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CleverRaven / Cataclysm-DDA

Cataclysm - Dark Days Ahead. A turn-based survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world.
http://cataclysmdda.org
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Inventory columns are confusing #17427

Closed mugling closed 8 years ago

mugling commented 8 years ago

Something we'll all probably get used to over time but RIGHT arrow should certainly not be equivalent to ENTER. The latter is counterintuitive and frequently results in selection of the wrong item.

Additionally the spacing between columns is too narrow with most of the text compressed to the left of the display

codemime commented 8 years ago

Could you expand on that? From my POV the right arrow behaves just as usual (I mean nothing's changed). The spacing could be adjusted fairly easy. BTW I tried to arrange columns evenly on the screen, but it looked rather weird on high resolutions.

Vidiveni commented 8 years ago

When I first pressed right arrow I expected to move selection to the equipped items to the right. Instead the item in the right column I intended to select got a red selection that made me think "oh...okay I guess it's selected now". I pressed enter but it did not open the expected menu. Took me months to realise you have to pressleft arrow instead of right arrow. And I still don't know what the red selection does.

EDIT: The red stuff was from long ago and no longer happens.

mugling commented 8 years ago

From my POV the right arrow behaves just as usual (I mean nothing's changed)

Before those changes it was exceptionally rare (almost never) to press RIGHT. Now it's fairly common. The problem is instead of moving to the right column (which is intuitive) it instead activates your grenade which leads to YASD.

It's a significant regression and a blemish on what is otherwise a good design.

mugling commented 8 years ago

@codemime how difficult would it be to fix the RIGHT action issue - it continues to be reported outside of GH?

codemime commented 8 years ago

It's fairly easy and I can do that, but I need a robust usage scenario. What's the expected behavior? I had tried this, but the change was criticized:

Coolthulhu commented on 25 Jul

Seemingly tiny change, but actually quite major: In wield menu, "Right" changes tab instead of selecting the current item. This is a discrepancy with drop > menu, where "right" selects.

mugling commented 8 years ago

RIGHT selecting an item (activating a grenade, eating something nasty) is definitely more surprising than switching column considering LEFT behaves as anticipated.

Everything else should be balanced around LEFT and RIGHT being commutative

codemime commented 8 years ago

Which key do we choose for selecting then (keeping in mind that pick-up menu uses arrows)?

mugling commented 8 years ago

Space?

codemime commented 8 years ago

Space?

Dubious. It's neither very convenient nor consistent. I wonder what does @Coolthulhu think on this matter?

mugling commented 8 years ago

Yes, wait for an answer before implementing anything

codemime commented 8 years ago

Pinging @Coolthulhu. What do you think about the keys for the inventory menu?

mugling commented 8 years ago

Temporarily fixed by 0dc49566 factored out of #18514 so as to prevent YASD. Overall we need to consider a consistent interface as we have a lot of idiosyncrasies resulting in bad UX.

Coolthulhu commented 8 years ago

Sorry, I missed the ping.

We should be going for consistency. Whether right works as left/enter/whatever should depend on how is it working in other menus. It should all be changed in one PR. Weird behavior is better than inconsistent behavior.

I didn't look at the current UI, but if right now behaves sometimes like enter and sometimes like left, that's a regression and not a bugfix.

mugling commented 8 years ago

The only exception now is multidrop where RIGHT selects as opposed to changes column.

We can't really have RIGHT selecting an item in the other inventory prompts as this results in accidentally activating grenades instead of changing column and all other manner of YASD.

We could do with SPACE for selection/action and ENTER for confirmation/close throughout the UI?

Zireael07 commented 8 years ago

We could do with SPACE for selection/action and ENTER for confirmation/close throughout the UI?

+1.

We can't really have RIGHT selecting an item in the other inventory prompts

Quoted for truth.

Whatever is the ultimate solution doesn't matter as long as multidrop behaves like the rest of UI.

mugling commented 8 years ago

I agree consistency is essential but effectively ending a players game because they pressed LEFT then RIGHT to try to change back to the original column is too high a price.

Zireael07 commented 8 years ago

Nowhere did I say that RIGHT selecting an item is a good idea. (fixed bad quote)

Coolthulhu commented 8 years ago

Ending one character's life is nothing compared to having to figure out each menu separately. YASD because of weird-but-consistent behavior is kinda bad, inconsistent menus where same buttons do different functions is horrible.

You can learn to work with weird menus. Weird isn't that much of a bad design.

mugling commented 8 years ago

Whilst that's true in the general case LEFT should always be commutative to RIGHT. It's such a strong association it's almost impossible to train yourself out of expecting that.