n00b who can't get past the sloppy UI

[Natty La Ridge]

I love sci-fi and colony sims. I bought ONI shortly after release and have tried to get into it a few times now, spending around 4 hours in total. It's ok, I think I get what the devs were trying to do. But putting aside other critiques I'm having a hard time getting past what seems like a really sloppily-implemented UI.

Ferinstance: the toolbar in the lower left pops up small windows full of icons for things you can select. But at 1080p, those popup windows aren't sized sufficiently to display an icon's full height, even when there's only one icon in the window. There's a scrollbar, it's enabled, and yep, if you move the mousewheel you can nudge the little icon up or down a few pixels to see the whole thing.

I guess later in the game there might be more icons in each category, and scrolling to see multiple rows will be a requirement. But to enforce a scrollbar and cut off the display by a few pixels when there's only one icon per category seems, I dunno, unnecessarily fiddley. Please explain.

Then there are the load screen messages, clearly dynamic text overlaid on a static graphic, where you took the time and effort to center the text horizontally, but not vertically. So the one line of wry loading text, rendered in a sharp system font, appears pushed up against the top of the faux-naive load screen graphic. Looks like you assigned the load screen implementation to two different programmers but didn't let them talk to each other.

I could go on, but I won't. I suspect fans of the game/dev aren't bothered by this at all, but see it as part of a unique aesthetic that they love. If so, I wish you great happiness. But I don't think it's for me.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Natty La Ridge:

I guess later in the game there might be more icons in each category, and scrolling to see multiple rows will be a requirement. But to enforce a scrollbar and cut off the display by a few pixels when there's only one icon per category seems, I dunno, unnecessarily fiddley. Please explain.

It seems they cut the pop up window at the bottom of the last row of icons rather than leaving some space below. The scroll bar is separate, always displaying the full length of what's there.

Originally posted by Natty La Ridge:

see it as part of a unique aesthetic that they love

Well, this kind of stupid statement is bothering me. You should fix it before complaining about anything else.

Originally posted by Natty La Ridge:

Then there are the load screen messages

I don't know what "load screen messages" you are talking about.

[Tseudonym]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by Natty La Ridge:

Then there are the load screen messages

I don't know what "load screen messages" you are talking about.

I think he's talking about how the loading screen gives witty comments about how the map generation is going, stuff like "Releasing critters" and "Too much oxygen, removing".

[custume]

I don't get you but from the type of games you have I can see why you have difficulties handling this game.

This game is actually easier than city Skylines or Xcom not mention civilization.

Why don't you try sandbox mode and get a feel for the game, is not that some one is running after you,

also if you play offline steam will not register the time you play and you can return it if you like

[believor in Prawn]

Originally posted by custume:

I don't get you but from the type of games you have I can see why you have difficulties handling this game.

This game is actually easier than city Skylines or Xcom not mention civilization.

Why don't you try sandbox mode and get a feel for the game, is not that some one is running after you,

also if you play offline steam will not register the time you play and you can return it if you like

im nearly certain that last claim is false, there is no way steam could allow something that would let people play a game for like 35 hours and return it saying they played 1 hour, it would be costing them millions of dollars

[Natty La Ridge]

Thank you all for your comments, I appreciate them. I'm not looking to return the game. I still want to find a way to get into it, because clearly there's a game here whose colony-building and management aspects I should love! But every time I fire it up, I find myself looking at UI choices, wondering why.

Bottom line is, that's my problem. Thanks again for your feedback.

[custume]

Originally posted by believer in prawn:

im nearly certain that last claim is false, there is no way steam could allow something that would let people play a game for like 35 hours and return it saying they played 1 hour, it would be costing them millions of dollars

Well I have return games that way, sure I got steam cash not credir card money but yeah you can do that if the game did not got to much "sale" time, after the 15 days is a question of luck

Edit.

also depends on the game and the excuse to return it

[Cotaks]

Originally posted by believer in prawn:

Originally posted by custume:

I don't get you but from the type of games you have I can see why you have difficulties handling this game.

This game is actually easier than city Skylines or Xcom not mention civilization.

Why don't you try sandbox mode and get a feel for the game, is not that some one is running after you,

also if you play offline steam will not register the time you play and you can return it if you like

im nearly certain that last claim is false, there is no way steam could allow something that would let people play a game for like 35 hours and return it saying they played 1 hour, it would be costing them millions of dollars

It still is true, put steam in offline and hours will NOT be counted, but there can be an underlaying system that still counts but we can't see. but the normal playtime counter will indeed not count when you play a game in steam offline mode

[believor in Prawn]

Originally posted by Cotaks:

Originally posted by believer in prawn:

im nearly certain that last claim is false, there is no way steam could allow something that would let people play a game for like 35 hours and return it saying they played 1 hour, it would be costing them millions of dollars

It still is true, put steam in offline and hours will NOT be counted, but there can be an underlaying system that still counts but we can't see. but the normal playtime counter will indeed not count when you play a game in steam offline mode

but i assume the refund people can still see our actual amounts

[custume]

Originally posted by believer in prawn:

but i assume the refund people can still see our actual amounts

From my experience NO, but you have to be offline ( like having the network card disable ).

Originally posted by Cotaks:

but there can be an underlaying system that still counts but we can't see.

Well they never told me that I have X amount of play time, normally when they reject is because of purchase time.

Not saying that they don't have it but I never notice.

[Natty La Ridge]

OP here. Reinstalled ONI recently, wanted to see if it was just my mood at the time, or there really is a problem with the game's poor UI. And while the UI has improved over the last 6 months, most of the issues that bugged me in February are still here.

I also reinstalled DON'T STARVE, the first Klei game I fell in love with, and that motivated my insta-purchase of ONI. A few differences between the two that I can call out:

- DS has a much more immersive soundtrack!
- DS uses full-screen cutscenes to introduce settings and scenarios.
- Given the prior two and more, DS does a much better job of world-building than ONI.
- The DS UI is minimal to a fault. ONI, by comparison, shows us unnecessary scrollbars in sub-menu popups to hint that maybe someday, there might be more options.

I want to love this game, but I can't yet. Just sharing an opinion.

[Shame]

I agree, the UI is done very sloppily. Their ultimate solution appears to be scrolling for pretty much anything, the sensitivity of which, at least to my knowledge can't be adjusted and in cases where there's just one more element to view, there is no exception loop implemented to allow overflow of the max menu size. I would much rather have a construction pop-up menu fill 2/3 of the screen than having to scroll to such an irritating extent. The menu sometimes glitches in its size and shows up too small, and I have to either deal with it or close it or open up again to have it show more constructions in a bigger window.

For me, another very annoying thing is the lack of options for certain buildings (very few things have "allow manual use" setting) and the audacity of them to give you huge menus with a tiny triangle button to open each section contents, with zero images to accompany items, while also having clutter of useless categories with 2 items in them, like the Filtration Medium. I am talking particularly about the resource menu and the storage menu here, it's so unbelievably awful.

[Natty La Ridge]

I suspect DS was hand-coded for PC aspect ratios and resolutions. The ONI UI feels like a multi-platform framework project that offers compatibility with all, but optimization for none.

Sadly, the "final release" of the game seems to have occurred a bit over a year ago, so don't hold your breath (heh) waiting for a fix.

[custume]

Originally posted by Natty La Ridge:

Sadly, the "final release" of the game seems to have occurred a bit over a year ago, so don't hold your breath (heh) waiting for a fix.

They are making a DLC, they might get back to changing the UI again