suggestion How would you improve The Long Dark's UI?

[Ghurcb]

On 12/18/2021 at 12:22 AM, jeffpeng said:

I also feel like the cooking menu is terribly cumbersome. Finding what you want to cook amidst 20 cups of tea in your inventory is quite the hassle. Plus I think that the selection what you want to do with a fire was actually a step back. Back in the day you had one screen combining all of this more or less elegantly, but definitely better than it is now. I realize that this is probably mostly for console accessibility, but for mouse users it definitely was a step back.

I've been thinking about this suggestion for I while now. It has the most upvotes here, and personally, I think cooking menu really needs updating.

Anyway, I've had nothing to do, so I decided to spend a couple hours coming up with a better version of the cooking menu that we have now. Here's what I made.

 

When you click on a stove, instead of the usual, "cook" and "water" options, you get "cook" and "pots".

 

If you click on "pots", you can choose any pot/can from your inventory.

 

If you click "cook", you'll be sent to this menu. Here you can choose one of the four categories. Meat, canned food, drinks, and water. 

Of course, the same limitations apply here. You can't cook meat in a can, or melt snow/boil water on an empty stove.

 

What do you think about this? What would you change or add? Let me know!

Edited May 8, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Ghurcb]

On 12/18/2021 at 6:12 AM, Kranium said:

quick menu: I want to use the 85% torch, not the 100% torch every time.

Sure, but would you want to equip a 2% torch when a wolf is about to attack you? I think, the best way to go about it is by making it so that when you choose an item in your radial menu, you can use the mousewheel to scroll through the "doubles" of this item.

On 12/30/2021 at 11:11 PM, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

1. Harvest all cattails in 2m radius option

Well, that option would be very handy. But it wouldn't fit the game. A bit too unimmersive...

On 12/30/2021 at 11:11 PM, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

2. Disrobe (remove all clothes for traveling under waterfall)

Like the previous one, this suggestion is way too specific. Adding a whole hotkey/interaction/whatever for this very rare accurance would be weird. 

[Leeanda]

 Disrobe could also be useful if sleeping indoors to save wear and tear or if your clothes are wet.

[odizzido]

If you wanted the game to have good controls the entire interface would need to be redone. The keys in this game are bad, the UI is bad, all the menus and clicking is bad. The only thing that makes this game tolerable is that there isn't a lot of stuff you need to do in that way and autohotkey.

I would post what I would do but I think it won't change and is pointless. The only reason I am posting this is to let hinterland know that this would be an issue for me for their next game. I am sure I will enjoy the story mode of TLD despite the shortcomings of this game because of the excellent atmosphere but if they could fix these issues it would make their next game much more enjoyable for me.

[Leeanda]

Doesn't anyone on PC/laptop use a controller? To me it looks a lot easier than clicking away at a keyboard . You can't shoot yourself when trying to pick up sticks etc either.

[odizzido]

I personally don't like controllers because they're too slow. For some games they work okay, 2D games and driving games, but not for FPS games.

[Ghurcb]

12 hours ago, Leeanda said:

You can't shoot yourself when trying to pick up sticks etc either.

Actually, it's a great way of teaching players not to walk around with a loaded firearm in hand.

 

Edited May 13, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Leeanda]

20 minutes ago, Ghurcb said:

Actually, it's a great way of teaching players not to walk around with a loaded firearm in hand.

 

 

I get that but I mean when you're outside! I've seen countless examples of it on ytube! Especially on interloper . Walking around without a weapon could end your run on higher levels.

Poor fridge.... What a way to go🙂

[Bearimpaler101]

5 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

Actually, it's a great way of teaching players not to walk around with a loaded firearm in hand.

 

 

Always have one when your are in wolf territory though put them away while looting things

 

[Laika Ivanova]

It would also be nice if the automatic spray paint symbol grouping on the maps could be toggled. I hate it when there is a collection of houses and I mark several of them as searched and then it all clumps together and I can longer see (on the map) which ones I haven't searched.

