saddened by poor interface

[Mr.Frag]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Hard to pick out my human controlled TF's by just looking at the map.

Instead of inventing complaints, how about following the RTFM! process.

F2 key.

And where in the manual is that? Somewhere buried in the 250 pages I guess? The game's depth and complexity are its greatest strength and at the same time, it's greates weakness. It has the learning curve of an HP Openview/Prognosis/Tivoli....

And realize most of us have not spent every waking hour of our free time for the past two friggin' years learning every little nuance of the game.

Get life, Fraggo, you desparately NEED one.

I'm sorry you are not capable of making it to page 13 of the 200+ pages ... they put it right at the front of the manual, but like everything else in life, you are too busy whining about it and spouting off how good you are to look. [8|]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: dinsdale

ORIGINAL: Panzer76

And lets be honest guys, this togheter with poor gfx is the "problem" of war games. The typical devoted grognard turned game desginer has "zero" (hihi, pun intended) knowledge about almost anything else than the data, ie, historical correctness.

This was "fine" a number of years ago, when computer games was not big business, and war games even a smaller niche. But, in 2004... there really are no excuses.

You're absolutely right, and from reading the thread I would extend it and say that the typical grognard gamer will not let an interface stop them from playing, and given the choice of a better interface at the expense of other features would balk at such a change.

Just as predictable as a game having a bad interface is the flood of "it's all right " posts from all involved whenever the subject is brought up.

Appears we now have two "do not tresspass" areas that the support staff gets defensive about in a hurry. AI and now UI.

The game is VERY good. But it is what it is. Most of these comments are for Matrix and staff/partners to digest for the next round of new title launches, not for this one. I'm still confilicted about whether scaling a UV game to this one was a "good" thing. I get the feeling that they attempted a project requiring a "quantum physics" solution but tried to get there using a "classical physics" approach... And I have yet to decide if they suceeded.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag



Instead of inventing complaints, how about following the RTFM! process.

F2 key.

And where in the manual is that? Somewhere buried in the 250 pages I guess? The game's depth and complexity are its greatest strength and at the same time, it's greates weakness. It has the learning curve of an HP Openview/Prognosis/Tivoli....

And realize most of us have not spent every waking hour of our free time for the past two friggin' years learning every little nuance of the game.

Get life, Fraggo, you desparately NEED one.

I'm sorry you are not capable of making it to page 13 of the 200+ pages ... they put it right at the front of the manual, but like everything else in life, you are too busy whining about it and spouting off how good you are to look. [8|]

No, like most everyone else here, I have a life outside of WitP, that prevents me committing 200+ pages of a game manual to memory. I imagine, a month into this game, what I don't know VASTLY outweighs what I do know about this game. And I expect that may be the case for long time to come, as well. I appreciate now knowing how to filter my map display, but regardless, take your smartassed RTFM comments and stick them in a warm dark place....

And yes, expect the complaints (what few I actually have) to continue.... It is what the forum is for in case you haven't realized it.

[barbarrossa]

well I for one have no life....but I still haven't RTFM![:D]

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Damien Thorn

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Once again, I think it would be preferable if the game interface worked exactly like a standard Windows application written to Microsoft's User Interface Standards. Standard dialog buttons (like Ok and Cancel/Exit) in standard and CONSISTANT locations. Windows standard mousing, list paging, item selection, etc. Standard Windows menubar, toolbar, statusbar widgets.

Yuck! Who wants to play agame that looks like a spreadsheet? I once played a game that ran on windows 3.1 and I never got the feeling that I was in a game. It always felt like a program but never like a game. I guess I wasn't alone in hating it because no company makes games that look like windows. People don't want to think about spreadsheets and word processers when they play their games.

We all work in Windows in our daily work lives,

...and that's why we don't want to see them in our games.

The UI could be improved in many ways but making the game look like windows isn't one of them.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

ORIGINAL: Mogami
He admitted this but pointed out the choice was 1990 or nothing since GG did not write in 2004 code.

OK well can we have some old-fashioned 1990s procedural keyboard shortcuts back then please? [8|]

I never played PacWar much but did spend some time with WiR (basically the same interface). Yes it was clunky but once you learnt the KEYS it was pretty much super quick to use. WitP will never be like that because it is 95% mouse-driven.

I can't emphasise this enough, just because you have a GUI doesn't mean you don't use the keyboard.

