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Revert PC UI Changes


Michelle

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The PC now looks like an uninspired mess..

- Any Sprite Mods are now clipping through the entire PC
- Unreadable stats/name text is made common with any sprite mod's odd scaling
- Additional rows of PC boxes will scale the window, pushing Pokémon sprites further out of orientation
- Redundant party view in the PC
- Box "titles" aren't prominent at the very top, the text is thin & underwhelming
- The larger window makes multitasking more congested
- When no Pokémon is selected, the window has 20% dead space, this will be a common visual 
- No ability to highlight a "?" to view the keyboard commands used for intuitive PC interactions
- Box Names are visually 1 letter less & throws off any formatting using 5 characters
- The UI window has been scaled up, and causes visual stretching on any customizations
- Auto Sort function is incredibly unclear(does it sort selected pokemon? the box you're viewing? every box you have? it's not clear)

Solutions(Other than reverting):
- Disable usage of custom mod sprites within the PC
- Hide the additional party view outside of PC, while using the PC
- Embolden box title text, give it some shadowing
- Auto-scale the PC window to reveal a "selected summary" only when a Pokémon is selected, to remove dead space & congestion
- Revive the "?" to help new players with shortcut keys when using the PC
- Scale the Box titles to allow for 5 letters(characters), as there is certainly enough room for it, and warrants no format changes
- Increase the actual image size used for the PC
- Highlighting the Auto Sort button should offer a description as to exactly how it functions

 

Ultimately, a lot of redundancies, inconvenient changes, and unnecessary changes that are arguably a visual downgrade. I would hope for a complete reversion, but if these issues could be fixed or even addressed, that would be nice too.

Edited by Michelle
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4 hours ago, razimove said:

I wouldnt mind to actually help aswell, but they wont let anyone help, that would hurt their pride, cant let that happen.

It's not about pride or ego, it's a matter of having an in-depth understanding of the engine / libraries the game utilizes and taking into account hundreds of thousands of other users also play the same game, you're not just developing it for a single group of users. You have to take accessibility, multiple platforms and different hardware types into account, which is what this latest update is working towards.
 

Edited by nurver9
clarification
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1 hour ago, nurver9 said:

 

- This isn't a bug, or the fault of mods(though they can be tailored correctly).
It absolutely is, the game does not dynamically scale sprites depending on what widget container they're in. The table guid file is no longer utilized.

- It is a bit odd to address my concerns with screen congestion with a reference to how the code is laid out, considering it is a visual element, and I'd provided my own solution for it in the same post.. but alright.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how TWL/libgdx work to display the user interface in this game. This again circles back to the fact this content is a work in progress, showcased by the fact the CODE IS UNFINISHED IN THE XMLs AND THE PC GRAPHIC / SUMMARY PREVIEW SHOWN ABOVE IS CURRENTLY UNUSED.

XML CODE (that anyone can modify.) controls the layout of the widget. As you can see, we've already edited ours:Unbenannt.png

- I am talking about the Box Name, the name of the box, that is now restricted to 4 characters rather than 5. Not sure how to make that clearer, sorry.
client / server side change, has nothing to do with themes / xmls, but the GAME ITSELF, it is not UI (TWL) related.
 

-Again, not referencing code here, I am talking about custom created images specifically for the PC that are now unusable, and will need editing.

To be clear, this suggestion is in reference to the UI of the PC, including how mods, themes, and users interact with it.
The reason I replied to was to attempt to explain the state of files currently, as someone who is obviously familiar with them, like @realmadrid1809. In other-words, some form of constructive input besides "this looks bad."

-It is not limited to theme concerns, nor do I have any confusion about how it is coded. I appreciate the time you've taken to reply, but a lot of what you've written is far removed from the actual discussion here.
This circles back to not fully understanding how TWL/libgdx works, it seems like there is some confusion here. Most of what you outlined can be changed VIA XML CODE (by anyone- and will be, because as stated previously, this is obviously a work a progress, supported by the new unimplemented assets.) (further supported by the screenshot of our custom PC window.)

The features handled by the client / server would be the missing hotkey cheat sheet, ability to jump to searched monster and the button character limit. These are the real things that need to addressed- again, the reason why I "replied about the code" is because everything else is trivial. It can be changed- and WILL be changed, again, supported by the unimplemented assets.

I think a little light did need to be shined on this topic, as in fashion with the replies here- everyone thinks they're an armchair developer, why don't the devs revert this, why don't they just add this, etc.. It's much more involved than that.
 