[Ghurcb]

7 hours ago, Laika Ivanova said:

It would also be nice if the automatic spray paint symbol grouping on the maps could be toggled. I hate it when there is a collection of houses and I mark several of them as searched and then it all clumps together and I can longer see (on the map) which ones I haven't searched.

Glad to see I'm not the only one wishing for this change.

[Admin]

Thank you for the suggestions. 

[Kranium]

On 5/10/2022 at 7:02 AM, Ghurcb said:

Sure, but would you want to equip a 2% torch when a wolf is about to attack you?

You get attacked by wolves? I can't remember how long ago they were an issue for me. haha Anyway, more choice is almost always best.

[florpman]

instead of selecting which weapon you want to use in a struggle, it should just automatically pick the one with the highest chance of getting the wolf off of you

the needs should be bars, not circles. i think it's much easier to measure a bar than a circle

Edited May 31, 2022 by florpman

[Ghurcb]

8 hours ago, florpman said:

instead of selecting which weapon you want to use in a struggle, it should just automatically pick the one with the highest chance of getting the wolf off of you

the needs should be bars, not circles. i think it's much easier to measure a bar than a circle

1) Different weapons work differently. Heavy hammer is high risk / high reward, as it can scare a wolf away immediately, but won't protect you well if it doesn't happen, knife deals the most damage, hatchet provides the best defence, and revolver can kill a wolf on the spot. I think it's great that you can pick the one, that fits the situation better. 

2) It's easier to measure a circle than it is a bar. 1/2 of a circle, 3/4, 2/3, 1/8, they are easy to picture and easy to identify. Not only that, but circles take up less space than bars of the same length. The needs were displayed as bars in earlier versions of the game, but they couldn't be shown at all time, as it would take too much space on the screen. Later they were replaced with icons that would deplete top to bottom, but that was hard to read accurately. Circles are the perfect final step of this evolution. 

At least, that's my opinion. 

Edited June 1, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Ansible]

I've got a simple one to add to this. A "Harvest All" button. As it stands right now, I have to click the right arrow like 72 times just to harvest all of my bear meat. It's a real pain in the tuchus. I'd love there to be a ">>" arrow to the right of each ">" arrow to "choose all", and also perhaps at the very bottom of that screen a "Harvest All" button itself, to harvest all the meat, guts, and skin, before you click the "Harvest" or "Done" button.

That QoL improvement would decrease my main frustration with the game GREATLY.

[xanna]

(Playing on Linux)

We ought to be able to easily copy custom codes to clipboard. It seems a bit ridiculous and unnecessary that they aren't selectable. Also, the font sucks for something like a code; I can't tell if that's a lowercase-L, a capital-i or a numeral-1, and since I have to manually type it, it matters. The custom code also seems to reset on me from time to time, usually to something like AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA or whatever. I wish it could persistently remember my last used custom settings. Or even to save different settings somewhere, with a name I choose.

The journal notes suck, sorry to say. I lose my cursor all the time, often manage to exit without saving, and if I copy in notes from a text file, the journal ignores all my line breaks.

I wish I could treat lamp oil the same way as water. If it's possible to summon little cans from nowhere to keep my fish run-off in, I want to also be able to drop half of the oil from a 3L jerry can.

When carrying more than one bedroll, I'd like to be able to select which one I want to sleep in from the sleep interface, like I can select which sewing kit I use in the repair menu. Or no bedroll, if in a vehicle. ATM, I have to drop a bedroll outside or stuff it in the glovebox to sleep without it in a car.

One of my big gripes is that there are too many different UIs for cooking, eg cooking up rosehips gives a different menu for a pot vs a can. Also that clicking on 'cook' won't let me make water, even though the button in the water menu is labelled 'cook'. This gets me all the time, even after years of playing. I'm tentatively hoping that cooking is one of the overhauls to existing systems that the new dev diary has mentioned. With more complex recipes being added, it's easy to imagine that it is. Some of the suggestions above are good. But really I don't mind too much what the menu is, I care more that it's consistent.

Big agreement with the comment above about mouse focus when transferring into containers, so that the scrollwheel does what you expect. I bump on that all the time.

