Terrible UI

[LookToWindward]

Hi,

Why is the RimWorld UI sooooooo bad? I particularly hate the Stockpile and Bill filter lists. Why are they all bunched up in a small corner of the screen? Why I can't I resize or move it around like a proper window? I think RW has the worst UI of any game I have ever played.

Dubs Mint Menu's is a great help, I don't know what I would do without, but the UI still sucks big time.

I really think the developers should stop adding any new features. DLC, etc. Until the UI is fixed.

All the Best
Dave

[whatamidoing]

I think the UI is quite good, if plain. I'm a sucker for UI decoration.

[LookToWindward]

Really? The filter lists are the worst thing I've had to deal with. It's infuriating because it could be so much easier/better. Plus I hate having to keeping moving the mouse across to the Architect menu. So many mouse clicks for so little payoff.

A good UI should minimise the amount Mouse Movement/Clicks for a given task. In RimWorld I find myself having to move the Mouse from one edge of the screen to the other (either Left/Right or Up/Down or Both!). Then when I get to what I want, I'm forced to look at it in a small corner on the extreme left of my screen! At minimum you should be able to resize and move the window and it should remember its last size and position.

[twan]

In this genre, comprising games like Dwarf Fortress (ui : most absolute argh of all games ever released), Judgment:Apocalypse, Going Medieval, Space Haven, etc... Rimworld has largely the best one (and Rimworld + mods improving ui is lightyear better than any competitor).

Now the genre being extremely complex with huge number of things to manage and ways to play, it's just impossible to have one as simple to use as games focusing on one thing (say pure tycoons with no combat or rts/tower defense with little item management).

[Caz]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

Why is the RimWorld UI sooooooo bad?

It's not, tho.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I particularly hate the Stockpile and Bill filter lists. Why are they all bunched up in a small corner of the screen? Why I can't I resize or move it around like a proper window?

Being able to resize them would be nice.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I think RW has the worst UI of any game I have ever played.

You must not play many colony sims.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I really think the developers should stop adding any new features. DLC, etc. Until the UI is fixed.

That's gonna be a hard pass. I'd rather have new features. The UI isn't bad.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

Really? The filter lists are the worst thing I've had to deal with. It's infuriating because it could be so much easier/better.

I can't think how the filter lists could be better than they are other than allowing them to be resized. They literally work like a filter menu.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

Plus I hate having to keeping moving the mouse across to the Architect menu. So many mouse clicks for so little payoff.

This doesn't make sense. What payoff? You're picking items you want to build from a icon list. Literally every game with a graphical UI does this.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

A good UI should minimise the amount Mouse Movement/Clicks for a given task.

Good UX design seeks to provide as much convenience and easy access to options as possible in as orderly a fashion as possible. Rimworld's UI achieves this very well.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

In RimWorld I find myself having to move the Mouse from one edge of the screen to the other (either Left/Right or Up/Down or Both!). Then when I get to what I want, I'm forced to look at it in a small corner on the extreme left of my screen!

Again, this sounds like you don't play many colony sims. Or city building sims. Or RTS games. Or many games other than action/arcade games. What you described is quite normal for colony sims and city builders.

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

At minimum you should be able to resize and move the window and it should remember its last size and position.

This would be a nice QoL feature. But it's absence doesn't make the UI bad.

Now if you had said it's bad due to lacking "info at a glance" information, I would be more inclined to agree. And there's a mod that addresses this issue: RimHUD. Prior to 1.3 the Search option required a mod, but is now part of the base game. They don't ignore the UI. And there may be a technical reason for not allowing the filter/bill window to be resized.

[Coffee Cat]

I actually think the UI is very well done.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

A good UI should minimise the amount Mouse Movement/Clicks for a given task. In RimWorld I find myself having to move the Mouse from one edge of the screen to the other (either Left/Right or Up/Down or Both!).

Um. It honestly sounds like you haven't played very many games before, and have your mouse setup incorrectly. Moving the mouse across the screen shouldn't be a "chore," you need your mouse sensitivity higher so it can be done with minimal effort, moving the mouse around honestly isn't a complaint I've ever heard before. I mean, have you heard of edge scrolling? Steam says you have 2 games on your account, which is honestly about what I expected when I clicked on your profile. The RimWorld UI is actually really good for the type of game it is.

[LookToWindward]

Originally posted by twan:

In this genre, comprising games like Dwarf Fortress (ui : most absolute argh of all games ever released), Judgment:Apocalypse, Going Medieval, Space Haven, etc... Rimworld has largely the best one (and Rimworld + mods improving ui is lightyear better than any competitor).

