Pixel Dungeon

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[ShPD] [discussion] UI/QoL stuff (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Let’s talk about some UI/quality of life stuff. I was about to open issue, but since it touches a bunch of different topics, I guess a discussion is better. It’s a bunch of things that were annoying to me over the last months. It doesn’t mean that something has to change, could just be that I overlooked some features somewhere.

Special floor explanations on mobile
- The desktop version of ShPD allows to hover the floor indicator, but I can’t find an equivalent for touch on mobile
Ignore invisible mobs and allies for automatic movement
- To some degree automatic movement reveals positions of mobs
- If you have 10 wraiths active on the floor or something like that, the character runs aimlessly back and forth without even reaching his destination
- It’s better to get stuck than wasting satiation
Optional auto aiming button for touch input that works like tab with keyboard input

Fat finger syndrome stuff:

Targeting yourself by clicking on your portrait or hitting the shortcut for hero info
- I had it happen a bunch of times that I accidentally shot my wand in some direction instead of shielding myself, which can be a serious problem with wand of blast/fire/disintegration
- Also relevant for ghost guiding
Optional "Are you sure?" popups for automatic movement
- It happens that you accidentally run somewhere when input for zooming/panning failed
Optional visual aid for aiming and maybe optional confirmation if you really wanna shoot/throw to tile without mob
- Did I touch the right tile and not a neighboring one?
  - A classic is to shoot a tile adjacent to a mob
- Can I even hit that mob/trap?
- Would I hit my allies?
- It’s sometimes hard to tell if it would hit a wall edge or not
- It should only respect revealed stationary environments and visible mobs, but not 100% show where it actually hits since that would reveal invisible entities

Those are especially related to taking a longer break and picking up a save game after months:

Notes for floors
- Did I find hidden doors on that floor with extra secrets?
- Did I use scroll of mapping?
- What did the quest say? Did I already finish that quest?
- Did I use all blacksmith options already?
- Did I solve all puzzles or were some potions missing for them?
- Such notes should probably be accessible via “Landmarks” interface
- Currently I use Steam overlay notes for that, but that’s a dissatisfying solution since it’s completely closed source
Notes for unidentified potions/scrolls/items (extends the previous point)
- On what floor did I find this potion/scroll?
- Who dropped it?
- Was it in a chest/grave?
- Maybe should be automatically deleted when identified
Ability to ⭐ items
- If I remember correctly, Borderlands 2 and Victor Vran allowed to mark items that you wanna continue to use to simplify selling not needed stuff
- It’s hard to remember your setup if you didn’t play for some time
More save game infos like "last played at XXX" and "save game of game version XXX"
- Though savegame should probably not be overwritten if you didn’t do any significant actions since opening the save game, dunno how that’s currently handled

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

There's quite a few things mentioned here, so I'll briefly go over each one in order:

special floors also announce themselves in the game log when the hero enters the floor or whenever the game is loaded on that floor. I always felt like that was enough to establish a connection with the icon. There is no 'hover' function on mobile, neither is there enough screen space to turn that icon into a proper button.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, as the hero does ignore enemies and allies which they cannot see. That's a big reason why auto pathing stops when an enemy pops into view, as otherwise suddenly changing directions would be quite common.
As a few folks have mentioned, you can tap on the enemy count indicator to swap targets like using the tab key on desktop.

I'm curious how many people would use something like this. The game would also need to communicate this functionality somewhere, as it's not exactly intuitive to discover.
this sort of situation would be effectively impossible for the game to detect reliably. It would likely end up asking 'are you sure?' in lots of cases where the player gave simple inputs, and would end up being quite annoying.
I have considered something like this on desktop because of mouse hover, but I don't think this would be possible on mobile without requiring every targeting prompt to take two taps. Auto-aim also already solves this problem in most cases.

All of these points boil down to having custom note functionality, which is something I would like to add soon-ish. The problem is mainly that implementing it well takes a fair amount of design consideration, as lots of different people all have different ideas as to what would work best. Just as a simple example, lots of people want notes or tags to exist in the inventory, but I'm wary of this as that UI is already very visually busy. The journal is the obviouls place to put them, but then the functionality might be too tucked away for lots of people to bother with.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I successfully procrastinated away to respond to this.

The new log is great
Had to play a bit more around with allies and pay attention, but it still looks like it has issues. (see below)
I was indeed just blind in regard to the clickable count indicator

It could be optional and that way show up in settings
Okay, I myself use a mix of keys and pathfinding. Since it’s possible to move the camera with right click and zoom with mouse wheel it shouldn’t be an issue.
It could appear on tap down and shoot on release.

The new notes with tooltip integration are great.

I guess a few points were strongly related to my rather narrow play style, so it’s probably best to give that as a context. But that’ll be long so I’ll post that as a reply to this.

Source of rare misclicks due to actions that use left mouse button just like walking:

Shielding myself with wands I rarely use:
- Wand of Corrosion/Fireblast/Blast Wave, for which it’s inconvenient to cast them next to myself
- Wand of Disintegration when I want to keep the grass intact etc
- Wand of Regrowth when I want to conserve it
Ally Warp since pathfinder doesn’t warp:
- Click next to them and walk there, which can lead to a detour due to them blocking the direct path
- Click on an ally out of range and accidentially walk there, since it’s not always clear to me what is in range

That’s a big reason why auto pathing stops when an enemy pops into view, as otherwise suddenly changing directions would be quite common

Maybe the issue is that it stops only for enemies? When an ally pops into view, path finder changes direction because it can’t warp. With more Wraiths that can lead to the hero going back and forth. I usually interrupt it with a click/touch. Wasted steps aren’t a big issue with my play style.

I could be wrong on this one: It feels like Ally Warp, directional keys and Hold To Move Sensitivity don’t go well together. With the ghost to my right: Even on level 2 it happens occasionally that I swap places with the ghost and then move right by one.

I usually play on level 4 and there I had it happen that I had 3 Wraiths to my right and instead of just swapping with the first one I accidentally swapped with all three and moved right by one.

I love Hold to Move for mining in the blacksmith quest, but maybe it should stop when the action would change? (move,warp,dig…) For Ally Warp it should maybe be completely disabled, it doesn’t even happen often to do two warps in a row. At least not with allies next to you.