Everything said with love and appreciation for everything that HL get so very right. None of these little gripes injure my enjoyment of this magical game. Really looking forward to seeing the UI changes in December!
❤️

[xanna]

7 hours ago, xanna said:

(Playing on Linux)

We ought to be able to easily copy custom codes to clipboard. It seems a bit ridiculous and unnecessary that they aren't selectable. Also, the font sucks for something like a code; I can't tell if that's a lowercase-L, a capital-i or a numeral-1, and since I have to manually type it, it matters. The custom code also seems to reset on me from time to time, usually to something like AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA or whatever. I wish it could persistently remember my last used custom settings. Or even to save different settings somewhere, with a name I choose.

The journal notes suck, sorry to say. I lose my cursor all the time, often manage to exit without saving, and if I copy in notes from a text file, the journal ignores all my line breaks.

I wish I could treat lamp oil the same way as water. If it's possible to summon little cans from nowhere to keep my fish run-off in, I want to also be able to drop half of the oil from a 3L jerry can.

When carrying more than one bedroll, I'd like to be able to select which one I want to sleep in from the sleep interface, like I can select which sewing kit I use in the repair menu. Or no bedroll, if in a vehicle. ATM, I have to drop a bedroll outside or stuff it in the glovebox to sleep without it in a car.

One of my big gripes is that there are too many different UIs for cooking, eg cooking up rosehips gives a different menu for a pot vs a can. Also that clicking on 'cook' won't let me make water, even though the button in the water menu is labelled 'cook'. This gets me all the time, even after years of playing. I'm tentatively hoping that cooking is one of the overhauls to existing systems that the new dev diary has mentioned. With more complex recipes being added, it's easy to imagine that it is. Some of the suggestions above are good. But really I don't mind too much what the menu is, I care more that it's consistent.

Big agreement with the comment above about mouse focus when transferring into containers, so that the scrollwheel does what you expect. I bump on that all the time.

Everything said with love and appreciation for everything that HL get so very right. None of these little gripes injure my enjoyment of this magical game. Really looking forward to seeing the UI changes in December!
❤️

OMG, I almost forgot one of the most silly and annoying ones:

If you don't have any charcoal, you can't pick the surveying option from the radial menu. But if you don't have a paint can, you can go all the way through the painting interface, including showing the player holding the can ready to spray before the game tells you you don't have one. This is obviously inappropriate on its face, but also it's inconsistent behaviour, and that does bother me.

[Ghurcb]

18 hours ago, Ansible said:

I've got a simple one to add to this. A "Harvest All" button. As it stands right now, I have to click the right arrow like 72 times just to harvest all of my bear meat. It's a real pain in the tuchus. I'd love there to be a ">>" arrow to the right of each ">" arrow to "choose all", and also perhaps at the very bottom of that screen a "Harvest All" button itself, to harvest all the meat, guts, and skin, before you click the "Harvest" or "Done" button.

That QoL improvement would decrease my main frustration with the game GREATLY.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of adding new buttons. So I think there could be a different solution here. When you take/thow out a certain amount of items, you can use the mouse wheel to choose the amount. I think the same thing can be used here. This also means, that if you killed a moose and want to harvest 20 kg of meat out of 40 kg, while the ">>" button would be of no help (you'd have to click 40 times one way or another), scrolling to 20 would be quite easy.

10 hours ago, xanna said:

The journal notes suck, sorry to say. I lose my cursor all the time, often manage to exit without saving, and if I copy in notes from a text file, the journal ignores all my line breaks.

YES. I use my notes to keep track of the items being stored all over the map. So when I want to update it, I find the location I'm in, click on it, and... The screen scrolls down to the end. And then I have to scroll back up to that location in the editing mode. Why not make it, so that you can edit your notes from wherever?

(in case you didn't understand this word salad)

What I want is for this interaction to be limited to the first picture. CLICK -> And you can edit from where you clicked.

2 hours ago, xanna said:

If you don't have any charcoal, you can't pick the surveying option from the radial menu. But if you don't have a paint can, you can go all the way through the painting interface, including showing the player holding the can ready to spray before the game tells you you don't have one. This is obviously inappropriate on its face, but also it's inconsistent behaviour, and that does bother me.

