Why the WinXP user interface??

[varsovie]

But dissing a UI for how it looks and not how it works shows a dim understanding of what a UI job is.
Sorry, but this is the way I see things.

You might want to read OP more carefully. Your comment shows a dim understanding of what I actually said:

The single biggest obstacle to my purchasing and playing this game is the Windows XP-style user interface. I have to ask -- in 2023, how has this game franchise not moved beyond this?


Because it doesn’t need to.

If a second spent in making this UI looking like a supermodel is a second not used for the game proper, then it is a wasted second.

Then you could argue that all the time spent to make the "purely visual" ship models/editor look better was a waste of time...
But at the end some people just enjoy drawing their ships and it makes the community thrives because some people just like to make and share their pretty ship (or ugly historically accurate ones).

But the GUI is something else, will a bad or ugly one stops a committed player to play ? No, more so for a game like RTW that is good, and niche and in a niche where graphics are expected to be an afterthought, or even to be bare for functionality (eg NATO counters vs 3d chips).

As personal experience, I myself played the 4x aurora, even if it would actually break the GUI outside the game itself or dwarf fortress in ascii when the GUI was all keyboard, and bad even at that.
http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.ph ... =Main_Page
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

But I can't say a better or more appealing GUI would have been a secondary QOL issue, and it is certain that it reduced the playerbase. First because people won't choose something ugly when the maket is full of pretty and shiny things. Second because the lack of intuitiveness and usability made lots of player decide it is not worth playing against the GUI instead of playing a game. And yes, purely graphics GUI elements, like background color, clarity of icons, ultimately impacts the usability.

I can understand why this game isn't sleek looking and has GUI I consider usable, even if there is space for improvements (dark mode?). At the end of the day it is the dev that has to make the calculation time/effort invested vs player gained/retained of every elements of the game. Some like Gratuituous Space battle went for max polish and outsourcing the GUI actually and ship design.
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspa ... ofgsb.html

And us in the forums cannot assume the dev are coding GODS, and that the game engine is modular with data, game logic and UI totally separated entities linked by a robust framework. Also the game has a long history and tools few years back weren't as portable as today.

I think the OP was pretty clear, for him the present GUI does not justify a purchase or RTW3. To see if he is the exception or the rule is important for the future of RTW. What is sure, is that even if.you disagree with this personnal assessment of the game, denigrating this opinion, or worse the people having it, is a bigger diserving to RTW than bad graphics. That guy is interrested enough in the concept of RTW to express what would make it a sure buy for him, and a toxic forum is certainly not a great incentive to be not only.a player, but an active member of the commumity.

So please people, keep classy.
[Tension -]

[blackcloud6]

I love the interface. It's a good interface. I don't like most modern interfaces because they're not intuitive. When I want to perform a task in a game, I don't enjoy hunting all over the computer screen for some special shiny widget that only the developers can easily identify.

This!

I fully agree. This game is so easy to play and intuitive on how to dos. The difficulty comes in playing well, good tactics, good fleet management, good designing, etc. And that is how a game should play. I'm not fighting the game engine as well as the enemy n RTW3.

[Jazlizard]

The UI/visual design is something we would indeed like to update, and it is a possibility that we have/are looking into.

Thanks!

That's really great to hear. As many have mentioned a dark, or darker mode would be great. Additionally some sort of texts scaling would probably be the other most requested item.

Several people have mentioned what C:MO did compared to CMANO, which honestly wasn't a huge change, but made a significant difference in the look and feel.

I feel while that an UI overhaul is probably due, you could probably get away with dressing up some of the key windows and get a ton of bang for your buck. Having said that, yeah dark(er) mode and UI scaling should probably be the top of the list.

[TheNewTeddy]

This game is so easy to play and intuitive on how to dos. ... I'm not fighting the game engine as well as the enemy n RTW3.

This has not been my experience at all. I'm constantly having to stop to remember what clicks and in what order that I need to do in order to get the game to do what I want.

Lets say I want to move 2 battleships from Northern Europe to SouthEast Asia.

Ideally, in the "perfect" game:
I would click on a little battleship icon, and literally drag it, on the map, from one area to another (imaginary).

In a less perfect game, I'd need to click select the ship or fleet, click tell it what to do, and click to tell it where to go (hearts of iron 4).

In this game, I need to click on the region the ships are currently, click on ship details, click on move ships, click the ships I want to move, click to move them over, click to the region I want to move them to, and click okay.


In an ideal game, I would not be able to make a ship that won't work, as, it would tell me the instant I try to do something, it wont work.

In a less ideal game, such as KOEI's PTO1, if I try to put in a number that's too high, the game makes a buzzer noise, and tells me to try again.

In this game, I need to click to check, but when I do, it tells me what I have to fix. Sometimes, it can fix it itself (like cross deck firing on a non-qualifying ship) but sometimes it expects me to go and do it. Worse, sometimes it's super vague, like "Hull too narrow" and I have to google it to figure it out.


This game's UX is workable, but I wouldn't call it good by any means.

