Testers Invited

I have uploaded what I believe to be a production-level version of the Rimworlds enrollment application. Its purpose is to allow a new player to design his first ship and equip it with everything necessary to give orders in the main program. The app is totally live, except for the final "launch" button which is not enabled, but would save the ship to the database and transfer the player to the log-in screen of the main app so he could file turn one. (He doesn't have to and can simply look around, check his inventory, etc.)

You are perfectly welcome to head off to http://starflight.rimworlds.net/ without doing any backgrounding but you might want to check out the overview of the game I posted here, and the the gameplay page of Rimworlds.info In designing the app, I assumed that the player would have been made familiar enough with the basic concepts from reading the wiki that the help pages would simply remind them of what they should keep in mind as they built their ship, not re-explain the basic concepts.

I would appreciate feedback from anyone who is willing to take the time to test the application. (It shouldn't take more than ten minutes, start to finish.) If you encounter a problem, 'twould help if you remembered the details so I could attempt to recreate it.

Thanks, and Good Gaming!

My initial reactions

• The intro font, while very cool and futuristic, is very difficult to read. I had a hard time reading the blurbs before they changed.
• The starry background makes it very, very difficult to read. See this image for an example: http://i.imgur.com/tXILv.png and http://i.imgur.com/qvKqV.png
• What if during the course of the process I decide to change my mind? How can I go back to a previous section? I tried clicking on the top icons, but it didn't do anything.
• When assigning talent points, there should be an indicator that says how many I have left to assign. I'm not good at addition.

The first two are my biggest gripes, in particular the background. IMHO, text should never be placed against a lively, busy background. It makes it seem unprofessional as well as being nearly impossible to read.

Things I liked:

• Nice compartmentalization of the various steps
• The breadcrumb up top is nice for understanding where you are in the process
• The individual forms are well laid out and clear.
• The popup help available at each step is awesome.

EDIT: Added the "things I liked" list.

Nice interface! Here's my feedback:

1 - please let people skip the intro/music

2 - some pages have a down-button to view a second section. this was not immediately obvious

3 - there is no way to go back to earlier pages. i might want to change earlier choices if i know what options i pick in the later pages.

4 - even though you are assuming people are educated on game play, I would still add popups for all in-game terminology. A blurb on "affiliation", for example, with 1-2 sentences on each choice.

There was music?! I totally missed that.. my speakers were on. Herm. I'm using Chrome.

[quote='Ramblurr' pid='674' dateline='1301686154']
There was music?! I totally missed that.. my speakers were on. Herm. I'm using Chrome.
[/quote]

Chrome is my browser of choice (though the app is tested for IE and FF as well) I guarantee that there's music throughout out the opening sequence. And that it plays in all major browsers.

[quote='Ramblurr' pid='670' dateline='1301684104']
My initial reactions

• The intro font, while very cool and futuristic, is very difficult to read. I had a hard time reading the blurbs before they changed.
• The starry background makes it very, very difficult to read. See this image for an example: http://i.imgur.com/tXILv.png and http://i.imgur.com/qvKqV.png
• What if during the course of the process I decide to change my mind? How can I go back to a previous section? I tried clicking on the top icons, but it didn't do anything.
• When assigning talent points, there should be an indicator that says how many I have left to assign. I'm not good at addition.

[/quote]

Interesting. Until now I have never had negative feedback about the Starcraft font. Can I ask about your screen-size and resolution?

You may not have noticed but I do actually have filters behind the frames that dim out the background - obviously not dim enough for you. Maybe I should put in a slider that lets the player decide how much he was to darken it. What do you think?

When going back, did you try clicking the back button on your browser? . . .Maybe I should have a button, too.

Best catch of the day was the talent counter. That was originally there, but I implemented it on the server and the app slowed way down (duh). I cut it out and intended to put the same logic on the client but was distracted for a couple of days and. . .:blush: That's the worst part about working alone on this big a project.

[quote='ixnay' pid='672' dateline='1301684687']
Nice interface! Here's my feedback:

1 - please let people skip the intro/music

2 - some pages have a down-button to view a second section. this was not immediately obvious

3 - there is no way to go back to earlier pages. i might want to change earlier choices if i know what options i pick in the later pages.