Good point. Ctrl-<whatever> to do what a series of mouse-clicks might otherwise do. In standard Windows app development you usually have a large hierarchy of menus, sub-menus and sub-sub-menues or a series of dialogs to get to what you want to do. You then usually have an array of toolbar tools to use as shortcuts to the more common tasks. But you also have corresponding keyboard shortcuts. Newbies will use the mouse almost exclusively and then some of the toolbar tools, but experts almost always resort to keyboard shortcuts.

And I should be able select items in a list using the Windows standard up or down arrow and spacebar punch and hopefully even have a select-all option (and a keyboard short-cut to boot). Bottom line, ideally, one should not have to use the mouse at all if they don't want to....

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: Damien Thorn

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Once again, I think it would be preferable if the game interface worked exactly like a standard Windows application written to Microsoft's User Interface Standards. Standard dialog buttons (like Ok and Cancel/Exit) in standard and CONSISTANT locations. Windows standard mousing, list paging, item selection, etc. Standard Windows menubar, toolbar, statusbar widgets.

Yuck! Who wants to play agame that looks like a spreadsheet? I once played a game that ran on windows 3.1 and I never got the feeling that I was in a game. It always felt like a program but never like a game. I guess I wasn't alone in hating it because no company makes games that look like windows. People don't want to think about spreadsheets and word processers when they play their games.

We all work in Windows in our daily work lives,

...and that's why we don't want to see them in our games.

The UI could be improved in many ways but making the game look like windows isn't one of them.

Did Eastern Front look like Windows? Did Panzer General look like Windows? Did Civilization look like Windows? Does SIM City look like Windows? Does Microsoft Flight Simulator look like Windows? All are native WIN32 applications with standard Windows UI widgets under the covers. Get my drift here??? Once again, it doesn't have to look like Microsoft Excel to use a standard WIN32 UI.

Have any of you guys ever developed something other than a game???? Seems like you guys need an infusion of ideas from outside your collective "box".

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Get life, Fraggo, you desparately NEED one.

you are welcome to discuss What you think can be improved or what you think that sucks. But you´r not welcome to insult people here.

Consider this an official warning. More insults and you´ll find yourself on a 2 week vacation.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980


Did Eastern Front look like Windows?

Have any of you guys ever developed something other than a game???? Seems like you guys need an infusion of ideas from outside your collective "box".

Yes and it turned me off, believe it or not. Not to mention the nice changes your normal Windows GUI suffered from CTDs of this applications.

No I never "developed" something else then a game, actually I only develop graphics for them. But I also not tell my software application developing coder buddies how much cooler there business applications could look like. Because I never developed one of that.

But to make you happy, we currently have two projects that are based on the Windows GUI. For both of them it´s very boring to develop interface graphics for ........[>:]

[carnifex]

Yeah baby, INTERFACE THREADS always bring out the very best hostility

Non-Interface Thread:

1: My bombers are blah blah blah'
2: You need to yadda yadda....
3: Thanks!


Interface Thread:

1: The widget and the button blah blah blah!
2: I will kill you in real life!
3:....

[Chaplain]

Hey ZOOMIE, give us a game that you developed. We're waiting. [:D]

[Arnir]

I was going to try to get the two week vacation, but something in the back of my mind said that it wasn't an all-expense paid 2 week vacation. That dampened it for me. [;)]

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

No, like most everyone else here, I have a life outside of WitP, that prevents me committing 200+ pages of a game manual to memory. I imagine, a month into this game, what I don't know VASTLY outweighs what I do know about this game. And I expect that may be the case for long time to come, as well. I appreciate now knowing how to filter my map display, but regardless, take your smartassed RTFM comments and stick them in a warm dark place....

Can you please explain me how an actuall answer to a question by you that obviously also answers it can be "smartassed" [&:] ?

[pad152]

One way to simplify the interface is to remove half the features and stop adding new ones.

One thing to remember is about half of the features have been added after the inital design, and the interface is likly to funkier as more and more features are added, but you'll get use to it after the first 300 or 400 turns[:D]!

