UI Discussion: Dino Inventory & Overlay, Engram Page, Player HUD, + Multi Wheel

[mleii]

1 hour ago, Calliope said:

Does the text chat fall under "player HUD"?  Because it could use a lot of improvements, at least on the PC.

I would consider it part of the player HUD on both PC and consoles.

1 hour ago, Calliope said:

It feels like text chat is a victim of catering to console UIs rather than PC,

Well, I wish I could tell you that it's catering to consoles.  But it's MUCH worse on the console than on the PC.  To name just a few of the terrible things about the chat UI on the consoles, you cannot even scroll the chat on the console, it gets stuck and doesn't scroll sometimes, and you cannot tell if you're in global or tribal chat.

The definitely need to fix this UI for both the console and PC.

[Milaan]

I would love to see the following:

• Dino: Show stats before leveling / imprinting next to the current stats in the inventory screen. Thats very important for breeding and there is enough room to show the starting stats on the left side of the current ones.
• Dino: Show the gender in the inventory screen.
• Add a way to change the way names are displayed above dino's (remove display of level above the head for example). If you have a lot of dino's its really getting messy.
• Add a way to remove the display of structure names when you are near them.

 

[Brometheus]

Currently when you open a dinos inventory it has 5 slots at the bottom which would typically be the crafting queue in a smithy or fab but in a dinos inventory these could be used as " never drop or consume " slots so no matter what was in the slots the dino would never consume an it would never drop unless manuanly taken out.

The folders that can be created in inventorys dino an player should also hold there contents unless your currently in that folder so like in my beaver I ike to keep all my wood an stone structure blueprints but when i type wood in the main inventory or stone it will take the bps out of the folders too it would be much better if they would hold there contents an also hold there ordering format like if you click alphabetical it should hold that format until changed

A split amount from inventorys would be a huge help instead of taking all an having to put back because in things like a forge you cant put metal back into it so you have to take a full stack

The player wheel is well too busy it would be better if the button to bring it up was toggle not hold an then when you hover over aggression it would open a new wheel with the aggression levels an then another folder for follows an groups another for ranks one for seating on dinos with public seats an all the rest in a misc folder 

The big player model when I open my inventory screen is not needed that space could be better used 

A marking system would be great for moving select things out of inventorys

Also a hot key to turn of the hud would be great an would help with performance a lot an an option to turn of the structure information of your own structures 

[PlatinumCore16]

Not even going to search to see if this has been said, because if it was, it needs to be said again:

CONFIRMATION DIALOGUE WHEN WHISTLING FOLLOW ALL

MOVING THE "FOLLOW ALL" COMMAND TO A DIFFERENT LOCATION ON THE ROTATION WHEEL

Seriously, lost a wyvern because it "followed" and then ended up flying off to get killed by a pegomastax (because apparently they aggro on wyverns? DILO?).  I didn't know it was gone even though I looked around my base for dinos due to already knowing that "follow all" is a dangerous thing to whistle.

Not the right forum, but this doesn't even cover the issues of:

Wyverns can't/won't land after following until they decide to finally fly off and "find" a spot which is usually in the middle of nowhere and a long ways from where you whistled them to stop.  Let alone not being able to land where requested upon pressing the "land" button when riding them...

Pegomastax aggro on wyverns?  I'm sorry but aren't wyverns an apex predator?  I don't care if the pego is supposed to be a little thief, it shouldn't AGGRO on a raptoring apex predator.

I did not submit a ticket because it would be useless anyways and a waste of mine and the support's time.

Apologies on the bad language, but I'm pretty much sick of Ark right now.  Or at least I am sick of all of the requests for input on an Early Access game and then no recognition of the issues found and no plan to eliminate them or even mitigate them.

But we get haircuts and sheep...

[Nexus]

I'm sure a few (if not all of these) ideas may have been mentioned already, at work so don't have time to peruse the thread in its entirety

From recent play the main things that sprang to mind:

Inventory UI - I like the thought of the holographic though I think it would be more effective if it did not take up the whole of your vision - think the way the inventory is accessed in Deadspace - should be similar to this for more immersion plus will let you still see the world around you to a degree

General on screen pop ups - these have always been too large in font and cumbersome in their position. Citing a recent berry harvest run around the trilakes area on the center with my Dire bear. The entire screen was filled with everything I was harvesting which impeded view enough for me to run off a cliff.These could be smaller font and generall the on screen messages could be moved over to the side so it doesn't take over your view when doing things similar to the activities above.

Floating names: Should have option to toggle floating names on or off on any dino or in world entity that you have built or placed. Why? Because every sign in my base I have placed cant be read unless you back away and don't look directly at it, otherwise you just see the stats and owner. Otherwise as above, make the font smaller or not as bold and move directly off the entity so as not to get in the way of things.

When you have a mass of dinos and only a medium size base all you see is bright green bold text which breaks the immersion somewhat

Nex

 

 

[BigRed1227]

I'd like to see a beacon of sorts to where you, your tribemates or tames die. Kind of like the loot drop lights that come down. Say, you lag out, dashboard or just do something stupid and get you and your dino killed, it would be nice to see a beacon of light that pinpoints right where you died. That way, you don't have to search for 15 minutes to find it. Implement it only for tribemates to see the Beacon so no one else can just grab your stuff.

God only knows that night, fog and rain appear when you are searching for something! 

Also would LOVE to see a USE ALL stack when you are trying to heal your dino. Especially on xbox where mashing the A button takes forever to heal your mosa.....

Just my thoughts....

 

[banggugyangu]

4 words:  Inventory Folder Auto-Sorting.

Inventory Folders are nice for setting up grouping, but it's clumsy how it's implemented.  My opinion of the best implementation are as follows:

New item is acquired:  Goes to the root of your inventory.

