the typos and mis-spellings. For example, 'assassin' is spelled with four s's, not 'assasin'.


But it's still a great game. With a streamlined interface, this game could become superb.

[johndramey]

Hey there,

While the game does have a lot of back button pressing, that's just the nature of the UI. It can't really be helped too much, although I guess I can see how the placement in the upper corner can be a little troublesome.

As a small FYI, depending on your device if you hit the "option" face button it will bring up a menu which will let you access the map, contracts, rumors, etc screens. The face buttons being to the left and right of your home button. If you have a newer device that has no face buttons I'm not sure if you'll be able to access this pop up menu, but it is there for most of us.

I do agree with you that a "buy/sell max" button would be nice, but it's not that much of a hassle to just click through the buy menu and move the slider. Sell all is actually not a really good idea, because you'll be wanting to micromanage your sells in order to maximize products. I guess in some situations you just want to clean out our cargo hold, but most of the time you'll be wanting to cache products to sell at the proper times.

As to your other suggestions... Well I don't really want to have more sounds in the game. I actually usually mute the apps and things that I do on my phone because I largely use it at my office or on the subway. Sounds could be a personal taste thing, but I'd rather the devs spent time smoothing the game out itself or adding new game content than sounds.

Notify messages being more noticeable.. Well I guess I can see that, but again I think this is a personal taste thing. I don't mind them how they are currently, although if it is possible I'd love, love, LOVE it if they could somehow be color coded or include more "at a glance" information. Something like the water shortage/crew dying thing, but with faction information or more readily apparent political information (e.g. TRADE EMBARGO being highlighted or having a simple Flag vs. Flag graphic tacked on to the bottom of the pop up)

Misspellings and things.. Well we are working on that! Please post any and all you find, they will be addressed in due time.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the game and hope that you'll stick around. Not sure if you are aware of the brothers' other games, but you should check them out Templar Assault Free and Cyber Knights free. Also keep an eye out for their new game that will hopefully be coming out soon, we just closed off a wildly successful kickstarter for it.

[robin]

Mar 5, 2013 21:18:40 GMT -5 johndramey said:

Hey there,

While the game does have a lot of back button pressing, that's just the nature of the UI. It can't really be helped too much, although I guess I can see how the placement in the upper corner can be a little troublesome.

As a small FYI, depending on your device if you hit the "option" face button it will bring up a menu which will let you access the map, contracts, rumors, etc screens. The face buttons being to the left and right of your home button. If you have a newer device that has no face buttons I'm not sure if you'll be able to access this pop up menu, but it is there for most of us.

I do agree with you that a "buy/sell max" button would be nice, but it's not that much of a hassle to just click through the buy menu and move the slider. Sell all is actually not a really good idea, because you'll be wanting to micromanage your sells in order to maximize products. I guess in some situations you just want to clean out our cargo hold, but most of the time you'll be wanting to cache products to sell at the proper times.

As to your other suggestions... Well I don't really want to have more sounds in the game. I actually usually mute the apps and things that I do on my phone because I largely use it at my office or on the subway. Sounds could be a personal taste thing, but I'd rather the devs spent time smoothing the game out itself or adding new game content than sounds.

Notify messages being more noticeable.. Well I guess I can see that, but again I think this is a personal taste thing. I don't mind them how they are currently, although if it is possible I'd love, love, LOVE it if they could somehow be color coded or include more "at a glance" information. Something like the water shortage/crew dying thing, but with faction information or more readily apparent political information (e.g. TRADE EMBARGO being highlighted or having a simple Flag vs. Flag graphic tacked on to the bottom of the pop up)

Misspellings and things.. Well we are working on that! Please post any and all you find, they will be addressed in due time.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the game and hope that you'll stick around. Not sure if you are aware of the brothers' other games, but you should check them out Templar Assault Free and Cyber Knights free. Also keep an eye out for their new game that will hopefully be coming out soon, we just closed off a wildly successful kickstarter for it.

Hello. Thanks for the reply. I'm guessing you are not one of the developers, and I cannot say I agree with most of what you said.

You say you want even more more game content, but how about about they first fix the basic problem of the clunky ui? I don't think that's an unreasonable request.



