3.0 Thoughts

[Riamus]

Okay, so I've taken a look at the 3.0 game options and startup. I'll have more comments after playing a 3.0 game, but that won't likely happen until after stable. But here are my thoughts about the menus and the options.

• The main menu of the game looks great.
• The settings menu looks atrocious. Whoever thought that was a good design really needs to be shown decent UI work. Huge, wide settings look ridiculous and you don't even fill the screen width, making it look even more poorly designed. The color scheme is hard on the eyes.
• Other menus look just as bad as the settings menu.
• New game options... sadly, not much of note for me here. No real surprise since I enjoy vanilla, but I see myself making only a few changes from default: No jars required for the dew collector (surprised and happy to see that option) and the intro challenges and quest disabled since I don't need them and don't see any reason to have to jump through those hoops since I can still get the 4 skill points when those are disabled. I *might* also set traders to 24/7, but only as a way to give me a reason to do the night quests that I normally ignore. And maybe I'll play around the with zombie density and spawn settings to see how they work, but those aren't game changers by any means.

Not much, I know. But it's what I think so far. The biggest issue for me is the UI for the various options menus. It looks like a student did it in the 90s. I get that the game has kind of an old school feel to it, but that UI takes it way too far, imo. I don't want "modern" UI as that usually looks awful as well (though better than this), but at least start by fixing the colors and making the options not take up half the screen. And if you're going to leave a lot of blank space on the right side, then at least center things so it doesn't look so lopsided.

 

[7DaysToDieEnjoyer]

I also don’t like this UI. Everything is too big, it blends together, and it’s hard to read. The colors are also not very well chosen. I liked the UI from version 3.0 that Jawoodle got.
I hope the whole UI in the game won’t look like this either, although judging by the first message from duke which already looks just as bad, I’m worried it might be like that. Besides, I’ve seen screenshots of what the in game UI is supposed to look like, and it actually looks like what we’re seeing now

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

It´s actually amazing coming up with a UI borked like that after over a decade of development. My favorite is that you have to scroll trough the settings in the world generator menu even though there would be easily enough room for all the settings.

Overall i like the sandbox settings, we can nearly have the full romero experience, even though i need to pump up the numbers of enemies spawning a lot for that. Would be nice to see a insane option after very high that doubles/triples the enemy spawn compared to very high.

If you play on warrior or survivalist i would say very high spawn rate with default settings is quite the difference. At least very early in game it´s way harder then. Didn´t play a lot like that though, just to test the spawn rate a bit.

We need to be able to adjust wandering horde frequency and size though with the option to get zombies according to your game stage up to elites. That would be neat. Same for screamer horde size.

 

[Kalen]

I loved the very high zombie density until I got to the snow biome.... ugh, that was brutal.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Maybe the new UX/UI director, was trying to make their bones, but has never come to the
forum. Generic drag and drops, that worked on Wolfenstein, probably would not fit here.

Opening the options, is great because it cut down on my personal modding time. It also
has given me options to test first hand, instead of theorize and mod. Now I actually like
playing Dead is Dead lose it all, and deservedly so, because I have the spawn turned up,
spawning in the wasteland, and have only 2 entity groups. The regular includes all up to
feral, all animals including vulture.

The second is all of the higher specials, So I either spawn in the wasteland, or 500meters
off the shore. There are 10 islands connected by land bridges, Forest is only large enough
in each area to cover a courtyard, all else is governed by the biome timer. Good Times.

 

[Sapient6]

The settings menu looks atrocious. Whoever thought that was a good design really needs to be shown decent UI work.

I strongly disagree. The settings menu IS exemplary UI/UX.

It presents to the player 150 individual settings without being daunting. For the most part it's intuitive for "where would I find a setting to accomplish X?". It's still a lot and players can miss things easily, but all of that in and of itself is a solid accomplishment.

A more compact layout, fitting more on the screen at once, runs the risk of overwhelming the player with too much information at once. So again, solid work there.

The color scheme? Eh. I could take it or leave it. It's not straining on my old man eyes, so I'm not going to complain.

 

[Riamus]

I strongly disagree. The settings menu IS exemplary UI/UX.

It presents to the player 150 individual settings without being daunting. For the most part it's intuitive for "where would I find a setting to accomplish X?". It's still a lot and players can miss things easily, but all of that in and of itself is a solid accomplishment.

A more compact layout, fitting more on the screen at once, runs the risk of overwhelming the player with too much information at once. So again, solid work there.

The color scheme? Eh. I could take it or leave it. It's not straining on my old man eyes, so I'm not going to complain.

UI and UX are not the same thing. I am talking about UI. They can make the UI look good while keeping it just as easy to use.

 

[Sapient6]

Sure, they aren't the same thing, but User Experience directly flows out of the design of the User Interface.

I've met an awful lot of code monkeys that think they are good at designing UI, most of whom can create a really nice looking UI... but most of them absolutely fail at creating a UI that is intuitive to use and navigate. If someone gets the UX right then that's they've won a hard fought battle. My expectation going into v3.0 experimental was that the UI to update 150 settings was going to be a horror show.

Is it to your taste? Obviously not. Can't please everyone. Doesn't mean the person/people who worked on this did a bad job at UI.