Now the genre being extremely complex with huge number of things to manage and ways to play, it's just impossible to have one as simple to use as games focusing on one thing (say pure tycoons with no combat or rts/tower defense with little item management).

More complex then applications such as PhotoShop, Logix X, Final Cut?

Just because something is complex doesn't mean it can't be done. They have made packets on this game the least they could do it spend a bit of it on a decent UI.

To be honest it really doesn't have to be a award winning to just allow windows to resized and moved. Why am I stuck using a time portion of my screen? It really is pitiful considering how much money this game has generated.

[whatamidoing]

It minimizes mouse movement, good for efficiency. If you want the UI to use more of the screen, adjust your UI scaling.

[LookToWindward]

Originally posted by Undead Dan:

I actually think the UI is very well done.

This must be some weird usage of the phrase "well done" that I was previously unaware of

[LookToWindward]

I've mostly played games like Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Stellaris, all these games have better UI's then RimWolrd and some of them were created in the 80's!!!!

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I've mostly played games like Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Stellaris, all these games have better UI's then RimWolrd and some of them were created in the 80's!!!!

Yes, by AAA teams.

AS for your OP, I agree that the UI leaves much to be desired, but as you get used to the game, that hardly matters (especially with mods) so I certainly don't agree that development on other things should stop in favor of only working on the UI. Maybe some work on the UI could be in order though.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I've mostly played games like Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Stellaris, all these games have better UI's then RimWolrd and some of them were created in the 80's!!!!

All those games are in vastly different genres and what constitutes "well done" in them is equally different. The Stellaris UI is particularly awful though and the most popular mod for the game is a full UI overhaul that makes the windows not ridiculously bulky and oversized. You'll notice such UI overhauls are nowhere near the top of the RimWorld mod popularity list because the default UI is already great. RimHUD is pretty popular but that just adds more details to an existing window. The only other common UI mods in this game are the research ones because adding hundreds of modded research projects to the vanilla research tab doesn't really work, and colonist bars because some people want more info to keep an eye on with all their colonists. I'm pretty sure most people use Dub's Mint Menus primarily for the research tab, the other elements are optional.

Also most buttons in RimWorld have a keyboard hotkey which it doesn't sound like you aren't using.

[brian_va]

Devs don't really interact here, best bet is to go to their discord. You should probably come with a better discussion than it being terrible.

Aside from that, the console version might be for you.

[gigamelon1981]

If anything you've been played, only Stellaris has some similarity tbh.
1. The UI doesn't looks nice. Looks like 80's
Me : Yes, it doesn't. Not 80's, perhaps 90's. Like the earlier Windows 3.11. Definitely not something like LHX attack chopper, or Lotus 123.

2. The UI is the worst for the similar genre
Me : No, it isn't. You play Dwarf Fortress the soul inspiration or the fore father of the genre and come back here. Similarly Space Haven also doesn't have the best UI.

If compared to Stellaris, it doesn't have a nice sub menu, like the ship design menu. Texts heavy, and can be a lot smaller when you add up item into the list. Like from MODS.
It does have shortcut, but not for the bill.
Play RW with a lot of MODs, then the RimWorld UI will gradually seems reasonable. It took years actually for me to buy this game. I've been eyeing for it since the Early access but every I see the screenshot, my desire fades. RW is highly dependent on MODS IMHO to be a lot more desireable. And maybe it is a good thing.

I played Space Haven first before RW since the graphics looks more desirable to me.
But that thing has no workshop content. I don't like the trading system there.
Must clicking one by one the item i want to buy. It is limited to 10 items a trade. Also can only queue 5 trade requests. Furthermore, the trading post also sleeps at night... I had to wait them to wake up. There's no cure for that, if the developer so adamant about it, nothing will change. Where at RW i could look up the workshop to find the way around.

Stellaris also had the same problem with UI, especially at larger resolution, during the late game. But it also has workshop content to somewhat alleviate the problem.

Dwarf Fortress (remake) is a magnificent game on its own but still, looking how the pawn moves, the menus pretty much made me remember classic Simon the Sorcerer.

Games of this genre is really still need a long way to go TBH,
But for the time being, RimWorld is the best IMHO, with its full workshop options.
If anything, my worst gripe for RimWorld, is how the game only uses 1 CPU core.
And GPU doesn't really matter.
It also happens at Space Haven so... shrugs.
Long way to go.

[LookToWindward]

Yes, lots of games have terrible UI's I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that RimWorld is one of them and IMO the worst UI of any game I have ever played. If there was a single reason I would ever stop playing the game it would be because of the UI not for any other reason.

Yes there are Mods that make the UI more bearable but there are limits on how far they can go.

I think they should get a UI expert to completely re-design the UI.