"While the game does have a lot of back button pressing, that's just the nature of the UI."

Continuously and incessantly having to tap the back button wouldn't have to be 'the nature of the ui' if there was simply a main screen button on every game screen, and that main screen having buttons linking to all the most common screens. I doubt it would be very difficult to implement. This simple change alone would greatly streamline the ui, and make the game much more playable and enjoyable.

And as far as the added sounds I suggested, that's great you feel they aren't necessary because you already play ST on your muted phone in your office. But many of us do not. Some of us do want more sounds. I would think the more options, the better. One size doesn't fit all.

As to the other games you listed that I might be interested in, I will not even consider buying any more of their games until the ui problems in Star Traders are corrected. Thank you.

[robin]

One other suggestion, devs.

How about adding the player's current money amount on the Ship Upgrades and Spice Hall screens? That would also be very helpful.

[johndramey]

Nope, I'm not a dev just a player.

I totally realize that my opinions are just that, my opinions. However I do feel that there is no point in cluttering up the UI with extra buttons. having a "system map" button on every screen would not really benefit the player too much, because most frequently you want to do more than one thing while landing. e.g. sell goods, buy fuel, recruit crew and fix sail damage pop to mind. If you are going to include a system map button, why not include a contract button? What about a training button? The problem then becomes having too many things incorporated into the UI and giving it a general sense of being cluttered.

I also realize that one size doesn't fit all and that is why I generally softened my statements with a "this is up to personal taste" or "my feeling is that" before or during my explanations.

Sorry if my reply came off as snappy or you felt that I was belittling your opinion, I didn't mean to sound like that at all. I was just trying to offer up a counterpoint to some of your opinions, explain what I think is the rational behind some other things, and support and throw in my two cents to other points.

As to your other suggestion, well I can't say for certain when it comes to the ship upgrade screen but the Spice Hall screen does have your current bankroll listed, it is just a little hard to find. It's generally at the bottom of the text, and will say "Your current bankroll is $xxxxxx" Maybe making it easier to see would be helpful?

[fallen]

robin - welcome to the forum and the community. Thanks for your suggestions and feedback! Star Traders is almost 2.5 years old, and it was our first mobile game, so I have to warn you up front that there are some limitations that are simply baked into the game that its way too late to try to unravel.

I hope you'll find that we keep working on our games to make them better. So, we appreciate the honest feedback and will try to take it and go. Hope you can find some kindred Captains here on the forum to discuss tactics and strategies.

I have added a couple of issues to our bug tracker for your requests so we can prioritize them onto the backlog and take a look to see what we can do:

ST-821 - reduce the required use of the back button. We might investigate an ant trail UI (Space > Orbit > Urban > Exchange) that lets you hop back quickly. Cory will really have to weigh on this one.

ST-822 - add credits to the Spice Hall and Ship upgrades screen

ST-823 - add more SFX (engines, firing sound)

ST-824 - more buttons in the exchange / explore screens (take all, etc)

On the notifications -- check your game options. You may already have some options there, and if you don't then there are some goodies coming in the next release for you.

johndramey - some of the little UI things are tough to help from an Android POV because robin is on the iPad. I am not sure you'll see the "Your current bankroll is $xxxxx" yet on iPad, but it will get looked at. Thanks for the help tho!

[contributor]

Yes Robin, welcome to the forum. Suggestions are good. Some are possible and some are not. Some are also a matter of personal preference. For example I have a hard time imaging myself enjoying engine sounds while I fly around the map. But no worries, because I have also made suggestions that I though would be really cool/useful, but nobody else seemed to see the point of. C'est la vie, uh.

I was also wondering if the back button issue is not more "felt" on an IPad. Because you're screen is bigger you are required to move your hands more to press buttons. On a phone or smaller tablet it's probably not such a big issue, at least not once your thumbs get good and limber. I don't know what the solution to that is, but I think it may be somewhat specific to larger screens.

[johndramey]

Mar 6, 2013 20:20:26 GMT -5 fallen said:

ST-821 - reduce the required use of the back button. We might investigate an ant trail UI (Space > Orbit > Urban > Exchange) that lets you hop back quickly. Cory will really have to weigh on this one.

