Forums » Suggestions
Touch UI problems and On-Screen keyboard feature suggestions.
Since my PC has been packed up the last 2 weeks or so for moving, I've logged a lot of game time on my phone, Android tablet, and recently an iPad. This had me thinking of a few ways to make the touch interface more effective.
Vendetta Online relies a lot on IRC-style chat commands for game functions. There's GUI buttons for many of these, but even some experienced players don't know about them because they're somewhat hidden or in inconvenient places. Some examples:
/msg - You can target someone, look at the target info page and press the button there, but that only works for ships that are in the same sector as you, within radar range, and while you're in flight. Not docked at a station, where chatting is less likely to get you killed.
/group - Group invites work from the target info page and from the station interface, buried under PDA -> Comm -> Buddies/Group. Try doing that while flying.
/gunner - This command is most relevant while docked, but there's nothing in the station UI to invite them, accept invites, or manage your ship's roster! The only GUI stuff for gunners appears in-flight, after you've already invited them on board.
/givemoney - This one isn't so bad, since the only time you're going to use it is in-sector with someone else. It's on the target info page, but there's a problem with that which I'll get to in a minute...
/duel - Similar to /givemoney it only works in the same sector, but also only while in-flight, so it's not too big of a deal.
/... - You get the picture.
All this is fine and dandy if you're sitting at a PC with a full extended keyboard and typing /gunner invite "Baekma Goji" is no big deal. However, once you pick up an iPad or Nexus 7, all this keyboard-intensive stuff starts to slow you down. Especially since the game doesn't implement several of the vital features that make on-screen keyboards truly usable.
Now, the game does have GUI equivalents to most of these on the target info (/CharInfo) screen. That would work great except that there's no way to access it with the touchscreen HUD! If you have a device with a hardware keyboard, you can press 'k' like on the PC platforms, or type /CharInfo in chat, but those are your options. None of the HUD buttons expand out to do this, and you can't open it from the sector list either.
OK, I'm done complaining. There's already enough complaining on this forum without constructive suggestions.
--- Suggestions for how to improve things:
* Predictive text entry - This is one of the things that makes on-screen keyboards fast and easy to use. Without it, you're stuck typing every letter of every word on a device without tactile feedback. I know this can get really complicated and involve a bunch of machine learning/AI bullcrap and I'm sure somebody's written a thesis or two on it, but it doesn't have to be. The game could add predictive text for relevant in-game strings like character names and text commands. Stuff that has to be typed exactly as shown, or it won't work. A context-aware list of suggested words, commands, or names that you can pick from would be even better.
* Auto-correct - Another one of those things that makes on-screen keyboards not suck. Again, not so important for normal chat messages, since there's a living brain on the other side that can usually decipher whatever it was you typo'd on your phone, but the client's lexer isn't so smart.
* Word completion - We already have this for character names. You can press the Tab key to fill in a character name as long as your client has seen that name since starting up. The problem is, it doesn't work on the on-screen keyboard. If you could fix this and extend it to include game commands, that would help a lot.
* Input history - This is another feature we already have on the PC clients, but doesn't work with the on-screen keyboard. PC players can press the up and down cursor keys to select from messages they've typed before and edit them. That saves a lot of typing, especially if you're doing something like inviting five players to a group.
Implementing some or all of these features would make the game's user interface less cumbersome to tablet and phone players without requiring a full re-design of things to accomodate poking a piece of glass with a capacitive chunk of meat.
Discuss!
PS: I still want a way to disable the on-screen keyboard without disabling the whole touch UI. All 3 of my mobile devices have either hardware or bluetooth external keyboards, and the on-screen one actually gets in the way of using them.
Vendetta Online relies a lot on IRC-style chat commands for game functions. There's GUI buttons for many of these, but even some experienced players don't know about them because they're somewhat hidden or in inconvenient places. Some examples:
/msg - You can target someone, look at the target info page and press the button there, but that only works for ships that are in the same sector as you, within radar range, and while you're in flight. Not docked at a station, where chatting is less likely to get you killed.
/group - Group invites work from the target info page and from the station interface, buried under PDA -> Comm -> Buddies/Group. Try doing that while flying.
/gunner - This command is most relevant while docked, but there's nothing in the station UI to invite them, accept invites, or manage your ship's roster! The only GUI stuff for gunners appears in-flight, after you've already invited them on board.
/givemoney - This one isn't so bad, since the only time you're going to use it is in-sector with someone else. It's on the target info page, but there's a problem with that which I'll get to in a minute...
/duel - Similar to /givemoney it only works in the same sector, but also only while in-flight, so it's not too big of a deal.
/... - You get the picture.
All this is fine and dandy if you're sitting at a PC with a full extended keyboard and typing /gunner invite "Baekma Goji" is no big deal. However, once you pick up an iPad or Nexus 7, all this keyboard-intensive stuff starts to slow you down. Especially since the game doesn't implement several of the vital features that make on-screen keyboards truly usable.
Now, the game does have GUI equivalents to most of these on the target info (/CharInfo) screen. That would work great except that there's no way to access it with the touchscreen HUD! If you have a device with a hardware keyboard, you can press 'k' like on the PC platforms, or type /CharInfo in chat, but those are your options. None of the HUD buttons expand out to do this, and you can't open it from the sector list either.
OK, I'm done complaining. There's already enough complaining on this forum without constructive suggestions.
--- Suggestions for how to improve things:
* Predictive text entry - This is one of the things that makes on-screen keyboards fast and easy to use. Without it, you're stuck typing every letter of every word on a device without tactile feedback. I know this can get really complicated and involve a bunch of machine learning/AI bullcrap and I'm sure somebody's written a thesis or two on it, but it doesn't have to be. The game could add predictive text for relevant in-game strings like character names and text commands. Stuff that has to be typed exactly as shown, or it won't work. A context-aware list of suggested words, commands, or names that you can pick from would be even better.
* Auto-correct - Another one of those things that makes on-screen keyboards not suck. Again, not so important for normal chat messages, since there's a living brain on the other side that can usually decipher whatever it was you typo'd on your phone, but the client's lexer isn't so smart.
* Word completion - We already have this for character names. You can press the Tab key to fill in a character name as long as your client has seen that name since starting up. The problem is, it doesn't work on the on-screen keyboard. If you could fix this and extend it to include game commands, that would help a lot.
* Input history - This is another feature we already have on the PC clients, but doesn't work with the on-screen keyboard. PC players can press the up and down cursor keys to select from messages they've typed before and edit them. That saves a lot of typing, especially if you're doing something like inviting five players to a group.
Implementing some or all of these features would make the game's user interface less cumbersome to tablet and phone players without requiring a full re-design of things to accomodate poking a piece of glass with a capacitive chunk of meat.
Discuss!
PS: I still want a way to disable the on-screen keyboard without disabling the whole touch UI. All 3 of my mobile devices have either hardware or bluetooth external keyboards, and the on-screen one actually gets in the way of using them.