There is no misunderstanding, again, these are suggestions to developers, as well as feedback. That is why I provided my preference in the topic header, as well as alternative ideas to the issues I've encountered. Regardless of how you percieve my levels of understanding, it is valuable to have this discussion when not everything can be considered by one group of people.

 

I'm not sure how much more clear I can state that the issue isn't regarding themes, and a discussion around what TWL/libgdx can achieve has zero relevance on this topic. While it is surely handy knowledge, this topic is a suggestion to the game developers with concerns towards the general playerbase, whether they use themes or not.

 

Assuming that these things will be changed because, 'they're obviously in need of an upgrade', is not exactly a constructive approach. As a community member it is important we consider eachothers ideas, and I do see some perfectly valid criticisms here, but they are scattered amongst the many different ways you've found to reiterate that 'this is already possible.' Which is again, far removed from the actual discussion here.

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1 hour ago, nurver9 said:

It's not about pride or ego, it's a matter of having an in-depth understanding of the engine / libraries the game utilizes and taking into account hundreds of thousands of other users also play the same game, you're not just developing it for a single group of users. You have to take accessibility, multiple platforms and different hardware types into account, which is what this latest update is working towards.
 

Sorry but no, it's not, you can defend them however you want, I work in the same area as them, not a junior on it either, and its also not on a fan made game, on actual products, if I accepted to end deliver a product like this, I'd have to answer a lot of people about it. 

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39 minutes ago, Michelle said:

I'm not sure how much more clear I can state that the issue isn't regarding themes, and a discussion around what TWL/libgdx can achieve has zero relevance on this topic. While it is surely handy knowledge, this topic is a suggestion to the game developers with concerns towards the general playerbase, whether they use themes or not.

 

Assuming that these things will be changed because, 'they're obviously in need of an upgrade', is not exactly a constructive approach. As a community member it is important we consider eachothers ideas, and I do see some perfectly valid criticisms here, but they are scattered amongst the many different ways you've found to reiterate that 'this is already possible.' Which is again, far removed from the actual discussion here.

If one simply opened the res folder, one could see there is unused PC background and PC preview pngs. (As shown here: https://forums.pokemmo.com/index.php?/topic/156678-revert-pc-ui-changes/&do=findComment&comment=1997203

These assets are coded into the default theme using the gfx.xml, but are not implemented into the pc.xml yet- because as you can see from reconstructing this link using the default assets, the content does not fit inside the graphic they created for the PC window, yet.

My comments are not far removed from discussion here. The point being- It's not in a finished state. This is very obvious. There is leftover old PC code too which is unused.
 

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Gonna chime in a bit and give my few words on the seemingly hot discussion here.

 

First I wanna address one thing, it's easy to look at one feature and say "If I would work on this feature I would get fired if it released this way", yeah surely - it's not perfect, but I think statements like this are a bit of overreaction right now.

 

As the main area of focus from me was around Johto related stuff recently and some other areas of features / bugfixing, I haven't got enough time to go over the PC changes as much as I wanted - overall PC rework was an effort of more people.

  • PC Rework is not final state, has been released this way as we thought it would already be an improvement to older PC in it's current state, and I still feel the general feedback is good from the functionality part of it. Might not be the prettiest interface ( esp. on desktop ) we shipped, but it will get some more love in coming days.
  • Rework took a lot of time to work on underlying code to have it properly working with keyboard/controllers/android while retaining old functionality and adding tons of new ( filtering/multiselect/quick itempreview/summary view ). It's not just UI/UX.
  • Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.
  • The sprite size of mods is already resolved for pending patch and will have them be automatically scaled to fit in the summary view if too big, probably something we will also eventually implement in non-pc summary window as well.
  • The unused graphic asset you found was a initial placeholder when PC rework was started, it's likely not gonna be used and new asset will be placed in place of it.
  • I highly suggest to avoid doing too much work on the PC custom theme area as this actively getting worked on and might require some re-doing once it's updated just a little note to keep in mind.

I'll be watching this topic for any extra constructive feedback including the existing one, but some of the suggestions here I was seeing were already planned to have on ( and just didn't have enough time to finish it in time for the update ) or were already changed for next client patch.

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11 minutes ago, Shu said:

Gonna chime in a bit and give my few words on the seemingly hot discussion here.

