Preview 0.34.2 XCE - Open discussions

[Charon]

Not to mention that renaming 4000 strings to something like "Ammunition - Plasma Clip" is the lamest thing ever.

I hope you can see my point.

[Charon]

Alphabetical sorting is a subsystem, not a mayor sorting system, and in 50% of cases a custom system beats it even as a subsystem.

[Solver]

You're of course correct that categorical sorting is better, but the categories have to be visible.

This is sorting by category:

You have a list of categories, and then items sorted alphabetically within each category. This is the norm for all games. Unfortunately, this is the Xenonauts store room:

A mod like X-Division actually needs an entirely different interface. The vanilla/XCE interface gets uncomfortable probably somewhere above 50 item types, let alone the amount you have. The issue with categorical sorting for you becomes that the categories aren't actually visible in the screen. So there is no on-screen indication to the player as to why the items are sorted in that order, which in my book sucks.

What you need is another column there. There is enough room. A "category" column after the item column, showing whether it's a weapon/ammo/alien tech/whatever. Then players can sort by that or by something else, and then you can have category sorting with alphabetical subsorting within categories.

[drages]

Yes we need an UI for it.. need to add that category for sure. We need someone who knows UI coding. Draku probably can handle but dunno

[Solver]

If you make a column there, I'll provide extra support.

[Charon]

1 hour ago, Solver said:

You're of course correct that categorical sorting is better, but the categories have to be visible.

I completely, utterly and over the top disagree, categories dont have to be visible. Furthermore the example you are showing has the same easy naming system like xenonauts again. "Imperial Armor" "Imperial boots" "Imperial ..." ... Imperial all the way.

All we need need is a sorting ID and you can skim throug the list and once you see a aircraft weapon you have all aircraft weapons.

Heres an example:

All swords nicely sorted together, without any visible category. All other categories are sorted the same, the daggers are grouped together, the bows are grouped together, the xbows and the bows are right after each other as the invisibible category "ranged weapons", the shields are grouped together, stronger shields are down, weaker shields are up. Improved items have the same sorting ID and stronger ones are lower if there is more than 1 item.

 

Here are my points again if you missed them.

1 hour ago, Charon said:

A. if the player spots 1 aircraft weapon he will know that these are all the aircraft weapons he has
B. easy comparing of stock count with other aircraft weapons
C. Easy power level sorting. Earlier weapons have a lower ID and better weapons have a higher ID. You dont have to be a genius to figure out what weapon is "generally" better or at a higher level than another one since there is a nice sorting generally telling you how things stand.
D. Easy telling where 1 category ends and another one starts
E. Easier Base to Base comparing as you already know where aircraftweapons are grouped together

 

1 hour ago, Solver said:

A mod like X-Division actually needs an entirely different interface. The vanilla/XCE interface gets uncomfortable probably somewhere above 50 item types, let alone the amount you have.

 

1 hour ago, Solver said:

What you need is another column there. There is enough room. A "category" column after the item column, showing whether it's a weapon/ammo/alien tech/whatever. Then players can sort by that or by something else, and then you can have category sorting with alphabetical subsorting within categories.

 

25 minutes ago, drages said:

Yes we need an UI for it.. need to add that category for sure. We need someone who knows UI coding. Draku probably can handle but dunno

Not necessarily, no. A revamped UI would be great but its not necessary.

1 hour ago, Solver said:

So there is no on-screen indication to the player as to why the items are sorted in that order, which in my book sucks.

I hear your oppinion. But i completely, utterly and over the top disagree. There has never been written a book about why stronger items are lower in the sorting system. There has never been written a book as to why item categories are put together but all players grasp the sorting system intuitively. And every sorting system is unique to its game.

This is where you go wrong. You think that players expect any sort of sorting system. This is completely wrong. This is only true for games you play 2 hours and then put down again. Players simply go with the flow of the game and learn everything anew and they judge a system on how fluently they can use it after they have learned all of its rules.
This is like a board game. You dont complain that the rules are different for every game, you judge the system after how fluently you can use it after you have learned the rules.

