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clansing1 year ago (2 edits) (+1)

First impressions feedback on the UI, there seem to be a couple of bugs, and some non-obvious things:

  • The pause button doesn't work very well with the touchpad on my laptop. It often immediately resumes after pausing - maybe a bug in touch/pointer event handling vs click? I'm not sure what events the browser receives on a touchpad tap. (edit: actually, seems like if I hold the click just a bit too long, it resumes as well)
  • It's not obvious that you must click exactly on the icon in the purchase buttons. I spent a long time trying to buy things unsuccessfully until I finally realized that.
  • The layout of the menu draws attention to the bottom buttons  (exit/restart), since it kind of has the layout of a dialog, which means the "start" button isn't necessarily immediately obvious, even though it's at the top, as the eye isn't really drawn to it).
  • The "restart" button only resetting the state and waiting for you to start again makes it look like the restart does nothing (even though it does) if you don't happen to notice the silent reset of the map (exacerbated by the start button being easily overlooked, so you try to restart and it doesn't restart, because it's really a "clear progress" or a virtual "refresh page".
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Rusher_go1 year ago

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

  • I've changed how it functions now, so it should work correctly. You can also use Spacebar to pause now. It used to be tied to a timer. Now it's a more proper toggle.
  • The buttons are now bigger. The whole frame acts as a button. I just didn't think of that earlier, so thanks for pointing this out.
  • I rearranged the menu for the Start to be on top. So it should be pretty easy to spot now.
  • The Restart button now won't show up until the game actually starts. This should eliminate any confusion. And yes, it's essentially a "clear progress" button indeed. One playthrough is just 10 minutes and there's absolutely nothing that needs to be saved. So that solution seems to be optimal.
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clansing1 year ago

Yup, that seems much better behaved. Spacebar to pause is a nice touch too, I hadn't thought of it, but it really helps since the enemies move so fast that makes it easier to pause and queue up a starting army before they close in.

And yeah, I have no issue with the "Restart" being a "clear progress", just found the behaviour slightly confusing with the layout of the buttons and it kind of looking like it was the start button (since it was kind of paired with "exit"). It not being there does mean I no longer want to click it to start the game lol. Although for some reason I still found myself spending several seconds trying to figure out how to start the game when I loaded up the page again today. If I can figure out why, I'll let you know. (Maybe it was the "Made with Gdevelop" banner darkening the top of the menu, so drawing attention away from the start button, or maybe "start" looks too much like part of the menu title... I'm not sure yet).

UX is both an interesting and irritating field eh?

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Rusher_go1 year ago

Yeah, I thought of it when testing but didn't know how to implement it. Then a few people asked for it as well and after some trial and error, I managed to do it.

And it was confusing indeed, I agree. I mean, the "Exit" button does nothing for obvious reasons. The logo up there indeed darkens the button too. But I want to leave it up there in case the game ever gets translated to other languages. Then the language choice would be neatly under the start button.

I was certain the bright buttons below would be self-explanatory. In the sense you're supposed to pause and read everything. But, turns out, it's not that intuitive for everyone. That's why there's an instructions pop up now. So I certainly agree it's both interesting and irritating. And sometimes confusing. Still, the most interesting part about it was optimising it to be used with just a click/touch. I could make the info pop up when hovering over a button. But on tablets and such you can't exactly hover over anything. So that's why there are buttons with question marks.

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