Korean washing machine

[Simon]

The Lix ingame UI looks too much like a Korean washing machine.

Idea: Remove boundaries between any two inactive buttons.



-- Simon

[ccexplore]

The Lix ingame UI looks too much like a Korean washing machine. Idea: Remove boundaries between any two inactive buttons.

I feel like I want to see a photo of this mythical, presumably many-buttoned Korean washing machine. The analogy completely went over my head.

But yeah, I like the boundary removal look, it helps highlight the skills still available that you can actually use.

[Simon]

I feel like I want to see a photo of this mythical, presumably many-buttoned Korean washing machine. The analogy completely went over my head.

Normal google search brings up images with 5 to 10 buttons. That's more complicated than western machines, but not strikingly so. There are two nuances:

• You can find blog posts by foreigners who tried to use the Korean machines. They got lost with the many labels and options, it's all special terminology, hard to guess even if one can read Korean.
• In Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda wrote about the phenomenon how tech gadgets must look good in shops, and used the Korean washing machines as an example. Many buttons and options imply powerful functionality. The product looks better even if, at home, we would rather press only one large button that does the right thing.

But yeah, I like the boundary removal look, it helps highlight the skills still available that you can actually use.

Awesome. The linked image is a mock, but I feel too that this is worthwhile to code. Even with many special cases.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

I think it makes the panel uglier for no real gain.

[Simon]

Hmm. Merging the UI widgets is effortful, I can well work on other things instead. Can you tell why it's ugly?

This generates large blank spaces between the statistics at the top and the greyed-out icons at the bottom. Is it that?

-- Simon

[namida]

As I suggested in #lix: I propose that this should, if done, only be done for skills that have zero uses from the start of the level, and not those that did have some uses but the player has used them up. This is so that someone in an unwinnable end-game state of playing will not overlook that skill X was available, when considering what they could do differently. (Of course, they still have no information on the quantity, but I think this would be harder to address than at least showing the general presence of a skill type.)

[ccexplore]

Hmm, interesting point, but given they still have no information on the quantity anyway, wouldn't it make more sense for them to just rewind or restart back to the beginning?  It's not just skill quantities, at the end of the level so many changes have already occurred (terrain etc.) that if they really need to review what to do differently, looking at the end state is arguably the worst place to do so anyway.

With all that said, your point is still reasonable, as is the opinion from Proxima that this tweak is probably one of the more low-priority things on the overall list of potential improvement.  Especially considering that it is somewhat irrelevant for levels that start off with most if not all skills active, or are the easier levels (which incidentally are also likely to be encountered earlier by players) with extra skill quantities such that there may be very few inactive buttons during most playings even towards the end.

[ccexplore]

Normal google search brings up images with 5 to 10 buttons. That's more complicated than western machines, but not strikingly so. There are two nuances:

There are definitely more controls than the 4-knobbed no-frills (and probably very outdated by now) washing machine currently at my home, but I wonder if the foreign text makes it look more intimidating to our eyes than otherwise.

Honestly, the current (ie. not the proposed) lix toolbar is far, far more buttoned by comparison (though also by necessity given the gameplay).  It would be more fair to say the Korean washing machines look too much like the lix toolbar.