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Jintachi95 days ago (1 edit)

I just found out recently that our recipe tool is calling the wrong datatype, but it only throws a runtime warning, so we didnt catch it.  The recipes essentially aren't connected at the moment. Normal deliveries work just fine though!
Any suggestions about the interface?  I am still learning to apply design theory to how I set up the UI, and I've been trying to keep it relatively straight forward with the most important information relatively close to eachother.  With a bit more time we would be able to adjust the icon sizes, make things a little more uniform, and update how the Tabs work (as well as highlight on mouseover so you know you can click something).
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!


-Jin

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nomelu94 days ago(+1)

I think the big thing would be to increase clarity. For example a label at the top of each menu so you know which menu is open (like “choose a production” or “choose a building” or something). Similarly the “tile selection” button doesn’t really look like a clickable button when compared to the “create cell” button. And when opening a building’s menu, having it’s current production already highlighted would be nice, because its hard to tell what a building is producing if you forget. A farm that does not have a production chosen yet also animates the same as if it was producing.

The other big thing I found is that it takes a lot of clicks to do something. For example, 1 click to highlight a building -> another click to open it’s menu. Since there currently doesn’t seem to be a reason to highlight a building other than to open it’s menu, it might as well be one click opens the menu (Also if I open a farm menu, but then click an envelope tile once, it looks like I have the envelope selected but the menu that is open is showing the farm). Similarly, say, to buy a new apple farm on an empty square then close the menu its 7 clicks (select tile -> click tile selection button -> farm -> click farm tile to open it’s menu -> click apple -> click tile selection button twice to close menu). Since the only reason so far to left click an empty tile is to put something there, and once you buy a (T1) tile you probably want to assign it a production, this could be 3-4 clicks (click empty tile opens buy menu -> click farm to buy it -> click or maybe auto open farm menu -> select apple, which could auto close the menu once selected). Auto closing the menu once selected would also stop problems like being able to click to buy a farm multiple times in a row and losing money, even though you’re only building a single farm.

I also couldn’t place any T2 stuff, or delete them if I accidentally clicked the create cell button.

I think the core idea is really interesting and the art looks good, I think if you felt like fixing those after the jam it could be a fun game, and if not, then I look forward to playing your next game :)

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Jintachi94 days ago

Awesome feedback.  It's funny you mention clicks.  I usually am a stickler on menus and actions being too complicated, so that is some great feedback that I absolutely let it slip the mind here. The reason for the multi clicks right now is more the contextual menus aren't fully linked.  When you click on a bare tile, the menu that SHOULD pop up, is things you can put in there immediately, so you should only have to click a tile, then click the item you want to go there, thus being 2 clicks.  But right now there was some back-door-gamejam-jank to get it out the door if you know what i mean.  We also had plans early on about making a full production line with transport cells as well.  Plant seeds and farm in one slot -> transport cell grabs from the nearby and pushes it into the processor cell.  We scrapped the transport for jam timeframes, so that was a bit of vestigial code.  Also - im aware we need some more visual feedback for your actions
Thank you again for the feedback, this is very insightful and useful for me!

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