These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

Forum Index

EVE Forums » EVE Information Center » EVE Information Portal » Dev blog: The future of probe and directional scanning ...

Topic is locked indefinitely.

First pagePrevious page23456Next pageLast page

Dev blog: The future of probe and directional scanning UI First post First post
Author

Previous Topic Next Topic

Causarius Meretrix

EVE University

Ivy League

Likes received: 0

#61 - 2017-02-14 13:29:04 UTC

Omnathious Deninard wrote:

Any chance on removing the discovery scanner and making players have to work a little again to find signatures?

I second this!

Although scanning will take a lot longer, and systems with no sigs will be frustrating; I liked the old way, where you actually had to probe different parts of the system to find out if there even were any sigs there. I actually don't remember if the anoms were visible or not, but I know for certain the sigs were harder to obtain when you had no idea if there even were any.

Many things get easier in a way that they are "dumbed down" to a level that is comparable to a FB 'whatever'-crush game with tooltips telling you what to do. There is nothing wrong with a bit of a challange and having to actually put some effort into it.

There may have beet many discussions about this when the mini games were introduced (was it at the same time the discovery scanner was introduced?) as a way to keep a balance between how hard it is to find the site and the difficulty leven to actually obtain stuff from the sig in the end. In the end the players are the ones who loose the experience.

Also; fixing looks to make the game more appealing to a wider audience (who cares more for the looks than the actual gameplay) might not always be a good thing ;-)

Erika Mizune

Lucifer's Hammer

A Band Apart.

Likes received: 2,500

#62 - 2017-02-14 13:33:33 UTC | Edited by: Erika Mizune

I like the new designs, but I have to say, one of the things that always annoys me about updates to the UI like this is that there is never color options for colorblind players. This is super frustrating. Perhaps some control over the sphere colors would be a nice step?

Erika Mizune for CSM - Industry & Accessibility Candiate

Former DJ & Manager of Eve Radio | Blog | Sounds of New Eden | Twitch | Twitter

GENT

The Meta Cartel

Likes received: 63

#63 - 2017-02-14 14:41:10 UTC

CCP Phantom wrote:

We are preparing an update to the scanning UI and UX in hopes of delivering a much better scanning experience. We hope to bring you these changes with the March release.

Check out the latest dev blog (with intuitive images and pictures) to learn more about the improvements to scanning!

The future of probe and directional scanning UI

Current proposed changes seem nice, but there are a few things that I would like to see improved for directional/probe scanning.

1) First and foremost of these is remembering 100% scanned sites! I have to use out of game tools to remember sites that I have scanned down to 100% already. Why is that?

2) I would also like to see the ability to use the mouse look to directional scan towards 100% scanned anomalies from the probe scanner window.

3) It is very irritating when scanning and a new site pops up, it zeros out any progress made on signatures bellow 100%.

4) Could we please, please, have a center probes on sun button? When jumping from a big system to small system it becomes very annoying to have to find them and drag them from way out in the middle of nowhere. (or is there a functionality existing for this I'm not aware of?)

Obligatory mention of "set this skin to default" toggle.

Watch my stream on twitch for small gang PVP and Exploration content in 0.0

70
Aves Asio Likes received: 70	#64 - 2017-02-14 14:41:54 UTC You are adding some cool features but unfortunately they are being added on to an inferior platform. Your new map is still bad.

CCP Claymore

C C P

C C P Alliance

Likes received: 432

#65 - 2017-02-14 14:58:42 UTC

GENT wrote:

CCP Phantom wrote:

1) This is a bigger question for Game Design, but I will raise it with them

2) This has been worked on and improved during the time the devblog was being written so was left out of the blog. Have a look on Singularity, hopefully next week it will be there, and see what you think.

3) This is a defect and should be resolved when the update is released to TQ

4) Currently in the system we have they are always launching at the sun, so the launching issue should be gone, and we have tweaked the manipulation box so hopefully losing them will not be so easy.