[52nd Lowland]

It is easy to sit and bemoan the interface or OOB/map things etc but we can only speculate at the length of time and man hours that has been put into WitP.Is the game perfect ? No of course not but IMHO is the best by far to cover the Pacific theatre .
Can improvements be made ? Of course.This is the only game i have seen where us users have participated so much in terms of information (ie OOB etc) and im sure the Matrix guys will take on as much as possible.[:D]

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Get life, Fraggo, you desparately NEED one.

you are welcome to discuss What you think can be improved or what you think that sucks. But you´r not welcome to insult people here.

Consider this an official warning. More insults and you´ll find yourself on a 2 week vacation.

Explain where I'm insulting anything or anyone? Letting you and your fellow Matrix staffers know that some of us think some of the development techniques you guys seem to use are appear to be less than optimum in this day and age should not be construed as insulting. If it is, well, then that's a problem in and of itself.

If, for instance you take these as insults:

1) Failure to incorprate modern object-orient design and data management techniques is a problem

2) Failure to use tried and true third-party toolkits is short-sighted

3) Continuing to allow obsolete development techiniques to be used because certain key personnel have failed to stay current is a problem

4) Reluctance to try new, modern paradigms in game design is self-defeating...


If comments like those are "insulting", well then you have bigger internal problems at Matrix than I realized.


I realize that WitP is not going fundementally change at all. Not the way the AI does things, not the basic way it handles its data, not its basic UI. Posters here critical of these things are simply offering comments that developers and their task-masters, might think about before the next big effort launches.

And as for my response to Frag, lets just say a smart-assed RTFM comment WILL be responded to IN KIND, every time. If you and your staff feel insulted by game criticisms then your staff or major support folks like him, need to be reminded that game players are equally insulted by their their condensending attitudes in response to those criticisms. Most of you guys are highly professional and face criticsm very well, but guys like the Frag character, are by nature, insulting in the way they respond to people. And it brings out the worst in some....unfortunately, like me.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

No, like most everyone else here, I have a life outside of WitP, that prevents me committing 200+ pages of a game manual to memory. I imagine, a month into this game, what I don't know VASTLY outweighs what I do know about this game. And I expect that may be the case for long time to come, as well. I appreciate now knowing how to filter my map display, but regardless, take your smartassed RTFM comments and stick them in a warm dark place....

Can you please explain me how an actuall answer to a question by you that obviously also answers it can be "smartassed" [&:] ?

Easy. I don't expect to EVER be told, directly, by support staff, to RTFM. I would FIRE any of my support technicians here if I EVER got even a remote INKLING they were talking to a customer like that. There is a way you inform poeple about where in the manual a certain item is without slapping them in the face with a ignorant RTFM comment. It's not appreciated and I, for one, will not tolerate being talked to like the four year child.

I find it hard to believe you cannot tell that that is poor customer service and where someone can be highly offended by RTFM like comments. I KNOW how stupid I am concerning this game, I don't need thin-skinned beta-tester to slap me in the face with it.

[mogami]

Hi. I'm not good at Windows I admit it. I don't know any of those "hot key" short cuts. The games I liked were always DOS based so I did not even install windows on my computers before the game designers started making me use it. (I think I changed for Civ I but I always still played the DOS games.) As Windows "improved" I disliked it more and more. I use Win 98 because I can run my DOS programs.

War gamers grow used to certain systems. SPI produced series of board games based on a system. Other systems were developed by other designers but I did not like them because they confused me. GG games have always been easy to play out of the box if you had played one before.

Now I am not saying progress is bad and we should be reluctant or afraid to learn new things but if I buy something because I liked the previous work and I find something totally new I might be upset as well. I don't go to hear Van Claiburne and then get upset because he is still playing Tchaikovsky.


I hated the Panzer General series but I can't/won't say it was because of the interface but then I didn't think of it at the time so prehaps that was part of it. (I didn't know the tricks) But I think it was because I didn't like the system over all. (I thought it was rather hokey with eye candy replacing combat systems (or everything I was used to already from 30 years of wargaming) It still holds the record for shortest time on my hard drive (except for High Heat baseball that I could never get to run)


What I am saying is to part of the crowd WITP interface is perfectly natural and undrstood. Some of us expected it. Other systems are possible and no one can say any particular method cannot be improved or one more efficent found. However there is no system that is as widely accepted and known among the long time wargamer. The game was designed by long time wargamers. The question is really then "Who should have to adapt?" Some portion of the buyers are going to have to change and accept any system.
The designer is well known. I'd expect a new designer to use newer systems. But I recall both Schlitz and Coca Cola updating their products. One recovered by going back to the old method. The other went from number 1 in the world to out of bussiness. The customer is always correct but what customer does a producer listen to?