 

First I wanna address one thing, it's easy to look at one feature and say "If I would work on this feature I would get fired if it released this way", yeah surely - it's not perfect, but I think statements like this are a bit of overreaction right now.

 

As the main area of focus from me was around Johto related stuff recently and some other areas of features / bugfixing, I haven't got enough time to go over the PC changes as much as I wanted - overall PC rework was an effort of more people.

  • PC Rework is not final state, has been released this way as we thought it would already be an improvement to older PC in it's current state, and I still feel the general feedback is good from the functionality part of it. Might not be the prettiest interface ( esp. on desktop ) we shipped, but it will get some more love in coming days.
  • Rework took a lot of time to work on underlying code to have it properly working with keyboard/controllers/android while retaining old functionality and adding tons of new ( filtering/multiselect/quick itempreview/summary view ). It's not just UI/UX.
  • Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.
  • The sprite size of mods is already resolved for pending patch and will have them be automatically scaled to fit in the summary view if too big, probably something we will also eventually implement in non-pc summary window as well.
  • The unused graphic asset you found was a initial placeholder when PC rework was started, it's likely not gonna be used and new asset will be placed in place of it.
  • I highly suggest to avoid doing too much work on the PC custom theme area as this actively getting worked on and might require some re-doing once it's updated just a little note to keep in mind.

I'll be watching this topic for any extra constructive feedback including the existing one, but some of the suggestions here I was seeing were already planned to have on ( and just didn't have enough time to finish it in time for the update ) or were already changed for next client patch.

Is the naming of boxes one of the aspects already planned to change in the future?

I'm a big fan of being able to see all PC boxes at the same time, but I feel the "preview" name when a box isn't selected going from 5 to 4 characters was a wrong move. I personally had plenty of box names specifically tailored to 5 character limits, which were broken after this update.

Maybe have more "layers" with the boxes for more characters to display?

 

Overall I'm very happy with this UI change though. I feel you guys did a super good job, and I'll be looking forward to seeing how you update and imporve it even more in the future!

Edited by LucasLyn5
grammar
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55 minutes ago, nurver9 said:

If one simply opened the res folder, one could see there is unused PC background and PC preview pngs. (As shown here: https://forums.pokemmo.com/index.php?/topic/156678-revert-pc-ui-changes/&do=findComment&comment=1997203

These assets are coded into the default theme using the gfx.xml, but are not implemented into the pc.xml yet- because as you can see from reconstructing this link using the default assets, the content does not fit inside the graphic they created for the PC window, yet.

My comments are not far removed from discussion here. The point being- It's not in a finished state. This is very obvious. There is leftover old PC code too which is unused.
 

These are suggestions and feedback based on the current release, it is not necessary to weigh in with unreleased code, as it is neither confirmed or relevant to what is confirmed. I had requested these things be addressed in the OP, but there was unfortunately little elaboration. Until such a time as staff directly addressing this, it is irrelevant to the discussion. While you could point to anything within the files and it would warrant some expectations, it would be strange whilst there are plenty of unused files/lines of code older than a decade. It is also good to keep in mind that things unreleased content is very much subject to change and is hardly much to hinge advice on and/or hinder a discussion.

Edit: Welp, Shu confirmed it is all subject to change and you shouldn't reference unrelease code while I was typing this. Please do keep that in mind when guiding people to placement images/code/etc.

Edited by Michelle
A wild Shu appeared
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2 minutes ago, LucasLyn5 said:

Is the naming of boxes one of the aspects already planned to change in the future?

I'm a big fan of being able to see all PC boxes at the same time, but I feel the "preview" name when a box isn't selected going from 5 to 4 characters was a wrong move. I personally had plenty of box names specifically tailored to 5 character limits, which were broken after this update.

Maybe have more "layers" with the boxes for more characters to display?

 

Overall I'm very happy with this UI change though. I feel you guys did a super good job. I'll be looking forward to seeing how you update and imporve it even more!

Yeah, we def are able to squeeze more characters for desktops for sure.

Might be tricky on android due too much less available screen space, will have to fiddle with it more to see.

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14 minutes ago, Shu said:

Gonna chime in a bit and give my few words on the seemingly hot discussion here.

 

First I wanna address one thing, it's easy to look at one feature and say "If I would work on this feature I would get fired if it released this way", yeah surely - it's not perfect, but I think statements like this are a bit of overreaction right now.