4 - even though you are assuming people are educated on game play, I would still add popups for all in-game terminology. A blurb on "affiliation", for example, with 1-2 sentences on each choice.
[/quote]

1. Okay. (the code is actually there as a back door; clicking on the logo up left jumps to the first screen.)

2. I'd love to make them more apparent. But here's what is there now: The buttons are mentioned on both help pages, they blink when the player first arrives and again if he tries to leave before clicking them, and they're tool-tipped. Any thoughts on something else I can do? Maybe play a recorded ("Press the frackin button before you leave the page, buster!") ? ;)

3. Hmmm, Looks like I definitely should add the back button instead of depending on the browser. (A long time ago I was told in no uncertain terms never to have a back button because that was the browser's job, but if two relatively sophisticated folks never considered that, I'd say there's a new paradigm.

4. On the help page for that screen, I note that if the player isn't clear on affiliation or species he-she needs to jump back to the wiki and read up on 'em. They are too important a choice to be handled any other way.

Thanks very much for the feedback. You are a prince!

I've got a new version of enrollment up now - I guess this is the playbymail.net version. My thanks to both of you!

I tried connecting to your test link, yesterday, and again, last night. Being on a very slow dial-up Internet connection, I'm probably going to have to try it, again, when I get a chance to borrow someone else's broadband Internet connection. It took six minutes on my end for the music to even begin to play, and then that was just the first couple of note.

[quote='GrimFinger' pid='693' dateline='1301818349']
I tried connecting to your test link, yesterday, and again, last night. Being on a very slow dial-up Internet connection, I'm probably going to have to try it, again, when I get a chance to borrow someone else's broadband Internet connection. It took six minutes on my end for the music to even begin to play, and then that was just the first couple of note.
[/quote]

Arrrggghhhh! Okay. Some of my braintrust had convinced me that there was no need to be able to skip the opening since no player would ever see it twice - of course we're all broadband and never thought of the dl time on narrow-band. :(

However, there is a back door cutoff for the opening. - click on the Rimworlds Logo in the upper left hand corner as soon as it starts to fade in. You'll jump cut to the end of the sequence after the opening crawl.

Looks like, at the least, I need to add a "no-sound" option.

[quote='JonO' pid='695' dateline='1301836984']Arrrggghhhh! Okay. Some of my braintrust had convinced me that there was no need to be able to skip the opening since no player would ever see it twice - of course we're all broadband and never thought of the dl time on narrow-band. :(

However, there is a back door cutoff for the opening. - click on the Rimworlds Logo in the upper left hand corner as soon as it starts to fade in. You'll jump cut to the end of the sequence after the opening crawl.

Looks like, at the least, I need to add a "no-sound" option.[/quote]

Well, designing the game for broadband play is probably wiser than designing a game for dial-up play, from a business perspective, these days.

Clicking on the Rimworlds Logo in the upper left hand corner does work, to take me to the menu at the end of the music sequence. However, to someone who happens upon your site for the very first time, how are they supposed to know about that trick? It is a helpful trick to know, but on its face, it's not very intuitive. I wouldn't simply know that, by looking at the screen, as currently designed. You know it's there, because you programmed it that way. If you're going to incorporate tricks to skip various things, then why make them hidden/non-obvious to those who you want to give your game a try?

[quote='GrimFinger' pid='698' dateline='1301846765']
[quote='JonO' pid='695' dateline='1301836984']Arrrggghhhh! Okay. Some of my braintrust had convinced me that there was no need to be able to skip the opening since no player would ever see it twice - of course we're all broadband and never thought of the dl time on narrow-band. :(

However, there is a back door cutoff for the opening. - click on the Rimworlds Logo in the upper left hand corner as soon as it starts to fade in. You'll jump cut to the end of the sequence after the opening crawl.

Looks like, at the least, I need to add a "no-sound" option.[/quote]

Well, designing the game for broadband play is probably wiser than designing a game for dial-up play, from a business perspective, these days.

Clicking on the Rimworlds Logo in the upper left hand corner does work, to take me to the menu at the end of the music sequence. However, to someone who happens upon your site for the very first time, how are they supposed to know about that trick? It is a helpful trick to know, but on its face, it's not very intuitive. I wouldn't simply know that, by looking at the screen, as currently designed. You know it's there, because you programmed it that way. If you're going to incorporate tricks to skip various things, then why make them hidden/non-obvious to those who you want to give your game a try?

[/quote]

The trick was a backdoor for me and other testers who were running through the sequence multiple times. I had originally intended to kill the code before releasing to the public. There are actually all kinds of back doors throughout the app right now. Clicking on "Rimworlds Enrollment" on the player-data screen will fill it out; clicking on the word "Captain" will assign all the talents and fill in the blanks on the officer profile screen - any screen that requires more than a couple of mouse-clicks has a backdoor. - Makes it a lot easier/faster to run multiple tests, but isn't for public consumption.