 

 

The only reason i would implement an alphabetical sorting system is if

A. I dont have any system
B. I dont want to do the work for a proper system

 

Geeeez why are we even still talking about this.

Edited October 1, 2016 by Charon

[Larry Burstyn]

As far as font size the eyes do best with the largest (I only have ONE eye to read with as vision loss to too great in the other to read).  Small print makes the one good eye get tired extremely quickly.  This makes the game harder for me to play as my vision decreases and I cannot see what I am doing so I have to stop.  A game session of an hour will result in massive headaches with the smaller print.

As far as order is concerned I like the category/alpha or category/version order.  Like weapons-Mk1 first followed by Mk2 etc.,  but any logically arranged system will work for me.

Right now For example I will find some Lasers at the top of the storage room list and some near the bottom...makes finding what I'm looking for very hard when there are more than 50 items.  Same is true in the manufacture (workshop) area where things seem to be listed in the order they were developed rather than some more logical order.  Maybe more categories will help this as you can divide DSB for ships from disassemble of weapons and from manufacture of weapons.  I know I've captured a cruiser but where is it in the DSB list.  Need to use my tiring eyes to search for it among everything else.

 

[Solver]

That example with the swords looks horrible to me. It's a categorized screen anyway, you're in the equipment category. The scrollbar is on the left, which is not standard. The swords do seem to be grouped together, and they don't follow any reasonable ordering among themselves. They're not sorted by name, by attack value or by weight. That screenshot is what a typical UI disaster looks like, quite possibly made by someone not used to working on software following any kind of commonly accepted standards.

You are instead wrong when you say players don't expect anything, or that every game can use its own conventions. No. This is the kind of thinking that leads to disasters like in your screenshot. Games are software. For the last 20 or so years, we've had fairly decent, commonly accepted conventions for how software should behave. When a game does not act accordingly, it's bad software, even if it's a good game. In terms of sorting, common convention is that items are sorted alphabetically when nothing better is available, or that they follow a "logical" sorting order such as categorization or other inherent properties. Most expensive to least, biggest to smallest, fastest to slowest, whatever makes sense.

In your case, "whatever makes sense" is by category. Which will be the best system if you add a category column. And you're proposing a hidden system where items are sorted by some internal ordering that isn't seen, and gets lost if the player wants to instead sort by quantity or so on. This is a bad software experience.

I hope you would at least agree that a category column would be best?

[drages]

As a gamer but not game designer, I can say that a column with categories is the best.

At that image charon posted, you can see images of the weapon, so you can figure out that they are swords. But at xdivision the soldier, airplane, vehicle even defense building weapon names can confuse players so easily even I confuse so much. Probably all the parts and otherstuff confuses people much more.

But alphabetical one is the worst. Can't we have them just as same order as items.xml? I think this could handle many problems and Charon can order them as he wanted. I think you won't even categories when you done this.

Or give us categories and if can't handle the UI, we go Charon way.

As result we need a way and we don't have one now..  

Edited October 1, 2016 by drages

[Solver]

If you have someone who is decent at Lua, you should then make a category column.

I can give Charon the ordering ID that he wants, which would replace alphabetical sorting in case it's used. It's not really an issue coding-wise, and allows using normal alphabetical sort in the unmodified XCE.

[Charon]

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

That example with the swords looks horrible to me. It's a categorized screen anyway, you're in the equipment category. The scrollbar is on the left, which is not standard. The swords do seem to be grouped together, and they don't follow any reasonable ordering among themselves. They're not sorted by name, by attack value or by weight. That screenshot is what a typical UI disaster looks like, quite possibly made by someone not used to working on software following any kind of commonly accepted standards.