 

As the main area of focus from me was around Johto related stuff recently and some other areas of features / bugfixing, I haven't got enough time to go over the PC changes as much as I wanted - overall PC rework was an effort of more people.

  • PC Rework is not final state, has been released this way as we thought it would already be an improvement to older PC in it's current state, and I still feel the general feedback is good from the functionality part of it. Might not be the prettiest interface ( esp. on desktop ) we shipped, but it will get some more love in coming days.
  • Rework took a lot of time to work on underlying code to have it properly working with keyboard/controllers/android while retaining old functionality and adding tons of new ( filtering/multiselect/quick itempreview/summary view ). It's not just UI/UX.
  • Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.
  • The sprite size of mods is already resolved for pending patch and will have them be automatically scaled to fit in the summary view if too big, probably something we will also eventually implement in non-pc summary window as well.
  • The unused graphic asset you found was a initial placeholder when PC rework was started, it's likely not gonna be used and new asset will be placed in place of it.
  • I highly suggest to avoid doing too much work on the PC custom theme area as this actively getting worked on and might require some re-doing once it's updated just a little note to keep in mind.

I'll be watching this topic for any extra constructive feedback including the existing one, but some of the suggestions here I was seeing were already planned to have on ( and just didn't have enough time to finish it in time for the update ) or were already changed for next client patch.

Thank you so much Shu, truly! ❤️

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32 minutes ago, Shu said:

Gonna chime in a bit and give my few words on the seemingly hot discussion here.

 

First I wanna address one thing, it's easy to look at one feature and say "If I would work on this feature I would get fired if it released this way", yeah surely - it's not perfect, but I think statements like this are a bit of overreaction right now.

 

As the main area of focus from me was around Johto related stuff recently and some other areas of features / bugfixing, I haven't got enough time to go over the PC changes as much as I wanted - overall PC rework was an effort of more people.

  • PC Rework is not final state, has been released this way as we thought it would already be an improvement to older PC in it's current state, and I still feel the general feedback is good from the functionality part of it. Might not be the prettiest interface ( esp. on desktop ) we shipped, but it will get some more love in coming days.
  • Rework took a lot of time to work on underlying code to have it properly working with keyboard/controllers/android while retaining old functionality and adding tons of new ( filtering/multiselect/quick itempreview/summary view ). It's not just UI/UX.
  • Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.
  • The sprite size of mods is already resolved for pending patch and will have them be automatically scaled to fit in the summary view if too big, probably something we will also eventually implement in non-pc summary window as well.
  • The unused graphic asset you found was a initial placeholder when PC rework was started, it's likely not gonna be used and new asset will be placed in place of it.
  • I highly suggest to avoid doing too much work on the PC custom theme area as this actively getting worked on and might require some re-doing once it's updated just a little note to keep in mind.

I'll be watching this topic for any extra constructive feedback including the existing one, but some of the suggestions here I was seeing were already planned to have on ( and just didn't have enough time to finish it in time for the update ) or were already changed for next client patch.

Thanks for the in depth reply. I definitely prefer the new window to the old one. Things I noticed while messing with themes:

 

 

 

The first Pokemon displayed upon opening the pc doesn't get the type tint for the background.

 

The active box does not get highlighted like e.g. chat tabs would be or the old pc boxes

 

Being able to use the scrolling wheel to change box would add a ton of qol for pc players for faster navigation.

 

Overall a lot of parts move around when you change to a different language than english (e.g. de and pt-br) cause the width of the buttons at the bottom is linked to the width of the box slots.

 

Instead of dedicating a whole bar to the name of the active box why not use that space for more boxes. E.g. have each box name be a maximum of 10 characters long and have each row display 7 boxes instead of the current 13. For renaming just add a little button in the corner (maybe like the one used in the monster-summary to rename your pokemon).

 

The vertical position of the pokemon info on the left should be linked to the box slots, because currently it shifts around when you have additional box rows.

 

Also on the party being displayed twice. Isn't it possible to hide the normal party bar, while the pc is open?

 

The filters are divided kinda weirdly between page 1 and 2. Wouldn't it be better to make 1 scrollpane instead (same applies to gtl)?

 

Though not 100% related to the pc, last point: The party bar still changes size when unlocking the position, which makes gauging the accurate position when locking it again very annoying. This can be fixed without needing backend changes purely through editing the theme. There are other annoyances like this that could be fixed across the default theme. How can I best report those?

