assembly Lines feedback

claxo on 2009/02/12 14:52 of Greg Ewing

Forgivme Greg, if this feedback is too much long.
And, I fear the wording can feel too pushy, but thats not the intention. Blame this to my low english skills.

Theres a lot that the game does, but I dont get engaged.
The basic problem is the unclarity factor, at various levels:

top level: What is the game about ?
The readme.txt gives a description for a 'Assembly Lines: The Engineer'; the first look at the game is more like 'Assembly Lines: The Manufacturing Tycoon'.
Decide what, and put the relevant description in a intro screen.

second level: ui design
The current design has too much top level elements, and probably too much info at all.
Make the ui design show the conceptual hierarquies involved, make it hint a reasonable workflow.

By example, if going with 'the engineer' variant:
-- begins design --
 The game consist of fulfilling a series of orders from the company management.

 Example orders: design an assembly line for a new product, 
 adjust existing Assembly line to product upgrade,
 adjust product volume,
 adjust to custom batch

 All the company, financials and product sales ui elements dissapear.
 
 Left Pane:
    projects pool : button list, each representing a job to be done.
                    Pressing a button will select the project in the project area.
                    Each button hints about completion ( mark or color ).
                    The world model adds or deletes projects.
    history button: will pop up an scrollable history for the 'news channel' ( new
                    technolgies announcements, promotions, bonus, help hints ) 
    save,load, time flow buttons.

 Right Pane (project area):
    Top Pane (Collapsabile Area Control): job - task description
    Medium pane: basically like the current factory screen, empty if the job
                 is 'new design', loaded with the base design for a 'modification order'.
                 Added a 'commit button',
                 added a mark to the 'last machine selected' button that hints it will expand
                 all the buttons with tool tips
    Bottom Pane:
       Left Pane: Product Spec ( assembled product and pieces, scrollable bitmap array )
       Right Pane: Inspection Tool (drag a piece from the product spec pane and one from
                                    the assembly line to compare )
              Compare area
              Adjust position buttons ( to control offset of one of the pieces )
              Clear button.

 Real state is under pressure here, the best probably is breaking the medium 
 pane ( factory) in left pane ( scrollable area, the factory map) and 
 right pane ( the toolbar). As an alternative, or aditionally, the bottom pane
 can be made collapsabile.

The current top level Machines windows must disappear. 
In the 'last machine selected pop up window' add text to each bitmap.

The current top level Inspection windows disapears, ( inspection now is
into the bottom pane)

The notification channel will pop up a window with the last new.

-- ends design --

Note: in the variant 'Assembly Lines: The Manufacturer Tycoon', one could think as the player fulfilling two roles: CEO and Enginer. To acomodate this, the left pane can be tabbed, with tabs CEO and ENG. While selecting the ENG tab, you see the previusly designed interfase, selecting CEO must show a right pane designed for the CEO tasks)

third level:
tmove content from the manual to the apropiate controls ( tooltips, news channel, help's buttons if any. )

fourth level:
Examine player activities from a new player point of view. Asume it will not read the manual. Detect problem points and revamp.
Problem examples in the factory, and posible solutions ( assuming the design is like outlined )
  • Machines orientation is not evident while moving (show an alphaed machine at the mouse position)
  • The rotation control is not intuitive. ( use mouse wheel and or add the item 'rotation' to the 'configure part' pop up window, )
  • align with other machines is not evident ( incorporate the apropiate conveyor parts to each machine )
  • parts flow can be not inmediate ( incorporate the apropiate conveyor parts)
  • While editing a factory, theres much mouse displacement from the factory map to the toolbar. Also, the need to select 'add' before clicking into the map area, or 'delete' or 'move' is a) not near the way other software works b) too tiresome. I sugest to aproach the behavoir of vector art editors ( Corel, Inkscape ) like: 
     . rclick over a machine brings up the configure or properties pop-up window
 . use mouse drag to move machines
 . lclick into the 'machine selection pop up miniwindows' adds the machine to the map
 . Eliminate the '+', 'move', 'configure' buttons. Change the icon for delete to trashcan
 or eraser (behaving as del key). key 'Del' would erase the current selected machine
 . eliminate the inspection icon. Inspection will be done by draging the product part
 to the inspection pane ( or selecting the product part and lclicking in the inspection
 pane )
    • five-th :): after al the activities are streamlined, identify wich remains not clear. Add help elements to clarify those.
    Examples:
    the inspection pane can have a 'question mark minibutton', pushing it will pop up the hint 'drag here a part from the assembly line an one from the product spec pane to compare'.
    At entering a new game, send the 'news element' 'Congrats, you are working now for xxxlll company and have assigned a project. Select a project by clicking one of the Current projects buttons. When you are done with the project, commit it'