[FS Zenity]

Lochverstaerker, on 04 February 2016 - 09:19 PM, said:

Do you consider a circular selection counter-intuitive? Because I think it's easy to wrap one's head around something like that.

Not counter-intuitive, but less intuitive than we can make a traditional layout. A circular layout quickly gets unwieldy unless you split it into multiple categories, and then it's less intuitive because it requires more digging before you have a good overview of what's available. Even if you can fit everything into one circle, it is much harder to show meaningful information within each slice of the pie, which is why CS:GO shows weapon information separately on the side when you hover an item.

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Giving players the opportunity to easily save presets would be great (not sure how many players do this right now using configs), but I still think speed is important. When I play Urban Terror I use different loadouts, but if I want to change something, it's a minor change most of the time (like switching laser to silencer or selecting a different pistol) and often times I do this at the beginning of the round so time is of the essence.

Even if you do it every round for some reason (which I doubt highly), it still pales in comparison to how time critical it is in CS. Changing your pistol requires two clicks, and you can do it at any time during a round. In CS, you can only do it during the few seconds of the buy time because only then you know how much money you have to spend. More importantly, you don't just make a minor change, you have to buy every single item you need (which can be either a full set, or a restock depending on the game situation). Because of this they had to come up with a system that makes buying as fast as humanly possible.

All you need to do to change your pistol is to make two clicks. And that's not going to be a problem under any imaginable circumstance just because you have to move the mouse a little bit further than with a pie menu. :)

[fr.Biddle]

I really like this Loch :)

[Yuri]

Just spitballing here: make the menu a list (maybe even with sorting or categories)? Drop-down boxes? idk...

[bluewormx]

Awsome work lock! :D

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Not counter-intuitive, but less intuitive than we can make a traditional layout. A circular layout quickly gets unwieldy unless you split it into multiple categories, and then it's less intuitive because it requires more digging before you have a good overview of what's available. Even if you can fit everything into one circle, it is much harder to show meaningful information within each slice of the pie, which is why CS:GO shows weapon information separately on the side when you hover an item.

I think Zenity does have a point, both about digging thru sub categories and about showing information in each slice. You really are limited to six slices max before it simply looks messy.

The present system represents slots: primary; secondary etc...
It has its things Negev takes up secondary, side arm is mandatory...

4.3 gets a little more messy with 3 new possible primaries to chose from, 14 weapons in total!
Perhaps secondaries like sub machine guns and shotguns should be relegated to secondary weapons only.

What about a gear selection menu showing "six pack" 3 horizontal circles, 2 vertical.
primaries opens two circles: assault rifles on one side + negev; sniper rifles + HK69 on the other.
the other circles: Secondaries; Side arm; Grenades; Items 1; Items 2.

If you really want to keep the secondaries available as primaries add them as a third disk, now days we all have enough screen real estate to
visualize this comfotably.

Its essentially what we have now but with the awsome disks that lock drew.
A decision needs to be taken first with 4.3 because it is a little messy with the long list of primary weapons.

This post has been edited by bluewormx: 07 February 2016 - 07:14 PM

[FS Zenity]

bluewormx, on 07 February 2016 - 06:15 PM, said:

What about a gear selection menu showing "six pack" 3 horizontal circles, 2 vertical.
primaries opens two circles: assault rifles on one side + negev; sniper rifles + HK69 on the other.
the other circles: Secondaries; Side arm; Grenades; Items 1; Items 2.

That would be defeating the purpose of circles to begin with. :) Pie menus are used to maximize the clickable area. Usually they are created around your mouse cursor to also minimize the distance you have to move the cursor, but the concept with CS:GO pie menus is similar: Effectively they separate the entire screen into regions, so wherever you move your mouse on the screen, you will be activating one of the items and that's faster than aiming at a specific box. This is all about Fitt's law.

If you'd have to actually aim at a specific slice of the pie (or at least close to them), then the pie menus would be objectively worse than square menus in every regard. Aesthetics could be argued about of course, but generally aesthetics are not the reason to use pie menus. Circles by themselves can be an aesthetic choice, but it's rare and kind of wasteful in terms of efficiency.

There would be ways to combine the approaches, but in the end it still comes down to this: Pie menus are less intuitive and only marginally faster than traditional buttons. Changing a loadout element in Urban Terror is not time critical enough that it would really matter whether it takes 0.5 seconds or 0.3 seconds, and we benefit more from the intuitiveness. Unless you change a lot of items frequently, in which case presets are a better solution anyway.

Pie menus would make more sense for real time choices during the game, but most of the time we would prefer keyboard centric solutions for this anyway. And it wouldn't even be suitable for providing mouse interfaces for things like dropping specific items, since pie menus become more effective with fixed item positions which you can memorise. They are not great for quickly scanning a list of items and making a choice from them.

[[SQD]dynomite33]

Can anyone explain to me why the gear menu is being redesigned in the first place?!?!?

Has anyone heard of "If it ain't broke, dont fix it." !?!

[fgt.Lochverstaerker]

dynomite33, on 07 February 2016 - 10:27 PM, said:

Can anyone explain to me why the gear menu is being redesigned in the first place?!?!?

Has anyone heard of "If it ain't broke, dont fix it." !?!

The gear menu will have to be reimplemented for UrTHD anyway, so why not think about a redesign that makes it more accessible for new players and generally better to use?
I was just trying to maybe provide some ideas on how to design a "better" selection menu from scratch.

The 4.3RC3 gear selection menu is shit currently, that's obvious. It could already be vastly improved by fixing this bug (not even sure if that's a bug or just an oversight) mentioned by Iye here.

EDIT:

bluewormx, on 07 February 2016 - 06:15 PM, said:

4.3 gets a little more messy with 3 new possible primaries to chose from, 14 weapons in total!
Perhaps secondaries like sub machine guns and shotguns should be relegated to secondary weapons only.

This should be thought about (at least for 4.3) as I can think of no reason why someone would choose an SMG instead of an automatic gun as a primary weapon. (Also in 4.3 you have the ability to select no primary weapon so you could select a shotgun(/SMG) as secondary and no primary which is virtually the same result as selecting a shotgun(/SMG) as primary and no secondary.)

This post has been edited by Lochverstaerker: 07 February 2016 - 11:19 PM

[Mod Iye]

well, the bug is new to RC3, so... :)
and im actually currently working on a script that might be able to create a 4.1'ish styled menu easily. cuz. i dunno. 2 much spare time. (actually not. :S)

This post has been edited by Iye: 08 February 2016 - 12:21 AM

[GlaD-Solitary]

One suggestion I would have is to allow people to create/modify 3 or 4 different "favorite layouts" for gear. This way they can quickly change their gear. Currently players use binds to change the gear, but a lot of players in general are not aware that this is possible. So introducing a "favorite layout" (better name needed) would be far more user friendly.

So one can be:
Kevlar, Helmet, LR300, laser, DE.

Another could be:
Kevlar, SPAS, HE Nades, Beretta, Sr8.

This way I can just click on one of my favorites, as opposed to changing my gear at the micro level every time.

This post has been edited by Solitary: 21 March 2016 - 08:38 PM

[Mod Iye]

while i like that idea, and after thinking about it for like half a minute i could imagine that it could be done. it would for sure require more or less coding with the current ui "engine" though, which i doubt is going to happen.

There is this web tool here however, which creates you a script that allows you to switch gear.
Note: I think that it only contains 4.1 weaponry, but hey..... :)