*sam* Posted Aug 30, 2008, 6:03 pm	· Moveable steering panel · Slightly reduced height of car manage panel. I will be discussing with desolatordan whether we can squash the whole thing substantially more, as several players have requested. · ?O? now opens/closes the occupants tab (the same as ?M? for the manage tab) · The ?Not Ready? button should now work · ?Cam Follow Car? is back, and ?Auto End? has been relegated to the top menu · added a new Preference: ?Disable Animated GUIs? · I?ve also made it so that left-clicking the body of the manage window closes it . Fixed the problem where projectles were invisible due to moving 100s of times too fast (!) . (Hopefully) fixed the recent problem with cars not moving from the start-grid.. I need to do some tests to validate this (it wouldn?t happen on my test build for some reason)
FineRedMist Posted Aug 30, 2008, 6:29 pm	Terrific changes. Thanks very much for your dedication to the game and your subscribers. I'll certainly recommend the game to my friends. Randy...
*sam* Posted Aug 30, 2008, 6:30 pm	No problem, & thanks its always good to get nice feedback
4saken Posted Aug 30, 2008, 8:37 pm	yeah that must have been a bit of work especially to come right on the tail of the last big update. must quicker than i would have expected. :o)
Marrkos Posted Aug 30, 2008, 8:45 pm	*sam* said: ·    Slightly reduced height of car manage panel. I will be discussing with desolatordan whether we can squash the whole thing substantially more, as several players have requested. Possible points of discussion: - Reduce the scale of the entire window.  Not sure if that's what you meant by 'squash the whole thing'. - Entertain the idea of orienting the vehicle horizontally (previous layout), rather then vertically (current layout).  Combined with a reduction of scale, this would free up more of the game window. Thanks for the quick usability tweaks!
Valiance Posted Aug 30, 2008, 8:55 pm	OK, finally got to have a look and here are my comments. The GUI itself is cleaner and neater and yet somehow it has managed to make the overall game seem much more overpowering. I was scared at how complicated the game was, and I know what I'm doing. Specific issues: [Moved to4Saken's GUI thread.
Alocalypse Posted Aug 30, 2008, 9:22 pm	Quote: 6) The manage tab is way too intrusive. I think the size of the armour blocks is too big. I expect that I will grow to love the weapons images, but do they really need to be that big? I love the size of the Inspect box - can we get the manage box down to that size? Or at least nearer to it? The picture of my car is lovely, but it's actually bigger and more dominating than the action, which seems wrong to me It'd be impossible to scale it down to the inspect box size because you need room to display the weapons and not make them too small so they're easy to click on when needed.
*sam* Posted Aug 30, 2008, 10:46 pm	Quote: yeah that must have been a bit of work especially to come right on the tail of the last big update. must quicker than i would have expected. ) Actually not as much work as fixing the game server crashes and the cars getting stuck on the starting line. Those two things had me pretty stressed (especially as they were stopping me from making these important changes to the new GUI).
Ivan Kerensky Posted Sep 2, 2008, 6:16 am	After a bit I am starting to get used and very like the new interface. I still notice the windows is a bit long to open with the animation and it would be nice to have the cargo on the same side than the car. There is no real need to have an extra window for passenger, or if we could have a small list avaliable in the car manage windows to give them the only 2 order we need them ( exit and take the wheel ), we can still open the side slide for info on them. I noticed that the engine HP bar on the moose isn't aligned with the engine pic.
Valiance Posted Sep 2, 2008, 9:45 am	Comment on characters: I like the personalisation, but as Ivan says, it is not yet entirely necessary. I would suggest some of the following to make it more useful: 1) Give them more options. I would specifically suggest reloading handweapons (I often get out, shoot, then get back in again, but can't reload) and perhaps jettisoning cargo 2) THere appears to be a bug that only 6 characters show up. I had 7 in my carrier van, and the last guy didn't appear, although he did appear in the list of people to assign to the guns 3) There is lots of space underneath, which I imagine is for "stunned", bleeding etc. I would suggest that, since we still have the pop-ups full of information, the characters should be stacked two high, and the critical information (bleeding, stunned) should be shown by icons. In these circumstances, I don't think that it matters if the entire portrait is obscured by icons. 4) I can no longer tell whether a character is sitting on the left or right. This is a big problem for me: I will often decide on whether to exit a ped depending on whether the vehicle is between him and the enemy or not - and I can't tell this any more.
*jimmylogan* Posted Sep 2, 2008, 12:17 pm	Valiance said: 4) I can no longer tell whether a character is sitting on the left or right. This is a big problem for me: I will often decide on whether to exit a ped depending on whether the vehicle is between him and the enemy or not - and I can't tell this any more. Gotta 2nd this one Sam... Yesterday I was scouting and decided to hijack a Punisher that the two occupants had fled. I got my box van between a demo'd but still firing car & the Punisher, then exited the gunner I *thought* was on the correct side. He was not hurt, as I was able to get him around and move the van at the same time, but it didn't work as expected. :-) JL
Ivan Kerensky Posted Sep 2, 2008, 12:39 pm	BTW, shouldnt Van, Lands, Apache and such vehicule crew be given a choice of wich side to exit ? except the driver and front gunner of course... Did you check if the weapon they are using impact on the side they exit ?
*jimmylogan* Posted Sep 2, 2008, 1:03 pm	Ivan Kerensky said: BTW, shouldnt Van, Lands, Apache and such vehicule crew be given a choice of wich side to exit ? except the driver and front gunner of course... Never assumed it before. I thought they were in "seats" and would have to "climb over" to get out on an opposite side. :-) Quote: Did you check if the weapon they are using impact on the side they exit ? Makes no difference. Any person can control any gun. JL
Rip van Rental Posted Sep 3, 2008, 4:54 pm	Have you ever considered making the "Steering Wheel" and th "Speedometer" concentric? In most (Real World) road vehicles, you can see the speedo through the steering wheel, so it should look OK, especially with the latest graphic style which is excellent. It would save some space on the GUI, and as it could be more 'square', it would suit fans of both the horizontal and vertical layout. Is it feasible, or would it make the selection of speed and direction with the mouse pointer too complicated? Cheers.
*Lugal* Posted Sep 3, 2008, 5:24 pm	Rip van Rental said: Have you ever considered making the "Steering Wheel" and th "Speedometer" concentric? In most (Real World) road vehicles, you can see the speedo through the steering wheel, so it should look OK, especially with the latest graphic style which is excellent. It would save some space on the GUI, and as it could be more 'square', it would suit fans of both the horizontal and vertical layout. Is it feasible, or would it make the selection of speed and direction with the mouse pointer too complicated? That's so simply clever it's frustrating. The only downside to that could be that it would be easier to miss-click one when you mean the other, but I use the keyboard instead anyway.
*sam* Posted Sep 3, 2008, 5:26 pm	The next patch will actually put the characters back into the main manage GUI, on the car itself. The Occupants tab will be available as away of getting more detail
*Zothen* Posted Sep 3, 2008, 5:44 pm	Sorry if its already mentioned (just a short stop) but the manage tab messes up when you hit M while the animation is playing. And its too slow.
*sam* Posted Sep 3, 2008, 7:23 pm	There's a Preference to remove the anim altogether Zothen. But yeah, it should probably speed up even when you are using it.
*Zothen* Posted Sep 3, 2008, 7:54 pm	Yes, Sam, ive seen it, but I also like the anims