Frozen Synapse Usability Improvements

[nervous_testpilot]

Posted this here already (https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791432007133/announcements/detail/687177876278004165) but reposting in case more of you see it...

We're looking at trying to make some improvements to the Frozen Synapse UI in FS2.

This is a difficult topic: Frozen Synapse is a very complex game; some elements of UI design are subjective; making changes to our UI is difficult and time consuming.

So, please don't take it as a negative if we don't manage to incorporate your feedback.

I'd like to know what you find difficult to do in the game, both in-game and in the menus, what you find fiddly especially. Feel free to post anything you want, but in general flagging up problems is a lot more useful to us than suggesting solutions.

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

If you wanted to me AMAZINGLY helpful, a video demonstrating your problems would be great but any notes or comments are more than welcome.

Paul

[asd]

I didn't have a lot of problems with it.
The most annoying thing is when I'm in CQB, waypoints get pretty close to each other and it can get a bit hard to select what you actually want to select. Selecting the timer when I want to wait gets a bit of a challange when there are a lot of waypoints close to each other. Especially if you use a lot of aiming orders too.

The other thing is that for some reason sometimes I can't remove orders I gave to enemies in coop. Sometimes I can't even give them orders at all. I think it only happens after my partner has committed his turn, maybe after I clicked on "get enemy plans" but I'm not sure.


In the menu I found it a bit hard to quit the game when I first played the game. Maybe I'm just a bit stupid, but there wasn't a lot that brought my attention to the little quit button on the top left corner.

[ArthurDent]

Take this with a grain of salt ... I have loaded up the game multiple times and found the text hard to read (font / colors / size) so I've been getting annoyed and putting off playing the game more. So far through the tutorials the UI seemed ok, but havent played that much.

[n11_n12]

Few things. Mostly nitpicks.

Icon scaling. When the map is fully zoomed out, icons for aiming, crouching and so on are tiny.

I bought this game when it first came out, and in that entire time, I don't think I've ever used the "zone focus/ignore" commands. Same with the "check" command. Why use it when I can aim, especially when I'm already in the habit of pressing X to cancel the aim at the start of most turns?

It's always mildly bugged me how ordered firing lines of the rocket/grenade launcher are slightly offset from where they're actually fired.

[BigBobr99]

Postat inițial de n11_n12:

I bought this game when it first came out, and in that entire time, I don't think I've ever used the "zone focus/ignore" commands. Same with the "check" command. Why use it when I can aim, especially when I'm already in the habit of pressing X to cancel the aim at the start of most turns?

.

One example of "check" would be to see an area behind you while you are running with an "ignore" command

Focus\Ignore zone comes into play against tricky experienced opponents

[BigBobr99]

I few things I found distracting.

-Not being able to chat with people (send messages) in the lobby (you can chat only ingame)
-Unable to delete assigned focus\ignore zone areas

[Sizzy]

Usually in the game, left-click does nothing, right-click calls out the menu and the wheel can zoom in & out. But today sometimes left-click becomes check, right-click becomes aim and wheel can't zoom? The only thing I can do is to close the game and restart and then everything is ok. Is that I switched to an unknown operation method without realization?

[Host]

Don't know if this thread is still relevant, but there should be a toggle to ignore riot shields when aiming grenades at the start of a turn.

In contrast, if you want to bounce a grenade off a riot shield that isn't already in position at the start of the turn, there's no way to see how it will bounce, so you need lots of trial and error to find the right angle.

A way to fix this, which would be useful in general in many other situations too (e.g. when fine-tuning wait orders, or creating waypoints through/around destroyed walls), is to be able to edit the plan at any time during the simulation when it's paused (only the portion that hasn't yet been simulated of course).

This would be complemented by a sort of 'breakpoints' feature, where you could tell the simulation to pause precisely at a certain order.

Alternatively, a 'step' button could play the simulation until the next order is executed or the next waypoint is reached (or even when it engages another unit).