Forum - Space Odyssey MMORPG - a massive free online space game
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1  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / GUI Improvements on: December 26, 2013, 12:13:02 AM
Hi!

I'm rather new to the community but have come to enjoy the game quite a bit in the 3 days I'm playing it. It took me a while to get used to the interface though and I still have to look where I click and sometimes even search for the buttons outright. That makes playing this game a little cumbersome. Aside from that, though, the game and it's mechanics are great. I truly enjoy playing here - great game, great mechanics, scifi and a REALLY welcoming community - what's not to enjoy? ^^

The only true problem I currently see with the game is it's interface or GUI (graphical user interface) in short. It is inconsistent, the important information is hard to spot and you have to kinda know where to look for things or you'r chances of finding them are sketchy at best. Aside from that the GUI still uses outdated concepts like popup windows instead of javascript controlled divs-message/info boxes and also does not make use of real time updating via JSON.

I would like to help improve this game and bring it fully up to the current level of webdesign and -programming. As a webprogrammer for over a decade I'd be willing to help with concepts, designs, coding and whatever else is required for that, rather momentous, change.

Question @ Sir Emi: are you willing to accept help in the development of this game beyond the scope of suggestions and art?


Now to concrete suggestions to improve the interface:

1. Important Information
The most important information are your current credits, the number of turns left, your current power and ranking. These information should be on all pages right at the top, where they are easily accessible. Putting the two most important of these at the bottom below everything else makes them REALY hard to find and inconvenient to look them up - the other two are even worse off at the moment with the ranking being split between quadrant ranking (if I understood the 'small' ranking list correctly) and global ranking.
This should be a rather simple adjustment to the HTML template which would offer great benefits to every user ^^

As an afterthought the information how many unread messages you have should probably also be added to the list of 'primary information' and displayed at the op of the page.

2. Consistency
Currently the game uses 3 different layouts I know of:
- main screen
- subscreen
- navigation

possibly even more of the building sub-pages.
Of these the navigation layout does not even offer the primary buttons, available on the other two.

My request is that as a minimum the primary buttons (fleet resupply, design, etc) will be added to the navigation layout and any other sub-page that might be missing them.
On the long run it would probably be good to convert all layouts to a single design (with the possible exception of the main page).





There are a lot of other changes which I would suggest (as for example showing the number of ships you can afford on fleet resupply or showing all your designs on a page instead of having to click through the entire design interface if you want to see which you have, etc ^^) but these two are the most important from my point of view.

What do you guys think of these suggestions?
Are there any areas where you think it might be easy to improve the interface noticeably without too much work being involved?

Feel free to rip my newb-post apart ^^ I always welcome criticism - so long as it is constructive ^^
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