If you know why Grognards are called Grognards then from a designers point of view the answer is easy.

(On my box it says "Level of complexity: Grognard")

WITP was not a pig in the poke. Everyone knew for 2 years it was a game being designed by Grognards for grognards to be sad that the end product is exactly what it claims to be is some what baffling.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Get life, Fraggo, you desparately NEED one.

you are welcome to discuss What you think can be improved or what you think that sucks. But you´r not welcome to insult people here.

Consider this an official warning. More insults and you´ll find yourself on a 2 week vacation.

Explain where I'm insulting anything or anyone? Letting you and your fellow Matrix staffers know that some of us think some of the development techniques you guys seem to use are appear to be less than optimum in this day and age should not be construed as insulting. If it is, well, then that's a problem in and of itself.

If, for instance you take these as insults:

1) Failure to incorprate modern object-orient design and data management techniques is a problem

2) Failure to use tried and true third-party toolkits is short-sighted

3) Continuing to allow obsolete development techiniques to be used because certain key personnel have failed to stay current is a problem

4) Reluctance to try new, modern paradigms in game design is self-defeating...


If comments like those are "insulting", well then you have bigger internal problems at Matrix than I realized.


I realize that WitP is not going fundementally change at all. Not the way the AI does things, not the basic way it handles its data, not its basic UI. Posters here critical of these things are simply offering comments that developers and their task-masters, might think about before the next big effort launches.

And as for my response to Frag, lets just say a smart-assed RTFM comment WILL be responded to IN KIND, every time. If you and your staff feel insulted by game criticisms then your staff or major support folks like him, need to be reminded that game players are equally insulted by their their condensending attitudes in response to those criticisms. Most of you guys are highly professional and face criticsm very well, but guys like the Frag character, are by nature, insulting in the way they respond to people. And it brings out the worst in some....unfortunately, like me.

Are you able to comprehend my post? I sayed you´re welcome to discuss what you think can be made better. I sayed you´re not welcome to insult people. Telling somebody to "get a life" is an insult IMHO. Therefore points 1 through 4 are pointless.

We allways have and will appreciate comments and discussions and we often, in fact very often have listened to our fans and customers and incoporated suggestions they made.

And as for my response to Frag, lets just say a smart-assed RTFM comment WILL be responded to IN KIND, every time. If you and your staff feel insulted by game criticisms then your staff or major support folks like him, need to be reminded that game players are equally insulted by their their condensending attitudes in response to those criticisms. Most of you guys are highly professional and face criticsm very well, but guys like the Frag character, are by nature, insulting in the way they respond to people. And it brings out the worst in some....unfortunately, like me.

Well I guess you have a "personal" problem then with Frag. Frag is and allways has been one of the most helpfull people on this board. He´s not "staff", he´s a volunteer betatester that commited more then he needed to this game and even more for jumping in here and doing community support. If it would be possible then I would suggest him for the CMOH.

"RTFM". If he simply would have sayed "RTFM" then yes, I would say you´re right. But he did not.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

No, like most everyone else here, I have a life outside of WitP, that prevents me committing 200+ pages of a game manual to memory. I imagine, a month into this game, what I don't know VASTLY outweighs what I do know about this game. And I expect that may be the case for long time to come, as well. I appreciate now knowing how to filter my map display, but regardless, take your smartassed RTFM comments and stick them in a warm dark place....

Can you please explain me how an actuall answer to a question by you that obviously also answers it can be "smartassed" [&:] ?

Easy. I don't expect to EVER be told, directly, by support staff, to RTFM. I would FIRE any of my support technicians here if I EVER got even a remote INKLING they were talking to a customer like that. There is a way you inform poeple about where in the manual a certain item is without slapping them in the face with a ignorant RTFM comment. It's not appreciated and I, for one, will not tolerate being talked to like the four year child.

I find it hard to believe you cannot tell that that is poor customer service and where someone can be highly offended by RTFM like comments. I KNOW how stupid I am concerning this game, I don't need thin-skinned beta-tester to slap me in the face with it.

He didn´t directly and only sayed RTFM. He even gave you an answer to your "complaint".

Frag is not customer service, he´s a member of thuis community, helping and answering peoples questions beyond duty. For years!