Right clicking on parts in flight

[SuperFastJellyfish]

We all know when you right click on a part in flight that a menu box appears with clickable options for that specific part.  Is there a way to make the menu box appear onscreen semi-close to the part you clicked on?  Depending on how I have my camera oriented, they often appear clear on the edge of the screen.  This has been problematic while using KER as the menu box appears hidden underneath my telemetry windows rendering it unclickable.  It's a very minor thing, but I find this to be rather frustrating.

Sidenote, I love that we can pin part menu boxes on the screen now(no more carrying your drop tanks around after they are empty because you forgot to reopen the fuel indicator after doing that crew report! ).

[Mahnarch]

If I'm visualizing correctly what you're describing - it's like how the Mechjeb tab hides under the tool bar, now?

 

That's weird. My menu boxes usually pop up about a thumb's width away from the part.

I didn't change any settings, that I know of.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Now that I'm home from work, and am bad with words...  This is what happens when I right click the science jr., for example:

It's repeatable if the part that I click on is to the right of the center of the screen.  If the part's left of center then it pops up fairly close like it always has like this:

http://imgur.com/a/wHLyU

Edited April 27, 2016 by SuperFastJellyfish

[AlamoVampire]

thats an odd issue to be sure. for some tho, pinning causes issues with being able to click ANYTHING on screen. a fix is coming for that. as to the its hiding under your mods, why not just turn the mod off for a moment, move the box from the part to a better place, turn mod back on? 

[SuperFastJellyfish]

6 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

thats an odd issue to be sure. for some tho, pinning causes issues with being able to click ANYTHING on screen. a fix is coming for that. as to the its hiding under your mods, why not just turn the mod off for a moment, move the box from the part to a better place, turn mod back on? 

Well, yeah there are workarounds like that, but sometimes there is no time to click off all the KER windows while you're trying to science the upper atmosphere while blazing through it at 2 km/s, etc.

[AlamoVampire]

@SuperFastJellyfish Lol ya, true enough. Wish i had more for on this. Btw does changing your camera angle fix it?

[FungusForge]

As a fellow KER user, I set up the displays as part of the HUD, like this:

Displays are always where I need them, and I don't have any of the readouts I don't use. Bonus is that while they may still somewhat obscure right-click menus, they don't prevent you from interacting with them, so dragging the window somewhere you can read it isn't an issue.

[AbacusWizard]

Is it possible to drag a pinned right-click menu to a new location? (I'd try it myself but I don't have 1.1 installed on this computer yet.)

 

Also: any chance we'll be getting CLOSE buttons for the right-click menus? That's what I assumed those buttons were in the early screenshots, and honestly I would find a close button more useful than a pin button.

[katateochi]

Does the UI have layers or does it have something equivalent to z-index?  
As part of a UI rewrite this should have been something that was considered. Not just how it will work in stock but how it will work with any mod that creates a UI object.  Assuming there is a similar concept to z-index, when ever something is drawn to the UI it should be given a z-index that is +1 from the highest z-index of current UI elements. When something is interacted with it should have its z-index increased above the current highest z-index.  And also allow for some UI elements to have a set z-index that doesn't get updated.

That pretty much covers it and means that whatever is last drawn to the UI is above whatever else is there and whatever the user interacts with is brought to the front. So in this case the context menus should get drawn above the KER window, but if the user clicks on the KER window then it is shown above the context menu (and closing & re-opening the context menus would again bring it above the KER window).  

From a cursory google, z-index in Unity is called GUI.depth, so it does exist, so I do rather think that this kind of generic approach is something that a UI rewrite should have considered. The lack of this sort of thing adds to KSP feeling rather unpolished. 

[SuperFastJellyfish]

5 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@SuperFastJellyfish Lol ya, true enough. Wish i had more for on this. Btw does changing your camera angle fix it?

Yes, as long as the part is to the left of the center of the screen it seems to open the menu nearby.  If it's right of the center of the screen it appears far on the right side of the screen.

4 hours ago, FungusForge said:

As a fellow KER user, I set up the displays as part of the HUD, like this:

Displays are always where I need them, and I don't have any of the readouts I don't use. Bonus is that while they may still somewhat obscure right-click menus, they don't prevent you from interacting with them, so dragging the window somewhere you can read it isn't an issue.

I never tried to use the HUD version of the readouts besides the two that are there by default.  Thanks for the tip.  I'll do that when I get home from work. 

3 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

Is it possible to drag a pinned right-click menu to a new location? (I'd try it myself but I don't have 1.1 installed on this computer yet.)

 

Also: any chance we'll be getting CLOSE buttons for the right-click menus? That's what I assumed those buttons were in the early screenshots, and honestly I would find a close button more useful than a pin button.

Yes, after you pin them you can move them anywhere on the screen.  You can have at least three pinned at a time(haven't tried more yet).  It's great.

2 hours ago, katateochi said:

Does the UI have layers or does it have something equivalent to z-index?  
As part of a UI rewrite this should have been something that was considered. Not just how it will work in stock but how it will work with any mod that creates a UI object.  Assuming there is a similar concept to z-index, when ever something is drawn to the UI it should be given a z-index that is +1 from the highest z-index of current UI elements. When something is interacted with it should have its z-index increased above the current highest z-index.  And also allow for some UI elements to have a set z-index that doesn't get updated.

That pretty much covers it and means that whatever is last drawn to the UI is above whatever else is there and whatever the user interacts with is brought to the front. So in this case the context menus should get drawn above the KER window, but if the user clicks on the KER window then it is shown above the context menu (and closing & re-opening the context menus would again bring it above the KER window).  

From a cursory google, z-index in Unity is called GUI.depth, so it does exist, so I do rather think that this kind of generic approach is something that a UI rewrite should have considered. The lack of this sort of thing adds to KSP feeling rather unpolished. 

Thanks for checking into this.  There is hope that this is a fixable issue.