You are instead wrong when you say players don't expect anything, or that every game can use its own conventions. No. This is the kind of thinking that leads to disasters like in your screenshot. Games are software. For the last 20 or so years, we've had fairly decent, commonly accepted conventions for how software should behave. When a game does not act accordingly, it's bad software, even if it's a good game. In terms of sorting, common convention is that items are sorted alphabetically when nothing better is available, or that they follow a "logical" sorting order such as categorization or other inherent properties. Most expensive to least, biggest to smallest, fastest to slowest, whatever makes sense.

In your case, "whatever makes sense" is by category. Which will be the best system if you add a category column. And you're proposing a hidden system where items are sorted by some internal ordering that isn't seen, and gets lost if the player wants to instead sort by quantity or so on. This is a bad software experience.

Well we disagree than, which is not bad either .

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

I hope you would at least agree that a category column would be best?

category column ? If its like the manufacture category column, sure thing.

But the substructure should again not be alphabetical, but sorted by my standart.

"Weapons" category example: I dont want gauss weapons to be sorted above mag weapons. Gauss weapons are phase 3 and mag weapons are phase 2, there is a visible power difference and structure for them. Phase 3 doesnt come before Phase 2.

Again we have that the custom ID sorting is the bread and butter here, even if you make a category column sorting.

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

or that they follow a "logical" sorting order

Exactly, they follow the structure of the game and i will implement that custom X-Division structure for all items. Every other modder can implemented his structure for his mod.

 

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

In terms of sorting, common convention is that items are sorted alphabetically when nothing better is available,

Isnt that what i said ?

1 hour ago, Charon said:

A. I dont have any system
B. I dont want to do the work for a proper system

 

About the example. The "hidden" structure you cant see is rarity and "reach" ( how long the sword is ). Common/short swords appear on top. Longer/Rarer swords are lower ( Still bound by the "sword" category ). After that comes "dragon swords" ( again sorted by rarity/reach) and "demon swords" ( same sorting here ).

We are talking about From Software btw, founded in 1986.

Just because you cant see the structure at first glance doesnt mean that your alphabetical order would be better. Like i said if you play the game longer than 2 hours you will appreciate that sort of sorting instead of an alphabetical one by far. If you play longer than 2 hours .... but if you dont than you dont like the game anyway and thats not because of the sorting system.

 

39 minutes ago, Solver said:

And you're proposing a hidden system where items are sorted by some internal ordering that isn't seen, and gets lost if the player wants to instead sort by quantity or so on.

If you add an sorting by quantity button thats a great ADDITION. But your bread and butter, so the first and fundamental sorting system is a custom ID sorting system implemented by the developer, not an alphabetical system. Thats only the case when you dont have any system, which From Software has for example.

If you add any ADDITIONAL sorting thats wonderful news, even if its alphabetical, as long as it is optional.

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by Charon

[Charon]

7 minutes ago, drages said:

But alphabetical one is the worst. Can't we have them just as same order as items.xml? I think this could handle many problems and Charon can order them as he wanted. I think you won't even categories when you done this.

Or give us categories and if can't handle the UI, we go Charon way.

This what i have been saying in 10000000000000000000000000000 words. Geeeeeeeeez.

[Solver]

Okay, here's what you get. The storage window works properly, as in clicking on the item/value/quantity columns sorts them. Clicking on the item column sorts alphabetically, unless you've specified a SortOrder in items.xml, which will then take precedence.

[Charon]

42 minutes ago, Larry Burstyn said:

As far as font size the eyes do best with the largest (I only have ONE eye to read with as vision loss to too great in the other to read).  Small print makes the one good eye get tired extremely quickly.  This makes the game harder for me to play as my vision decreases and I cannot see what I am doing so I have to stop.  A game session of an hour will result in massive headaches with the smaller print.

Im running out of juice but heres the answer:

How big do you want the fonts to be ? I especially asked Draku to give you some examples so that YOU can tell us whats best for your eyes and still acceptable for the game. So look at them and tell us how it should be !

44 minutes ago, Larry Burstyn said:

As far as order is concerned I like the category/alpha or category/version order.  Like weapons-Mk1 first followed by Mk2 etc.,  but any logically arranged system will work for me.