In the case of turning off the sound/skipping the opening screen, I will be adding a labelled button.

If you want the game to cater to dial-up users, why not add a blue button like the one on the right hand side, which says Dial-Up, with another that says Full Experience (Broadband), or something similar?

That'd work, but I was going to see how much overhead there was in doing it behind the scenes.

Ah, I had FlashBlock enabled, hence the lack of music.

I never thought to use the back button, because I didn't realize the page had actually refreshed. Usually the URL in the URL bar changes, which indicates a page refresh. Are you using HTML 5's ability to inject pages into the browser history for use with back/forward, or are you just POSTing to the same page over and over?

I don't know if a back button is necessary, but being able to click on the section logos makes a lot of sense. It feels natural to click those buttons to go back to a previous section.

Right now all the sections are dimmed except for the active one. I would suggest that as the user progresses leave the sections active (not-dimmed and white text), this UI will indicate to the user they can click on it. It also provides a nice way of viewing their progress. By the time they get to the end the entire thing will be highlighted/active. This also doubles to enforce the fact you can only go back to sections you have completed and aren't able to skip ahead.

nice intro as mentioned. I had no problem reading text, however my problem was in the enrollment itself. The first page went fine, the second page (hulls) was overwritten with same text. I still chose the hull I wanted and armor, hit submt. I was taken to the computer section which displayed briefly and then went blank, that is the background was left but the computer information/choices disappeared. I was unable to proceed from there and thus unable to complete enrollment.

I'm seeing same "overlapping text" issue. Here is a screenshot:

I had the same problem and was confused as hell. I checked and all the right files had been uploaded. (???) Then I realized that the computer in its wisdom was showing me the cached background from yesterday along with the new images and labels that I had removed from the background and brought in the foreground so they'd show up better, and so I could opaque the background. <ctrl><f5> took care of it.

I can only fill out the first two sections of the enrollment. When I get to the computer section, it flashes up and then disappears and I am unable to continue any further. Is this by design at this time or is there a problem on my end?

I'm wondering if I'm doing something that chokes your browser - what OS and Browser combination are you using?

When you say flashes up - what exactly happens?

windows vista. 32bit OS.

After I complete the hull choices and hit submit, it moves to the next screen (computer I believe) and the options pop up giving the choice between the two systems offered, like you would expect to see, but only for a second, then it disappears leaving only the starry background. At that point you can only go back.

That helps - but what browser are you using? One of my testers has access to just about any combo of OS and Browser. So far the only one it hasn't worked on is IE6 - we're going to implement a script that will fix that.

I have internet explorer, but couldn't tell you if its 6 or not. My laptop is 2 years old so I'm sure it is loaded with whatsever the latest IE was at the time.

Am I one of those people you tell to find another game?

[quote='nazareth' pid='846' dateline='1302225754']
I have internet explorer, but couldn't tell you if its 6 or not. My laptop is 2 years old so I'm sure it is loaded with whatsever the latest IE was at the time.

Am I one of those people you tell to find another game?
[/quote]

It's unlikely you have IE6 on a 2 year old laptop. IE6 was released in 2001, and replaced with IE7 in 2006.

Honestly, IE6 is mostly still in use in corporate environments where they wrote internal websites just for that browser. I don't think you're going to lose many gamers if you wrote a web site that didn't support IE6.

Hatch

[quote='nazareth' pid='846' dateline='1302225754']
I have internet explorer, but couldn't tell you if its 6 or not. My laptop is 2 years old so I'm sure it is loaded with whatsever the latest IE was at the time.

Am I one of those people you tell to find another game?
[/quote]

I can guarantee you are not. I make extensive use of Portable Network Graphic files (extension: .png) because they handle transparency much better than gifs. However, IE6 sees them as simply a big gray rectangles. You couldn't have gotten to screen 3. You are probably in i.e. 7 - let me see if i can figure out why it is choking - probably I am doing something cute with JQuery that it doesn't like. :(

I really appreciate the time you are taking to give me this feed back!
[quote='nazareth' pid='846' dateline='1302225754']
I have internet explorer, but couldn't tell you if its 6 or not. My laptop is 2 years old so I'm sure it is loaded with whatsever the latest IE was at the time.
[/quote]

Okay, I just forced IE8 to pretend it was IE7 and was able to duplicate the problem - if I can duplicate it, I can fix it. Hopefully I'll get it done tomorrow. Thank you for this! :D

Okay the new version is up and, in spite of the caveat you'll see urging you to upgrade, I believe I've delivered at least 97% of the user experience of the app that you'd get in IE8/Chrome10/FF3.6