Quality Assurance Analyst Team Psycho Sisters


CCP Claymore C C P C C P Alliance Likes received: 432	#66 - 2017-02-14 15:00:00 UTC Aves Asio wrote: You are adding some cool features but unfortunately they are being added on to an inferior platform. Your new map is still bad. Just so we are clear, the map is not getting changes. The Solar System map is getting changes. Quality Assurance Analyst Team Psycho Sisters

Drabbin Mishi

Ministry of War

Amarr Empire

Likes received: 38

#67 - 2017-02-14 15:13:30 UTC

CCP Claymore wrote:

4) Currently in the system we have they are always launching at the sun, so the launching issue should be gone, and we have tweaked the manipulation box so hopefully losing them will not be so easy.

I hope that that is only for the FIRST launch in any given system.
So that if my probes expire in space, or I recall them and then relaunch, or briefly dock and undock, I won't lose the positioning that my probes had before they left space, when I relaunch them?

419
Circumstantial Evidence Likes received: 419	#68 - 2017-02-14 15:23:33 UTC Could we get a new sound effect for scanning-in-progress, for our "space sonar"? Former audio developer CCP WhiteNoiseTrash expressed disappointment that a "stock" sound from a commonly used effects library was chosen.

CCP Claymore

C C P

C C P Alliance

Likes received: 432

#69 - 2017-02-14 16:10:48 UTC

Circumstantial Evidence wrote:

Could we get a new sound effect for scanning-in-progress, for our "space sonar"? Former audio developer CCP WhiteNoiseTrash expressed disappointment that a "stock" sound from a commonly used effects library was chosen.

Obligatory, EVE has sound?

Sounds are being worked on at the moment.

Quality Assurance Analyst Team Psycho Sisters

Ocean Ormand

Bagel and Lox

Likes received: 62

#70 - 2017-02-14 19:53:34 UTC | Edited by: Ocean Ormand

First off - will these changes require us to use the new map? Will the old scanning system and map still be available? I'm not going to get into how terrible the new map is since that has been done to death, but as long as the new map is not mandated then I'm fairly meh to the scanning changes.

Second - scanning is already ridiculously easy. Once upon a time scanning used to be a profession and a skilled scanner was a welcome addition to any fleet. Now scanning is so easy that any tom, **** and harry can do it. In fact, scanning is so easy that many fc are able to multitask scanning along with the running of their fleets to the point where sniper fleets were rendered questionable as a doctrine. That being the case - changes that render scanning even easier then it already is are ultimately counter productive.

Jeremiah Saken

The Fall of Leviathan

Likes received: 830

#71 - 2017-02-14 20:46:33 UTC | Edited by: Jeremiah Saken

CCP Claymore wrote:

GENT wrote:

1) First and foremost of these is remembering 100% scanned sites! I have to use out of game tools to remember sites that I have scanned down to 100% already. Why is that?

1) This is a bigger question for Game Design, but I will raise it with them

This should be prio with new UI change, why CSM didn't ask about it? We are asking for this years now.

If you want to add icon for specific sites would it be better to remove site type column from scanner window, we will have information doubled.

Any chance to remove sites names from scanner window? We would have some "discovery" taste at least when warping on site grid. Just "relics" and "datas" for non sleepers/covert sites.

Quote:

As an attempt to improve usability, we’ve introduced the concept of scanning difficulty. This should hopefully help new players understand why they simply cannot pin down a very difficult site, as well as creating a nice reveal moment that can also help with deciding if it’s worth proceeding with the scan or not as difficulty roughly correlates with the value and risk of the site.

Why you making scanning easier and easier. Alphas can scan Superior Sleeper Sites - should they be?. Now you even show me before scan what result I may expect? It's opposing to explore, it's calculation. Make things harder not easier. Easy things geti bored quickly.

"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas..." - Herman Melville

Lil' Brudder Too

Pistols for Pandas

Likes received: 234

#72 - 2017-02-15 03:02:20 UTC

Dev Blog wrote:

In short, the old system is going to be removed when we are happy with the new implementation, but we are committed to this being as soon as possible.

For the initial release we will keep the “old” system in place and replace the current system with a “brand new” system that’s the default for all new players.

You mean like the new inventory window was so awful and CCP promised to 'iterated' on it until it was just as good as the old one....released a couple token patches...then left it alone after everyone simply got tired of complaining...

Sounds like a good business plan.

New Icon SiSi feedback thread that got wholly ignored!

An example of that a good ship icon set looks like.

