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An Emote-Wheel Style PAW


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Everyone knows that PAWs (those menus with yellow borders you get when you right-click on a part), with their tiny little buttons that take too long to search through and click, are annoying and badly designed. My suggestion for an alternative: an emote wheel. You would right click and hold on a part to open the wheel, whose actions would be customisable. To adjust a value in a slider, you would move your mouse in the appropriate direction and a slider would appear and follow your mouse. What do you think of this idea?

Edited by LHACK4142
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15 minutes ago, LHACK4142 said:

Everyone knows that PAWs, with their tiny little buttons that take too long to search through and click, are annoying and badly designed. My suggestion for an alternative: an emote wheel. You would right click and hold on a part to open the wheel, whose actions would be customisable. To adjust a value in a slider, you would move your mouse in the appropriate direction and a slider would appear and follow your mouse. What do you think of this idea?

Yeah, emote wheels are very reliable. But I'm not sure what a PAW stands for.

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7 minutes ago, Catto said:

Yeah, emote wheels are very reliable. But I'm not sure what a PAW stands for.

I Googled "PAW UI UX design" and can report that it apparently stands for Puppies At Work, so that clears that up!

Edit: Also if I hover over PAW in your post or mine it says "part action window" in a tooltip, but I'm going to continue thinking it's about puppies

Edited by whatsEJstandfor
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23 minutes ago, razark said:

On the other hand, I know what the PAW is.  What's an "emote wheel"?

A selection wheel used in most console and some PC ports. Example below.

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Actually, not a bad idea really.

Edited by shdwlrd
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@shdwlrd Thank you.  I appreciate it.

I fail to see how this is better than the current PAW system, though.  The PAW not only allows you to select actions, but also displays other values of interest.  I'm also able to open several PAWs, and pin them to the screen. Unless one is using a limited method of input, this just seems like a much more cumbersome way to handle things.

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45 minutes ago, razark said:

@shdwlrd Thank you.  I appreciate it.

I fail to see how this is better than the current PAW system, though.  The PAW not only allows you to select actions, but also displays other values of interest.  I'm also able to open several PAWs, and pin them to the screen. Unless one is using a limited method of input, this just seems like a much more cumbersome way to handle things.

You're welcome. :)

I've used both in the past. Each has their pros and cons.

The wheel is better for quick actions or commands. Information can be hard to discern. Multiple levels can be a pain to access. 

The list is better for pinned menus, as you said, and better information presentation. Multiple levels can be easier to deal with, depending on setup (click instead of hover.) But it's slower overall to use. 

It's basically a case of "to each their own." I personally think the wheel would be better if the Kerbals actually have emotes for multiplayer. For hand signals and such. But I'd rather have the list for part interactions.

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Just now, shdwlrd said:

I personally think the wheel would be better if the Kerbals actually have emotes for multiplayer. For hand signals and such. But I'd rather have the list for part interactions.

Yeah.  I can see the use of the wheel for quick access to a small number of items needing quick access.  I just don't see it as a (total) replacement for the PAW.

How to implement both is a good question.

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Nah the PAW is fine. Those wheel controls are awful and have no reason to exist if you have mouse input.
Their usability falls down drastically once you have more than a handful of actions/items.

They also are unintuitive and slow to read for random items.
When they are implemented on console games, they work well because they always have the same items in the same place, so you quickly learn how to navigate them intuitively.
But your brain is much more efficient at parsing a vertical pattern than a circular one. That's why newspapers are (were) formatted in narrow columns. That's basic UX/design principles.

The PAW clutter and usability issues in KSP1 are caused by the absence of a top level vessel-level UI, a "VAW" for "Vessel Action Window".
Stuff like camera controls, crew transfer/EVA, control point and target management, comms management, science data management, resource management and transfer, crew inventories, etc should be implemented in a vessel-level UI, not in a part-level UI.

And arguably, the vessel-level UI should also have a part/module list allowing to access part/module level actions, unifying the PAW system and the "action group" system.

Edited by Gotmachine
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IMHO Gotmachine nailed it... I know it would never happen, but I'ld add, that i would lie to have seen customization options to show/hide certain PAW items, ability to re-organize them, and custom grouping. Another *huge* thing, IMHO, that should have been implemented, is the ability to resize the PAW independently from the overall UI.

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13 hours ago, razark said:

How to implement both is a good question.

I've never seen a game that used both. The closest I've seen is the Build Info mod for Space Engineers. It's kind of clunky to use from what I've seen, but it's a beta version still under development so it could get better.

Gotmachine is correct about the easiest way to display information is by listing it. But to control actions, it's really dependent on the user, and what you need to control. If it's a basic click to do something, both the wheel and list works. If you have to change a variable, or a slider, the list wins. 

I have to disagree with the top down vehicle UI. I use the Part Commander mod. The biggest issue I run across all the time is if I want to find something quickly, I can't. If I want to control different settings for the same repeated part, I can't. I still have to click on the specific parts to quickly change settings or have something set different from the others.

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  • 3 weeks later...

A short-hand shortcut system could be nice, especially if you can repath actions to it at will.

By that I mean what Tribes(&nt) have been using for dialogue. You relegate one key to an action three, with branching options. For anything bigger than a rover, I tend to run into a wall with action groups already, and this would allow you to map more than ten actions. I prefer keypaths over a visual action wheel.

VGS
VGS
VGS

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