I should, perhaps, explain "who" I am. I'm a gamer. I spend hours a week, sometimes hours a day, playing video games.
According to steam, I've spent 60.5 hours playing RTW3. Here are the games, on steam, I've played for more than 3 times as long (180 hours)
at 181 hours we start with Stardew Valley, then My Summer Car, Mass Effect 1, Factorio, Dragon Age Inquisition, Victoria II, Skyrim, RimWorld, Starbound, GTA5, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Europa Universalis IV, The Long Drive, Hearts of Iron IV, and Stellaris. I have 1390 hours in Stellaris.
I'm a gamer.

And I'm trying to tell you, as a gamer, that this style of UX is going to be passed by, by most gamers. I am "old" (38), and a nerd (I like strategy games), and happen to have an interest in battleship era naval stuff. If any one of those three were missing, I strongly suspect I would never have bothered with this game. Heck, I bought it when I did because I just happened to see it on steam.

There are a lot of steam users out there, looking to buy games like this, that are going to pass it over simply because it looks cheap.

[supswar]

This game is so easy to play and intuitive on how to dos. ... I'm not fighting the game engine as well as the enemy n RTW3.

This has not been my experience at all. I'm constantly having to stop to remember what clicks and in what order that I need to do in order to get the game to do what I want.

Lets say I want to move 2 battleships from Northern Europe to SouthEast Asia.

Ideally, in the "perfect" game:
I would click on a little battleship icon, and literally drag it, on the map, from one area to another (imaginary).

In a less perfect game, I'd need to click select the ship or fleet, click tell it what to do, and click to tell it where to go (hearts of iron 4).

In this game, I need to click on the region the ships are currently, click on ship details, click on move ships, click the ships I want to move, click to move them over, click to the region I want to move them to, and click okay.


In an ideal game, I would not be able to make a ship that won't work, as, it would tell me the instant I try to do something, it wont work.

In a less ideal game, such as KOEI's PTO1, if I try to put in a number that's too high, the game makes a buzzer noise, and tells me to try again.

In this game, I need to click to check, but when I do, it tells me what I have to fix. Sometimes, it can fix it itself (like cross deck firing on a non-qualifying ship) but sometimes it expects me to go and do it. Worse, sometimes it's super vague, like "Hull too narrow" and I have to google it to figure it out.


This game's UX is workable, but I wouldn't call it good by any means.

I should, perhaps, explain "who" I am. I'm a gamer. I spend hours a week, sometimes hours a day, playing video games.
According to steam, I've spent 60.5 hours playing RTW3. Here are the games, on steam, I've played for more than 3 times as long (180 hours)
at 181 hours we start with Stardew Valley, then My Summer Car, Mass Effect 1, Factorio, Dragon Age Inquisition, Victoria II, Skyrim, RimWorld, Starbound, GTA5, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Europa Universalis IV, The Long Drive, Hearts of Iron IV, and Stellaris. I have 1390 hours in Stellaris.
I'm a gamer.

And I'm trying to tell you, as a gamer, that this style of UX is going to be passed by, by most gamers. I am "old" (38), and a nerd (I like strategy games), and happen to have an interest in battleship era naval stuff. If any one of those three were missing, I strongly suspect I would never have bothered with this game. Heck, I bought it when I did because I just happened to see it on steam.

There are a lot of steam users out there, looking to buy games like this, that are going to pass it over simply because it looks cheap.

Just stay on "ships in service." Control+click what you want to move, hit M or right click and tell it where to go.

[supswar]

I think a major part of the argument is that dragging and dropping ships would be highly tedious. It's currently set up to move fleets. You're working with a navy, not a couple ships.

The issue would be making the game have a more welcoming few hours, but a far less easy game for long-term play.

[el_slapper]

Coming after the battle, but All this highly depends upon the technologies used. Some old techs can be upgraded in terms of UI style, some cannot. And I have no clue what lies behind.

Add to this that the whole engine is likely reused from version to version, and here is the reason why the old UI is likely to stay even for a possible RTW4 - even if of course it makes flee a fair number of potential buyers. The modernization is likely yo be impossible given the amount of work needed vs the available resources.

[Orffen]

I think a major part of the argument is that dragging and dropping ships would be highly tedious. It's currently set up to move fleets. You're working with a navy, not a couple ships.

The issue would be making the game have a more welcoming few hours, but a far less easy game for long-term play.

With the new Division Editor, it would make sense to be able to move divisions by drag/drop on the map. Don't need to show individual ships there at all, just a count.

[WLRoo]

With the new Division Editor, it would make sense to be able to move divisions by drag/drop on the map. Don't need to show individual ships there at all, just a count.

Even then, I can have 20+ divisions in play in my home theatre. Making sure I grabbed the correct division for drag and drop isn't all that easy.

[thedoctorking]

I, too, would enjoy some UI upgrades to this game, but the retro UI actually adds somewhat to the charm. As I'm playing with century-old ships, I feel like a decades-old computer technology adds some "flavor" ??? I'd say prioritize improving what's going on "under the hood", add multiplayer support, improve the political/(land)military model, before spending a lot of resources on changing the way the game looks. JMHO