Right now For example I will find some Lasers at the top of the storage room list and some near the bottom...makes finding what I'm looking for very hard when there are more than 50 items.  Same is true in the manufacture (workshop) area where things seem to be listed in the order they were developed rather than some more logical order.  Maybe more categories will help this as you can divide DSB for ships from disassemble of weapons and from manufacture of weapons.  I know I've captured a cruiser but where is it in the DSB list.  Need to use my tiring eyes to search for it among everything else.

This is EXACTLY what i have been talking about, Solver.

And the most logical order for X-Division is ... the X-Division strcuture which we, the developers, and the players, know best about because we PLAY the game, are in the game, and feel the structure at every decision we make in the game ... ... ... and thats not an alphabetical one.

[Charon]

5 minutes ago, Solver said:

Okay, here's what you get. The storage window works properly, as in clicking on the item/value/quantity columns sorts them. Clicking on the item column sorts alphabetically, unless you've specified a SortOrder in items.xml, which will then take precedence.

You are the BEST . THIS is the BEST system .

[Solver]

New items.xml for base XCE:

items.xml

See that it now has a Sort order column. You can start doing the same in X-Division for your items. If you leave any items at -1 sort order, they will use the alphabetical sort.

[Solver]

4 minutes ago, Charon said:

How big do you want the fonts to be ? I especially asked Draku to give you some examples so that YOU can tell us whats best for your eyes and still acceptable for the game. So look at them and tell us how it should be !

At least for certain screens, I suspect I have found a way to let players control this via game options.

[Charon]

7 minutes ago, Solver said:

New items.xml for base XCE:

items.xml

See that it now has a Sort order column. You can start doing the same in X-Division for your items. If you leave any items at -1 sort order, they will use the alphabetical sort.

For clearity, lower numbers appear first and higher numbers appear later ? Is it ok to leave out numbers ? Like 0- 376 are weapons order 400 -432 are ressources, etc ... ?

[Charon]

Quote

24 minutes ago, Charon said:

This what i have been saying in 10000000000000000000000000000 words. Geeeeeeeeez.

7 minutes ago, drages said:

No problem at all..

If Solver fixes the UI problem we literally have everything we wish for. Nice sorting on the click of a button, categories, etc ... EVERYTHING.

 

 

[Solver]

7 minutes ago, Charon said:

For clearity, lower numbers appear first and higher numbers appear later ? Is it ok to leave out numbers ? Like 0- 376 are weapons order 400 -432 are ressources, etc ... ?

Lower numbers appear first normally, but players can click on the column again to reverse the order.

You can leave out numbers if you want to. You could have some item that's always last (first if reversed) with a very large number.

Alphabetical, except special ordering for 3 items: Laser Rifle < Jackal < Buzzard.

Same in reverse:

[Charon]

17 minutes ago, Solver said:

Lower numbers appear first normally, but players can click on the column again to reverse the order.

You can leave out numbers if you want to. You could have some item that's always last (first if reversed) with a very large number.

Alphabetical, except special ordering for 3 items: Laser Rifle < Jackal < Buzzard.

Same in reverse:

Thats a dream that has come true. Thx Solver . Much love for you .

All we have to do now is to wait for Draku to come back with good news about the column.

[Draku]

Something like this?

[drages]

Just now, Draku said:

Something like this?

OMG he done it.. puhahahaha...

I think Solver and Draku can create Xenonauts 2 without any problem just over default Xeno..

[Solver]

Draku, you're awesome.

I think it'd be great for X-Division. There's no point using this for the default X:CE, but if you post the Lua file, I'll make a few small changes so that it also works with sorting, etc.

[drages]

3 minutes ago, Solver said:

Draku, you're awesome.

I think it'd be great for X-Division. There's no point using this for the default X:CE, but if you post the Lua file, I'll make a few small changes so that it also works with sorting, etc.

It's not up to me to decide, but i would use it at XCE too, to be an example for modders.