 

[Riamus]

Doesn't mean the person/people who worked on this did a bad job at UI.

Whether or not something is bad is subjective. It's obviously an opinion. And as far as I'm concerned, yes... they did a really bad job. The UX is good. That doesn't mean the UI is good. They could easily make a better UI without having a negative impact on the UX. If you like the UI, that's fine. As I said, it's an opinion. There isn't any right or wrong opinion. I wrote this to give feedback on what I think. That's all.

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Anyhow, to continue with the feedback...

I had to go through and restart the game a number of times to get all my original settings back because I didn't notice them when setting up the game with the new sandbox settings and so forgot to change them back to what I use. Things like 120 minute days and no drop on death, for example. I wish we could change things while the game is running, but oh well. It is all sorted out now. I'd also prefer to have the last used game options be the selected option when starting a new game. It's extra work having to click through to the User options and then select the saved option you want when, in most cases, you're likely going to use the same settings most of the time. Having the last used settings be the default on a new game would be preferable. It may be minor, but it's a simple QoL thing to add.

I think the game options need to be sorted out better. Some things that seem like they go together are not next to one another. It's not critical, but some better ordering would be useful.

Having some indication other than the "not-very-noticeable" scrollbar that you have to scroll in certain screens would also be good. I missed a number of options because I didn't notice them being off the screen. But that is minor and only affects someone once.

The game options need to have "default" be in the correct place in the choices. Going from default to very low to low and up makes no sense. You have no indication of whether or not you're increasing or decreasing it from what is default. I'd assume that default is the level above "low" for everything, but I doubt that's always true. I understand that default is whatever the XML is and mods can change the XML, but the order should just be based on what the default vanilla values are. If that's between very low and low, then put default between those. If it's higher, then put it higher. Just please put default in the correct place on all settings. Note that it does seem correct for some things, but for others, it's the lowest option.

I decided to try the increased zombie density and it definitely is noticeable. My initial run to the trader left me fighting 5 zombies, with one being the biker and another the tourist. I could have run away, but chose to fight instead. It did make it more interesting, and the increased zombies afterwards also kept things more active than in previous versions, so that's a plus.

Probably not related to the game, but Steam disconnected in the middle of the game and didn't reconnect until I closed the game. Also, in-game voice that I had to use when Steam disconnected worked only for a while and then stopped working as well. Never had either issue before with the game.

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Unrelated, but I don't want to start another thread and it's still my thoughts...

I did the bandit survey and it's funny that the things I ranked most important/interesting to me in the 10 sets were rarely related to bandits. Heh. More biomes? Definitely! I would prefer that over bandits any day. More decorations for my base? Yep. Still more important to me than bandits. Lol!

 

[Riamus]

One other thing I forgot to add... the water requirement for boiled eggs makes them basically useless. You're only making boiled eggs in the first day or two and you don't have extra water sitting around at that point. I get that water is used to boil stuff, so it makes sense... but I also know that if I am going to boil eggs, I don't get new water for each egg. I boil all the eggs I want with the same water. So it's also pretty dumb. At this point eggs are really only worth it for bacon and eggs.

I guess I won't make boiled eggs anymore. There are so many recipes that just aren't ever worth making. They really need to look at that and fix the recipes or else just remove them.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Should be fried eggs instead of boiled eggs tbh. For the other recipes maybe get rid of the candies and put those buffs on food.

 

[Riamus]

Should be fried eggs instead of boiled eggs tbh. For the other recipes maybe get rid of the candies and put those buffs on food.

Yeah, I'd rather it be changed to fried eggs. You can fry eggs in a pot if you don't have a pan without any water, so there's not really any reason to require water if you just rename the eggs.

 

[Sapient6]

The UX is good. That doesn't mean the UI is good.

Point of contention to me.

They could easily make a better UI without having a negative impact on the UX.

And it's this that I really bounce off of and why I responded the way I did in the first place. Changing the UI without negatively impacting the UX is a trick in and of itself. Better contrast in colors is the one change they could make that would positively impact both. Reducing the type and filling the available screen space, as you suggested, is a fantastic way to make the UI slicker while making the UX objectively worse.

There isn't any right or wrong opinion

I very much agree, and it hasn't been my intent to take issue with your opinions about the aesthetics of the UI. Only with the extremely harsh "this is so bad they should rub the dev's nose in it. bad dog!" take. Got my hackles up when the dev who designed the interface objectively did a very good job.

And it really stood out to me because I usually agree with the stuff you share here.

 

[Sapient6]

Yeah, I'd rather it be changed to fried eggs. You can fry eggs in a pot if you don't have a pan without any water, so there's not really any reason to require water if you just rename the eggs.

It's been a while since I paid attention, but IIRC the very early recipes that don't require water subtract water when you eat them and the boiled foods add water. It's not necessarily sensible, but it's a nice early game survival hurdle that they could lean into.

Would be nice if there could be batch cooking where certain recipes can be made in larger batches where each ingredient requirement is calculated using its own individual ratio. Boil one egg: 1 egg 1 water. Boil 3 eggs: 3 eggs 1 water. Boil 6 eggs: 6 eggs 2 water.