In part 2 we covered the route selection screen. Once you have selected the route, you land in the main screen. Coming at this point, I realized how many screens we already apssed, and we are still not playing the game. I would like to compare this to one of my other favourite games, RailRoute which is a dispatich game. RailRoute has one screen where you can start doing something and with two mouse clicks you are doing something interesting. It would be unfair to set this as a target, but it would be good to reduce the numbers of screens you need to pass before you get started (in the streams this is wisely done before showing us anything, so I guess Matt, Sam, Natalie and others know well that there is room for improvement). I make some screenshots so lets bring an example up to have a clear view. The first thing I notice is that half of the screen is not used. This may be on purpose, to create some more consistency but in a sense this is a waste. It also makes the left side feel a bit crowded, but since we do not discuss what would be more beautiful, I like to skip this. Nice is a short description of the route, but it is obsolete here. If you arrive here you already have chosen this route and I can reasonably assume you have some idea on what you are playing, since you have paid for it at some point. So this is not very urgent information. Also there are some statistics on driving distance and collectables. It shows the number of scenarios, tutorials and timetable drives. What is missing are the action points, route level, medals and achievements/trophies and mastery. There is room enough, so why not show this? There is more unbalanced, the button resume savegame does not tell you which game you will continue. This can be fixed, at the route selection screen you already have the information. Same for continue journey. It does not show the progress in the journey. Except for savegame, which feels pointless here, clicking any button brings up another menu. My plea would be to focus this screen more on the one place selection on what to do in this game, So integrate the next level in this level. For journeys this may be a bit difficult, because some routes have a lot of journey chapters and you also can select to play just the next drive. The way it works now is not very clear. I noticed many people do not understand how it works. If you single click, you get two buttons, one just to continue and one that allows to select a chapter. It would be better to show two buttons: one showing the actual drive you select and a second one that allows to choose a journey chapter. I thing the UI for journeys has some more problems and needs a thorough revision. The explore button will show a subselection screen: I think there is enough room to show these four buttons at the main screen. This saves mouse clicks and it gives a better view on what you can do. For new players, it may be useful to have a help button or to use popups to explain what a scenario is and so on. Then we have a separate tools menu, where you either select the livery designer or the scenario planner. It is only two buttons and I not believe the number will increase a lot. So why a separate level here? A suggestion from my side, add a button here for just playing a scenario. This separates design mode and game play a bit better. I think I will leave it for now. There is far more to comment on the design of this UI. Looking forward to read about your opinions.
No comments, just some likes. Did you get tired of telling DTG stuff? Do you fully agree with my opinions or don't you care? it is time to move on to the next part in this series.
Basically this. Especially after listening to a "you will get used to it". The new UI is a huge step back compared to the last version, which was not great either. Regarding the Main Screen, I think that there is no point about the "explore" subsection. Just put everything in this main screen considering there is so much empty space.
You make very good points. Dtg assure us that the forums are closely watched but any response seems to take six or more months to bubble to the surface. It’s a fairly horrible screen and one I click past as soon as I can. That deeply shadowed station wants only a slow drip and the patter of rodent feet… I forgot to add that many of us criticised the hud ages ago but nothing has changed. I admire your doomed optimism though.
Didn’t they say on launch if people didn’t like it’d be changed? Do people like? Have enough people moaned? Maybe there’s lots of people silently running the blue colour mod. I did as soon as it dropped. Orange is not nice to me but I am only one.
I certainly don't like having that menu at a abandoned station. When you want it to rain for example, you can't see the intensity of the rain. Nor can you see the clouds when you pick the slider. This was a terrible design choice.
Agreed, the station diorama was a bad choice. Id rather have the train outside rolling on a bit of looping scenery for example so I can look round it and see slider impacts. It’s too restrictive.
As others have said above, it's often hard to adjust the weather sliders due to the colours used. It's also a shame we cannot see the adjustments we make reflected in the diorama like in the previous version. Also, it annoys me now that only certain routes can have snow because the temperatures are preset. I wanted snow on GWE earlier today but couldn't get it because the temperature wouldn't go below 2.5c on the screen thanks to the presets.
Never really paid attention to the waste of space, but yea you are absolutley right. I dont mind the orange instead of blue, but i cant understand the angle when choosing the train & livery. Right now i can only see the front, and need to actually run the scenario to see what livery is selected. (I have similar cl66 repaints which are not recognizeable just from the front view). This clearly was better in the old ui. I like that we can see our weather settings, not sure it was this way before. For me the new ui is neither a big benefit nor a big annoyance, except for the thing with the camera angle.