Lil' Brudder Too

Pistols for Pandas

Likes received: 234

#73 - 2017-02-15 03:06:43 UTC

CCP Claymore wrote:

Aves Asio wrote:

You are adding some cool features but unfortunately they are being added on to an inferior platform.

Your new map is still bad.

Just so we are clear, the map is not getting changes.

The Solar System map is getting changes.

Well, the new map is what needs changes....just so we are clear...#oldmapbestmap

New Icon SiSi feedback thread that got wholly ignored!

An example of that a good ship icon set looks like.

Aves Asio

Likes received: 70

#74 - 2017-02-15 11:24:32 UTC

CCP Claymore wrote:

Aves Asio wrote:

You are adding some cool features but unfortunately they are being added on to an inferior platform.

Your new map is still bad.

Just so we are clear, the map is not getting changes.

The Solar System map is getting changes.

The solar system map that is getting the changes is a part of the new map. In the end you will replace both old maps with the new and inferior solar system and universe maps - THIS IS AN ISSUE

You are trading features, on one side we are loosing a functional universe map and on the other side we are getting a slightly better solar system map.

DrysonBennington

Eagle's Talon's

Likes received: 334

#75 - 2017-02-15 16:03:16 UTC

Signature Pinpointing or Holding

I think that scanning for wormholes should come as part of the scanner of the ship. The Wormhole Scanner would be a Role Bonus to the ship where for each level of the ship trained to the scan would increase or hold the wormhole signature in place by 10%. The Tech II variant of the ship would have an additional 5% Signature Holding bonus for wormholes for a total of a 70% Signature Holding bonus.

How the Signature Holding would function is that the ship would constantly produce a signal that when a wormhole signature is located would lock the signature down from moving around while the probing process was taking place. The drawback is that the cruiser sized ship would have nearly double the signature radius as battleship.

The Signature Holding could be turned on or off from the HUD by clicking a small button.

Integrated resource scanning built into a ship would also create a new type of ship where the built in scanner would scan a group of asteroids and return a simplified result of the composition of the scanned asteroids or ice chunks compared to a more detailed result of using an on-board scanner.

Amarak Valerii

Likes received: 20

#76 - 2017-02-15 17:40:28 UTC | Edited by: Amarak Valerii

First off.. great job! I appreciate most of the features here!
I have a question though: Will the dscan/probescan window automatically dock/undock from the solar system window when i close it?

As much as I wish that, someday, the grid, the solar system window and the map would be morphed into one. Gradually zooming out from one into another.. giving a Sins of a Solar Empire feel.I know that day won;t come soon, thus I;m asking for something more realistic:
Can the currently selected item from the overview (enemy ship) have it's signature highlighted in the probe scanner? (after I've scanned it 100% ofc)

This can make my life way easier when scrolling through literally thousands of ship signatures in order to warp to my intended target.

Think for yourself. Don't be sheep!

Morikvendi

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 5

#77 - 2017-02-15 18:33:28 UTC

Rhyme Bittern wrote:

Thanks for the changes, they are all very nice.

I have one more request, though. Can you please let the tooltip of each scan result show the result current name instead of its ID?

My screen resolution is not the greatest, and I need to squeeze the scan results window as much as possible. However, this means that the name column becomes mostly hidden and I can only see the first few words in it and cannot identify it. I would be like to see the name of the scanned result (or whatever information I currently have about it - "Cosmic Signature" -> "Relic Site" -> "Ruined Sansha Crystal Quarry", etc.) when I hover the mouse cursor over it, instead of the result's ID - an almost useless piece of information.

Agreed.
+1

Boldly go where no man has gone before...

Morikvendi

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 5

#78 - 2017-02-15 18:41:02 UTC

Adeline Lachance wrote:

One thing I've noticed with the current D-Scan system is that, when sorting by distance, objects that are too far away to be rendered with a numerical value (i.e. the '-' character) are listed first in ascending order. For example,

Name Type Distance
Ship1 Purifier -
Ship2 Purifier -
Ship3 Purifier -
Ship4 Catalyst 1900m
Ship5 Catalyst 3000m
Ship6 Catalyst 3500m
Ship7 Thrasher 20km
Ship8 Tornado 40km

I fairly regularly see the '-' ships scrolling of the screen. I can sort in descending order to see this.