Folder is created and labeled however.  Sub folders can be placed inside folders however.

Item gets placed into folder or subfolder. (This preference is then saved automatically unless manually changed.)

All future items of the same type are automatically placed in that same folder without any further user intervention.

 

An example of real-world use:  

I collect a piece of raw prime meat.  I place the raw prime meat inside a folder specifically for raw prime meat.  I then take a dino out to farm more raw prime meat for the purposes of taming or cooking.  I collect 45 raw prime meat on that dino.  I rush back to my tame,  access the dino's inventory, transfer all, and all of the raw prime meat is automatically placed in the folder I placed the original piece 30 minutes prior.  I access the tame's inventory, switch to the folder for raw prime meat, and transfer all.  Only the folder's contents are transferred (which is how this already operates).

The only change is that when an item is placed in a folder, any time you get more of that item, it automatically goes to that folder without having to do anything else.  (This would be great for dino, storage, and crafting inventories as well.)

[CCRogerWilco]

1) I would like mouse over pop-ups to stay within the viewport. Now they can often not be read because they are partially outside the viewport.

2) I really don't like the clickwheel.

• This is mostly because it is unpredictable. It changes depending on distance, which might change while you are interacting with it.
• It is also unpredictable where my mouse is. It would be really useful if every time the mouse would be centered on the middle of the wheel.
• It would be useful if the different options could be identified without having to read them. Especially because the layout of the wheel is unpredictable.
• It would help if the same buttons would be in the same place.
• It requires quite detailed mouse manipulation to get to the right pie slice. UI designers over the last 30 years have discovered that users are much better with making big motions. I really like OSX's Hot Corners for example, just slam your mouse into a corner or screen edge.
• Some work really weird, like the emote one, that always resets the keybind of the key you pressed to open it, or the one where you have to select harvesting levels, which makes you unable to exit the clickwheel.
• The wording on a lot of the options is really confusing. This is because it doesn't show the current setting, but only the options to change to.
• Things like changing Follow Distance are a chore, as you have to go through the clickwheel several times to cycle to the option you want. Just give me all the options.

3) HUD.

• Often not readable against the background, especially sky.
• Also fairly low contrast and because of the shapes, some are very hard to gauge accurately (especially stamina doesn't seem linear at all)
• When harvesting/killing things, you get spammed with really big text, covering what you're doing.

4) Inventory.

• Parts are unresponsive. You often have to scroll until the entire icon is in view to be able to interact with it, but other times you don't have to.
• It reorganizes itself when a row disappears, making it hard to use "T" to transfer items.
• Not every keypress of "T" or "O" results in a transferred or dropped item, only if the interface is quick enough in re-arranging things. It would be much quicker if to transfer 5 stacks of wood I have, I can just hammer T 5x while hovering over the first one.
• I like the text input for filtering. I would like a button to clear it in one go, instead of having to select it and use Backspace.
• The whole folders thing doesn't work for me. I would like folders for engrams/craftables.
• It would be useful if we could mark certain items in ur inventory as "never transfer". For example bullets of guns. you should still be able to manually drag them, but "Transfer all" should be able to ignore them, like it does the items on the hot bar slots.
• Show engrams you have learned but can't craft using the current inventory (smithy/fabricator etc.).
• 5 most recent filters, or most used filters with this dino, selectable with a simple icon, or even just [1][2][3][4][5] set of buttons. Maybe instead of the useless buttons (alphabetical and whatever).
• I used a mod in Minecraft that would reorganize the inventory so all items of the same type would be together.
• Maximizing stacks/minimizing number of stacks of each type of item on transfer between inventories.

5) Settings/options screen.

• It's too cluttered. What's wrong with one for graphics, audio, keybinds,...
• Allow an easy way to unassign a keybind so nothing is assigned to it. It would be really good if we could tell new players/tribe mates to unbind "Whistle Aggressive All" when they first join for example.

[CCRogerWilco]

On 23-1-2017 at 8:51 PM, Calliope said:

Does the text chat fall under "player HUD"?  Because it could use a lot of improvements, at least on the PC.

It feels like text chat is a victim of catering to console UIs rather than PC, but it would be really nice to have a proper, customizable text chat UI that you can resize, reposition, filter, have multiple tabs, etc.  The way that MMOs tend to have.  I play on a roleplaying server and do not use voice chat, and that tiny text chat box with the giant text in it makes it very hard to follow when the messages get busy.  Even more so since radio messages pile into the same window. 

On a similar note, it'd be nice to be able to more easily speak on different radio channels, selecting a single one to send messages on but being able to listen to multiple channels at once.  Being able to put different channels on different chat tabs, and so on

This. Also for the (tribe) log. Tabs for killed dinos, destroyed structures, etc.

[CCRogerWilco]

On 17-12-2016 at 3:55 PM, Marksman00048 said:

An option in the feeding trough inventory to highlight the ground, showing the full range of the trough feed range.

Also would be great to see it's range highlighted when placing the trough

I would in general really like if things that have a range would have an option to visualize it. This would include group whistles.

[mleii]

@Jat Lots of great feedback about how inventories should look and work.  Please be sure to read them and point this and the other thread you created out to the devs.

[Blade052]

Let's face it. The learn engram page needs some serious TLC. I would like to see the engrams sorted into simple categories such as weapons, structures, tools, and misc or something like that. And let's address the elephant in the room. Searching for engram requirements is a colossal waste of time. I don't know how many hours I've wasted just searching for an engram to find out that it has a requirement only to search for that to find out it too has its own requirements. I'd like to be able to click on any particular engram and view it's tech tree. Like so...

For full details of my idea check my post: