Some Thoughts On The New Game Ux

Just a couple thoughts I've had since this was first previewed. I'll note I don't have the disk space or desire to download another version of the same game from Epic, so I'm going entirely off what's been presented in the couple of streams we had, especially the one early today (Jul 29). Also just to be clear, this is going to be subjective opinions, others will have different viewpoints and that's totally fine. I'm also aware that some things may still be tweaked before official launch and render some of the points invalid.

Overall, I think the UX looks much cleaner and modern and gives a nice visual refresh to the game.

Also really like the choice to select the month for weather. As a meteorologist, weather related things always get my mind going and I've always been curious where in each season the current weather selector placed you and if it was different from run to run - seasons span ~3 months and there's A LOT that happens in that time, meteorologically speaking. Love to see more settings in the future, but this is good start

Font size change: PLEASE put in a setting for this. I get the reason for the change and glad its there for those that need it, but it shouldn't be forced on everyone - it looks really bad and bulky on smaller screens and not on a TV sitting across the room - specifically referring to the Time and distance counter on the HUD. Also, the distance counter causes a constant bobbling of the Next Objective/stop text as it counts down/changes which is distracting and annoying.

Thank you for fixing the mastery thing on game load!

In the service mode selector, the single medal looks really nice and I'm glad there's a placeholder for uncompleted services instead of blank. Also blurring the dioramas in in the backgrounds really adds a nice effect.
Couple tweaks I'd suggest is 1) Bold the service name to let it stand out a little better from the service ID/number since there's not much of a divider between them. And 2) consider using a slightly semi-transparent colors for the background on some of the elements. Just a little to not introduce accessibility issues, but a little transparency goes a long way and will make item backgrounds blend better with the rest of the UI. Some examples (excuse the PowerPoint drawing) - it's subtle, especially with the gold background, but it blends better with the diorama background and makes everything softer


My biggest gripe is the main menu though. Being honest, I think it draws too much design from console game UIs with less focus on the PC experience. The experience needs to be tailored to find the best middle ground between the two platforms, and I really don't think this is it. I do NOT like that now the only way to get to a route is to mouse wheel scroll until I find the route I want b/c only five fit on screen at once with one in the foreground. One of the main rules of UX design is to make primary content easy to get to, which means limited scrolling and not burying it in menus/other containers. And while none of the main menu screens have ever followed this guideline since they've been one column lists, this is probably the worst yet, from this angle, especially on PC where we have a mouse/keyboard and not a controller (typically). I've always wished it was a grid view (similar to the DTL store page) to utilize the horizontal screen space too, but that's just what I would've done. That's enough on this point though...

In the pause screen, having the options for main menu/settings/etc hidden behind another menu (Options) isn't a great experience either. I think this is mostly because its not how the game has been and it's sort of a "breaking change"

Despite the concerns I've mentioned, I can't wait to get the new update and routes and actually first hand experience everything!

 

I agree with most of your points here. One thing I would like to mention is that although the new diorama is interesting, I vastly prefer the old outside, wedge-angle diorama because it allows me to set up my environment better for timetable runs. When looking from the perspective of inside the locomotive shed, I am basically guessing as to how light it is or how overcast, etc. Also, it might please all users if we could rotate the camera around the locomotive by either right-click-dragging the screen or with the right joystick on a controller.
Personally I prefer the classic blue interface (the orange seems so gaudy and makes everything look under construction or untextured/unfinished. An option to change the UI colour accent would be appreciated but I can definitely tolerate it as it is.

Cheers

 

Excellent! If we can also switch between the old dioramas (old rural track, Cumberland yard, and the various mastery dioramas) then that would resolve my biggest gripe.
I do agree that this new UI seems to be tailored to users on a gamepad, but it is still quite useable for me with KB+M. Especially, I think the new Scenario menu looks great, and I love the addition of estimated completion time on the timetable menu. It makes it a lot easier to figure out what I have time to play.

Cheers

 

I think it would be better if the unearned medal icon next to services, whilst much much cleaner in the new version, be dimmed so it’s not as white.

This will make the actual awarded medals stand out even more. It may even be beneficial to those with impaired vision as the awarded medal will be more obviously highlighted.

The text describing the route and the services could do with being bigger.