That's actually a really good idea if possible. Everything sounds so easy, but coding is magic and sometimes things are impossible within the laws of magic.

And I didn't realize the differences between iOS and Android were so great! Sorry if any of the information I posted was wrong or out of date, Robin.

[fallen]

johndramey - we are working hard to scrub out all the differences between the two games, but its on-going.

On the ant trail idea -- that will be a "it can be done" or "it is impossible" based on the ST architecture. Cory will have to weigh in when he comes out of working on awesome HoS stuff!

[Cory Trese]

Mar 5, 2013 18:41:39 GMT -5 robin said:

Hello all. First post here. I just downloaded Star Traders Elite for my iPad the other day and am really enjoying it. I'm also really impressed with the amount of support the creators are still putting into this great game.

But honestly, the user interface is pretty bad. Way too many button taps are required to do almost anything. Practically half the game is spent tapping the 'back' button.

This game is in desperate need of a more streamlined interface. A 'Main Screen' button available on every single game screen would be good. The 'Main Screen' could have buttons directly linking to the most commonly used screens in the game, such as the 'Star Map', 'Exchange', 'Star Dock', 'Palace', and 'Spice Hall' screens. This would greatly reduce the excessive amount of annoying button taps.

Also, on the 'exchange' screen, a 'buy max' or 'sell max' button next to each item would really help. Same for the 'explore' screen- 'take max' or 'leave max'. Also, a 'sell all' button on the exchange screen that sells everything in the ship's hold at once, except for 'water'.



And a few more suggestions:

- add laser and rocket sounds to the ship combat screen that play each time a weapon is fired (button tapped).

- add spaceship engine sound while the ship is traveling on the main star map.

- make 'notify' messages much longer, bigger, and in the middle of the screen. Maybe even an audio alert could play when it pops up. As of now, they are just too short, too small, and too easy to miss.

- fix the typos and mis-spellings. For example, 'assassin' is spelled with four s's, not 'assasin'.


But it's still a great game. With a streamlined interface, this game could become superb.

Robin -- thanks for joining our forum.

My name is Cory, and I'm the developer / designer for Star Traders.

The interface in Star Traders is still a work in progress, especially on the iPhone/iPad versions. I am sorry that you find the buttons annoying.

We're working on improving. I see that my brother, Andrew (fallen) has logged a series of requests to implement your ideas. This is a great start.

As we bring the iOS version of Star Traders to feature-complete, we will start adding new features and functions. This will include a better 'notify' system (complete re-write) and improvements to the main map (sound effects, more navigation graphics.)

A couple of questions:

1) Are you not hearing the sound effects (explosions, guns, etc) when you are in combat?

2) I didn't find the misspelling of assassin -- any hints?

[BlastGT1]

Robin, glad you've joined us on the forum, but belittling someone who replied to your post about what device they play on, and their status related to the game just isn't necessary. The people on this forum generally do their best to be helpful, especially the devs, so please extend the same courtesy to those who are here, as they have extended it to you.

_______________________________

"Issue the standard Cadar greeting, Ensign."
"But sir, that's one of our allies!"
"I know that, Ensign. We're confirming that the treaty is still in effect!"

[fallen]

Please all, let's welcome a new-comer who has new suggestions. Everyone will have endless differeing opinions about things, so that is for Cory and I too sort out.

Already some good ideas have come out of it. Thanks all!

[johndramey]

Yes please do stay and feel welcome, robin. The brothers seriously do take any and all criticisms and ideas to heart. If you think something should be changed or added in just post about it here. Having new faces is always a give thing. He'll, I'm a new have myself. I only just joined the forum due to the afore mentioned kickstarter.

Stick around! Have some fun! Help the brothers make even more awesome games!

[Cory Trese]

Fixed ST-822 for next release (Adds Credits display to Upgrades and places it was missing in Spice Hall.)

For both iPhone and Android.

[johndramey]

Woohoo! Thanks Cory, you're awesome.

And also I apologize for the massive amount of typos in my previous post. The stupid auto-correct on my cellphone can be.... aggressive about the changes it wants to make.