Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

[Shashakiro]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Lemme go through all your complaints.

The Challenge/FFR Shop/Credit Count. How do you get rid of this side bar? When I'm picking songs, sometimes it's there covering up valuable info that I would like to actually be able to read.

Hey, your first one is pretty valid actually...this IS pretty bothersome and I hope they fix it.

The Characters. Do these actually DO anything? I see a row of buttons with "characters" that show up as you hover over them, but I've seen no change when playing with differen't buttons selected.

The characters have different facial expressions depending on how well you do on the song. Nice job making a complaint out of ignorance.

The Genre selections. Alright, so I understand that you use the arrows to find a genre, and click it to open up the song selection for that genre. I also understand that clicking it again will close the song selection. Why are the arrows still usable to scroll to other genres? If they are used, then why doesn't the song seletion change on the fly? If the arrows are used and you want to see the songs of a new genre while another song list is open, you have to click, for some reason, the new genre THREE times.

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO CLICK THREE TIMES, HOW HORRIBLE. Something that minor isn't worth Synth's time to fix or even pay attention to.

The Song selection. So once you get your genre open you click the song you want to play to see some info on it (which is covered up by the Complaint #1), and click it again to load. Well, if you're in multiplayer and 1 person loads the song, the game waits for the other person to as well, and if player 2 isn't fast enough, then for some reason, player 1's song disappears from the chat window.

Player 2 is still in the stats from the pervious song, and when he exits the stat screen both circles go gray. It's in the guide.

The Multiplayer experience itself. I call this complaint "Which freaking side am I on??". http://www.neom.ca/andru/link/why.png If you follow this link, you will see a usual multiplayer screenshot with my name circled on the right, both times. Any NORMAL person who has no previous experience would assume that this means that I am designated the player on the right. It took me about 4 games to realize, lo, this was not the case. Why are my arrows and ratings "perfect, boo, etc" on the left?? I thought my wireless keyboard was severely lagging because i was seeing misses on the right that weren't mine.

I personally find it a hell of a lot easier the way it is, and I'm sure many would agree. People with no previous playing experience just figure it out on their own, it's not rocket science. Deal with it.

Leaving a challenge area, or room. If I look for a song and load it, why is it that if I leave the room, the song remains selected and loaded? I can even use the arrows (for a bit until the top half of the play area freezes and become unusable).

Why shouldn't it remain loaded? What's the harm in it? And I have no idea what you're talking about with the freezing thing, it's probably a problem on your end.

Basically, except for your first one, all your complaints aren't even valid at all, and mostly just stem from ignorance...yeah.

[UberMario]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Squeek, what do you do for work?

[AndruC]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

My complaints are not about coding bugs. The code it seems, is great. It's the DESIGN issues I have complaints about. It may be because I've taken courses in avoiding design flaws that their existance shock me so much.

1. The difficulty of a song isn't valuable information? And if the rest isn't, why does it exist if it's hidden?

2. Fair enough.

3. I just started playing. I like to browse the genres to see what songs are available. Unneccesary clicking is something I've learned to try and avoid in design. If the arrows can still scroll, the the song list should close when the genre is changed. If not, then disable the arrows when the song list is open, it's that simple.

4. This was me not understanding due to a lack of reading forums, instructions, whatever I suppose. I still think more information should be available in-game.

5. If both players are doing equally well, then how is one supposed to differentiate one side from another? We played at least 4 or 5 games together before I even questioned which side I was on. Even after that we were confused.
"Are you on the left or the right?"
"Well, I'm on the left."
"Oh, so I'm on the right then.. It's still missing some of my presses!"
And so on.

6. Also just a design flaw. If a challenge room is left, then should the menus reset to where they were before a room was entered? Doing this by default would prevent many bugs that may come up due to songs being loaded before games being or rooms are entered.

This will probably be my last post tonight, and thus, here. I won't be playing this game anymore but I still felt that this issues were important and should be stressed. Squeek, I know how things work in the field of programming. It's what I'm doing for a living.

Just think of me as a mean, straightforward, tell-it-like-it-is design consultant. My consulting is done.

[UberMario]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

1. The name for the difficult is square in the middle of the screen. the little bars that you can't even count once they go up to Challenging+ (or atleast I can't) are corresponding to the name. Also, if you really want to know who the stepartist/artist is or the length, it tells you at the beginning of the song. And... half the time your creditcount, etc. goes away anyways.

2. .

3. Play every song one by one, one after the other in every genre. It really helps keep an idea of what's where.

4. .

5. Everyone's on the left.

6. Harmless thing, I believe. Also, as I stated, you can click the genre button to cancel loading.

Have fun.

[AndruC]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

1. So it is trivial information then, since it's repeated elsewhere? Why is it there to be hidden?

3. I won't be playing any more than I need to, as I only joined to play against my friend.

5. A name at the top corresponding to who is who would solve this immediately.

6. It's all about bug prevention.

[Shashakiro]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

That's all well and good, but here's the thing:

but I still felt that this issues were important and should be stressed.

You're one of oh so few. Except for the sidebar covering up the song info thing, all of the "design flaws" you pointed are too irrelevant for anyone to really care about them, and just really aren't worth Synth's time to deal with now. Maybe all this would've been helpful back when it was all originally being coded, but right now it's too trivial, and there are more important things to work on.

[UberMario]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

It's almost as trivial as re-syncing 3 year old songs.

Thank god he didn't mention that. it's just a nuicance to read people complain about.

[Afrobean]

Re: Horrible Design! Oh the Complaints!

Everyone handled their responses pretty completely, but I just felt these two things needed to be said.

The Challenge/FFR Shop/Credit Count. How do you get rid of this side bar? When I'm picking songs, sometimes it's there covering up valuable info that I would like to actually be able to read.

This is a bug that only occurs if you click a genre before the animation is complete. There is no design flaw here at all. And in reality, the information which is hidden by the shop/challenge/etc. is entirely useless. Even with that covered, you can see the title of the song, the genre, and it's difficulty. The stepfile artist, length of the song, and artist of the song shouldn't really make a difference in if you'll play the song or not.

I played this mode several times: http://www.neom.ca/andru/link/diagonal.png and I still haven't figured it out. I even tried the numpad diagonal keys with num lock on and off. Clearly those are diagonal arrows, but they don't work. Which arrow is the "up" key, and so on and so forth?

Diagonal is useless. Everyone knows this. No one plays this way, except when screwing around.

With all of the things you could complain about FFR, I don't see why you picked so many stupid things. There are a lot more legitimate things to be upset about in FFR (lack of BPM changes, speed mods, old songs are offsync, only newer songs are color coded to the beat, no up scroll for those crazy MP players that want it, certain genres are jam packed with tons and tons of songs and it can be a pain to navigate through them to find just the song you're looking for, and I'm sure there are even more things I've failed to think of that should be fixed effectively with 3rd Style anyway).