I think, it's this way to allow removing spray paint marks (you do it with RMB), even when you don't have any spray paint. But considering how few options for surveying there are in the radial menu, Hinterland could add a separate one for removing the spray paint (like a little rag icon). It IS a little weird that you have to choose which shape you want to paint, when all you want is to remove something.

(How it works now)

(How it could work)

(Wow, making pictures like this one takes way too much time. Eh, at least I'm learning Photoshop this way)

Edited November 5, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Bearimpaler101]

3 minutes ago, Ghurcb said:

Personally, I'm not a big fan of adding new buttons. So I think there could be a different solution here. When you take/thow out a certain amount of items, you can use the mouse wheel to choose the amount. I think the same thing can be used here. This also means, that if you killed a moose and want to harvest 20 kg of meat out of 40, while ">>" button be of no help (you'd have to click 40 times one way or another), but scrolling to 20 would be quite easy.

YES. I use my notes to keep track of the items being stored all over the map. So when I want to update it, I find the location I'm in, click on it, and... The screen scrolls down to the end. And then I have to scroll back up to that location in the editing mode. Why not make it, so that you can edit your notes from wherever?

(in case you didn't understand this word salad)

What I want is for this interaction to be limited to the first picture. CLICK -> And you can edit from where you clicked.

I think, it's this way to allow removing spray paint marks (you do it with RMB), even when you don't have any spray paint. But considering how few options for surveying there are in the radial menu, Hinterland could add a separate one for removing the spray paint (like a little rag icon). It IS a little weird that you have to choose which shape you want to paint, when all you want is to remove something.

(How it works now)

(How it could work)

(Wow, making pictures like this one takes way too much time. Eh, at least I'm learning Photoshop this way)

Your one picture says mouse button four which is not a thing what's that about?

[Ghurcb]

1 hour ago, Bearimpaler101 said:

Your one picture says mouse button four which is not a thing what's that about?

Oh, my mouse has two buttons on the side (where the thumb usually is), so I assigned one of them for "put away" action. I like it more this way.

EDIT: I would appreciate if instead of "mouse button 4" the prompt said "MB4" or looked like a side button on the mouse. Right now, it's a little too long.

EDIT 2: Maybe, something like this?

  

Edited November 5, 2022 by Ghurcb

[odizzido]

If you want an actually good interface instead of a painful struggle, the entire UI on PC needs to be redone. It's a disaster as of the last time I played this game maybe a year ago and I cannot imagine anything has gotten better.

You have to slowly scroll through stuff to get to where you want to go instead of having a selection area of things you can just click on

The number of clicks needed to do basic things like pick up 150 sticks is beyond awful, but thankfully autohotkey can save you here. This game is almost unplayable without autohotkey.

The controls were designed as if keyboards had six buttons with many keys doing double or triple duty. These need to be broken out and allow us to bind actions to what we want.

 

I am sure if I played this again I could come up with a big list, but honestly I don't know why I am bothering to write this much so I won't go any further.

 

 

As to the journal I think something like this would be super good and would greatly improve the game's feel.

 

[Kranium]

I wish I could use the scroll wheel when picking an item to cook. You know, the horizontal item list. When I'm doing a big bear/moose meat cooking session, for example, I hafta clickety-click thru 128 pieces of meat before I get to the cooking pot. Moar scroll wheel integration, please. :)

[Ghurcb]

9 hours ago, odizzido said:

The number of clicks needed to do basic things like pick up 150 sticks is beyond awful, but thankfully autohotkey can save you here. This game is almost unplayable without autohotkey.

This problem could be solved by this menu popping up when you pick something up from a big pile of similar items.

I'm not sure if it can be coded into the game though... Hopefully, it can.

[javijungle]

3 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

This problem could be solved by this menu popping up when you pick something up from a big pile of similar items.

I'm not sure if it can be coded into the game though... Hopefully, it can.

I absolutely support ideas like this. And let's not even talk about leaving and picking up stones on the ground.