Name Type Distance
Ship8 Tornado 40km
Ship7 Thrasher 20km
Ship6 Catalyst 3500m
Ship5 Catalyst 3000m
Ship4 Catalyst 1900m
Ship3 Purifier -
Ship2 Purifier -
Ship1 Purifier -

Very occasionally I see the closest ships scrolling off the screen. What I would ideally like to see is this.

Name Type Distance
Ship4 Catalyst 1900m
Ship5 Catalyst 3000m
Ship6 Catalyst 3500m
Ship7 Thrasher 20km
Ship8 Tornado 40km
Ship1 Purifier -
Ship2 Purifier -
Ship3 Purifier -

I'm aware that the Overview can help here but wish for a pure ascending order in D-Scan. It's entirely possible I'm unaware of something in the current system that will allow me to accomplish this.

Agreed.
+1

Boldly go where no man has gone before...

Morikvendi

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 5

#79 - 2017-02-15 18:44:26 UTC

Draco Argen wrote:

Really pleased to see some love for scanning. Spend lot of time exploring.

All of the feature tweaks and fixes are much more intuative and pleasantly surprised me to be buffing and improving without ripping up the carpet.

However one thing I've not mention and ccplease consider.

We are living in bio clones in amazing spaceships, why can our hyper stupid clever ship computer not remember a scan result we get to 100% when we leave system or dock up. I'm ok with the "bookmark or loose out" mentality in general but If I'm scooting through systems and scanning when I double back and go through a system I've scanned I cant see if the signatures are new or one I've already scanned.

I used to bookmark but it became unmanageable and required a lot of wasteful bookmarks (Bad for your DB too!)
And even then It immediately obvious which result I've BMed unless I name it after the sig name.

As a game mechanic I see no harm in remembering any results I get to 100%. If I dont get it that far, fine forget about it.
Remembering to the greatest scan precision might be nice, but not a game change if you can't.

I can understand adding this level of persistence might be a technical hurdle. But I'd hope that remembering signatures that naturally expire would only leave a fistful of sigs needing to be stored and a relatively easy expiry method when the sig dies.
WAY better than me forgetting to delete 1001 BMs and clogging up your DB lol
Even if its the last 10 signs I've successfully scanned that is sooo useful ! First in last out and I'm a happy bunny.

The only other solution I have is keeping a notepad by my kb to note the sig names Ive scanned and thats a ball ache.

(Though Im a big fan of pen and paper support for games like this, this is no fun)

Agreed.
+1

Boldly go where no man has gone before...

Morikvendi

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 5

#80 - 2017-02-15 19:35:14 UTC | Edited by: Morikvendi

CCP Phantom wrote:

After reading all of the comments before writing mine to make sure nobody mentioned it, here it goes.

Let me start by saying that (as not being a color blind person) I love most of the changes done, but there is a point I have to make about the new Probe and Scanning window LAYOUT as a developer and a person who knows a bit about UI and UX.

This is the picture I am talking about:

http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/71875/1/NewScanning8.png

1. When designing something that is not just looked at, but also used, usable items (buttons) should go to the top. Example: Browsers, Word processors. The reason for this is because in most cultures we read from top to bottom, from left to right. That is how our brains are wired as a consequence.

2. Following that, all the main content / information is then contained in the central part of the window. All good there.

3. Then, all the secondary information goes at the bottom.

How many of us ever launch more or less than 8 probes? How many of us actively check every single time we scan what is our strength, deviation, and duration of the scan? This information doesn't change every time we open scanner, it is something we should know but don't have to interact with every single time. All that information is important but it is secondary in my opinion, so it should be available at the bottom of the Scan window to be checked when needed. No need to have it at the top where the more important elements should be - Actions (Buttons).

What I propose is this:

http://i.imgur.com/qyHKDtY.png

"Analyze" button can be either kept where it is currently (first on the top left) or moved to the far right as in the second screenshot. As you can see from the second screenshot above, this layout even leaves you with enough room at the top to add more future features/actions (for example resetting probes back to the Sun for those who don't like recalling and re-launching probes which does already).

In any case, I am looking forward to the rest improvements you are going to make.

p.s.
I apologize for the long post, but there was no way to make this shorter yet understandable.

Boldly go where no man has gone before...

First pagePrevious page23456Next pageLast page