 

Edited by realmadrid1809
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1 hour ago, Shu said:

Gonna chime in a bit and give my few words on the seemingly hot discussion here.

 

First I wanna address one thing, it's easy to look at one feature and say "If I would work on this feature I would get fired if it released this way", yeah surely - it's not perfect, but I think statements like this are a bit of overreaction right now.

 

As the main area of focus from me was around Johto related stuff recently and some other areas of features / bugfixing, I haven't got enough time to go over the PC changes as much as I wanted - overall PC rework was an effort of more people.

  • PC Rework is not final state, has been released this way as we thought it would already be an improvement to older PC in it's current state, and I still feel the general feedback is good from the functionality part of it. Might not be the prettiest interface ( esp. on desktop ) we shipped, but it will get some more love in coming days.
  • Rework took a lot of time to work on underlying code to have it properly working with keyboard/controllers/android while retaining old functionality and adding tons of new ( filtering/multiselect/quick itempreview/summary view ). It's not just UI/UX.
  • Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.
  • The sprite size of mods is already resolved for pending patch and will have them be automatically scaled to fit in the summary view if too big, probably something we will also eventually implement in non-pc summary window as well.
  • The unused graphic asset you found was a initial placeholder when PC rework was started, it's likely not gonna be used and new asset will be placed in place of it.
  • I highly suggest to avoid doing too much work on the PC custom theme area as this actively getting worked on and might require some re-doing once it's updated just a little note to keep in mind.

I'll be watching this topic for any extra constructive feedback including the existing one, but some of the suggestions here I was seeing were already planned to have on ( and just didn't have enough time to finish it in time for the update ) or were already changed for next client patch.

i agree that it is a big improvement compared to the system we had previously.

 

one thing to add to the wishlist:

 

please add a toggleable lock to make it impossible to change the order of your boxes, i keep moving them by accident and its starting to get a bit annoying

Edited by Quakkz
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1 hour ago, Shu said:

Some of the work was added closer to the patch day and didn't get enough love/polish we would like to.

This is something I don't get it, why push big update batches instead of smaller ones and have effectively more time to work on problems?

 

1 hour ago, Shu said:

PC Rework is not final state,

This is good to know, and I'd love to know if it's ok to actually PM you regarding this and chime in on some suggestions I could provide you with to not flood this thread

 

 

1 hour ago, Shu said:

it's easy to look at one feature

My main concern is that I'm not looking at one feature but multiple, while this thread is tailored to the PC problems, we got old bugs back on android, such as android type bar having been removed once again, making us blind guess what we're typing (with no option to correct since no type bar), between others. I understand you guys might want to focus on specific areas like in this case, pushing Johto, and you're not a huge team, but at the same time, why force so much in so little time? If Johto was the main concern, wouldn't it have been best to just go with it first and postpone this 1-2 months after Johto release/patches/etc?
 

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30 minutes ago, razimove said:

This is something I don't get it, why push big update batches instead of smaller ones and have effectively more time to work on problems?

 

This is good to know, and I'd love to know if it's ok to actually PM you regarding this and chime in on some suggestions I could provide you with to not flood this thread

 

 

My main concern is that I'm not looking at one feature but multiple, while this thread is tailored to the PC problems, we got old bugs back on android, such as android type bar having been removed once again, making us blind guess what we're typing (with no option to correct since no type bar), between others. I understand you guys might want to focus on specific areas like in this case, pushing Johto, and you're not a huge team, but at the same time, why force so much in so little time? If Johto was the main concern, wouldn't it have been best to just go with it first and postpone this 1-2 months after Johto release/patches/etc?
 

It might look obvious to release smaller batches of updates, but it's not always possible. While certain person might work on X feature, another works on Y.  And Y could be months from release while X is expected to hit in next update. So while Y is still being developed in background, sometimes the person working on Y comes in to help with the X as it's closer to release.

 

For example Johto isn't small to work on either and it's been in development for quite some time, and blocking another feature ( already fairly complete ) from being released just because we want to release Johto faster isn't always a viable option.

 

UI is also a bit annoying to work/rework on as we have much bigger update planned for it in who knows when future ( not actively developed at this moment - so don't bring your hopes up ), and doing anything with existing one is somewhat delaying it even further, but with some reworks like PC some parts can be reused.

We feel like PC was well worth the effort tho, as being core part of the gameplay experience and important tool in the game.

 

It's probably best to to create new topic for suggestions, although I can't promise anything will be added ^^

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