Topic

Beta Feedback: "Can't read the streetsigns! My mini-map is in the way!"

This one's for the devs. I'm not sure whether it belongs here or in the Bugs subforum; it's not a programmatic bug so much as it is, I think, a flaw in the game's information design.

So, up your left corner of the screen, you've got dialog -- semi-opaque dark-gray boxes with words in them. Up your right corner of the screen, you've got your mini-map and any condition indicators (meditation cooldown, overwhelmed by ancestral nostalgia, etc) and possibly your "Set Destination" navigation aid arrow.

And then you have elements of an area which will only ever show up beneath these things, because they are positioned at the extreme ends of the sidescroll. You can't walk farther to the right or left to bring them closer to the middle of the screen, so they are always obscured by these informational elements described above.

It's a common problem with street signs. I often can't use my mouse to activate and choose between them, because they are always beneath permanent or semi-permanent informational elements. Even on the left -- the messages displayed there take the mouse focus, though heaven only knows why they're clickable. (My mouse icon actually changes from an arrow to a text cursor. Why? Am I supposed to be able to highlight and copy text there?)

That's not a big deal in and of itself; I can use my keyboard to activate the sign and choose which, if there are several, I want to go to. BUT I can't read the darn signs, because there's this MAP in the way! Sometimes I can't even see whether there's two or three signs to choose from, there's so much stuff obscuring the view! Sometimes I have had to expand the minimap and set the next area as my destination, just so I'd have the navigation arrow to click on and get me to the right connecting area.

This is a worse problem on the right edge, where the elements are permanent or semi-permanent. On the left, eventually the messages will fade -- though sometimes I'm in a hurry because I need to finish some task before some status condition elapses, making waiting impractical.

Even more frustrating is when the obscured item is a tree. When there are messages in the upper lefthand corner, the mouse clicks on them instead of on the little broken-hearted "Pet me!" speech bubble. Again, I have to wait for the messages to fade on the left -- or I'm sh!t-outta-luck on the right.

I hope I'm doing an adequate job explaining this!

My suggestions for a possible fix would be to give us the option to temporarily hide the mini-map, and give us the option to *not* have messages show up in the upper left (they're always duplicated in Local Chat). Another idea I have would be a key that simply toggles the visibility of those icons -- tab, maybe, or the tilde key (~). You'd hold it down and all those informational elements would vanish or become extremely see-through and "transparent" to the mouse (so that when you clicked in those areas, you'd click on whatever interactive items were underneath them).

I'd love to hear whether other players have been bothered by this issue, and whether they have any suggestions as to a solution.

Thanks for soliciting our feedback, devs!

Posted 17 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • +1 !!!

    Especially the mini-map street sign problem. I completely agree with what you have said!  It is very annoying to not be able to click on the sign properly to leave.
    Posted 17 months ago by Innie✿, Obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Here! Here! 
    Posted 17 months ago by Joy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The only time I ever really notice this is with a stack of messages on the left while I'm chasing around butterflies in the animal pen at my house. Maybe my resolution's high enough to not experience the UI interfering with street signs?

    +1 though!
    Posted 17 months ago by MX Ghostie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dunno, MXG -- maybe the mini-map isn't completely opaque like I thought, and better graphics than mine would reveal all UI elements to be more transparent? I thought my resolution was pretty state of the art, though.

    And even then there's the problem with clicking. I've got no idea at all while the message stack on the left is clickable. It ought to be completely transparent to the mouse, so that you could click "through" it to the game elements underneath.

    I'm really glad y'all seem to know what I'm talking about. I tie myself in knots trying to describe stuff like this and I never know how it'll come out on the other end. Whew.
    Posted 17 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have also noticed how hard the little map is to interact with and wondered why it hasn't been it has become more of a hindrance than and in the way of all the street signs.  So annoying trying to navigate around it.  Glad you brought this up, really needs to be restructured.
    Posted 17 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • yes, sometimes a rock or tree against the right side of the screen wants to talk to me, and i have to just ignore the poor thing because i know i'm not going to be able to see what it's saying!

    eta: yes, this only happens on vertical streets when closing the navigation window isn't enough to reveal the dialogue
    Posted 17 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Vortexae, I meant that my street signs are low enough in the game window that the minimap (et al. on the right side) never obscures them. Maaaaybe if it was a vertical street, and I had the minimap expanded, and the navigation aid on. (But I never do that.) Usually, with games, the higher your resolution, the less screen real estate is taken up by UI (and the more surrounding area you can see).... I'm not sure how Glitch works in that regard, but I made a leap and assumed perhaps something similar might be at work here, to explain our difference in experience.

    I do like your ideas for options (particularly the UI toggle)! And I completely agree with you about the message stack--there doesn't seem to be any logical reason for it to be clicky.
    Posted 17 months ago by MX Ghostie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think your browser may be helping you here MXG When I changed from Firefox to Chrome I found my glitch window became taller by about half an inch because my Chrome setup doesn't have all those effing toolbars and menus hogging the top of the screen. I discovered my cave had a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling!
    I have a personal grudge against widescreen format computer screens. I hate having limited vertical screen space when the left and right sides of all my browsers have a couple of inches of blank space. 
    Who knows, maybe with tablets becoming "the latest thing" real computer manufacturers will re-explore the virtues of portrait screens? Probably not, they all seem wedded to cinema screen formats.
    But to get down off my hobby horse and back to the topic, I too suffer from some signs being obscured by the map and would like a toggle button or maybe an auto hide for the map - but of course if it came back on screen hover it would just reappear when you're trying to hit your tree! 
    Maybe a temporary solution would be to hide browser toolbars etc while playing the game - if you do that the game playing area does expand.
    Posted 17 months ago by Momo McGlitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I sometimes play Glitch with my browser in fullscreen mode, that helps a bit.
    Posted 17 months ago by Victoria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And for any who may not be aware of it, if you use Chrome just hit F11 for a truly full screen view of the game (or anything else).  A second F11 takes you back to normal.  Much quicker and simpler than hiding various toolbars and such.  Chrome uber alles!
    Posted 17 months ago by Hawkwell Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Weird, but I've never had these problems.  I don't have all those extra browser tool bars though, and I do use Chrome, but even when I was using Firefox, it was no problem.  Also, I do play in Full Screen, so that must help too.  Hope you get it all figured out, 'cause that would drive me batty!  
    Posted 17 months ago by kat65 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sounds like if I turn off things like location bar, bookmarklets, menus, that might buy me enough vertical real-estate to get the street signs out from under the mini-map.

    Unfortunately, it's not just the mini-map but also the status indicators. If I've got Focused Meditation Cooldown AND Overwhelmed by Ancestral Nostalgia AND Teleportation Cooldown AND Hog-tied Piggy Capture Cooldown... Well, you get the idea.

    katlazam: I had precisely that happen to me. A shrine wanted to talk to me, but it was all the way right in a vertical climb cavern and I couldn't read a darn thing it said. All I could do was hit ENTER until the dialogue was over.
    Posted 17 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have the same problem but it's caused by one single thing: screen size. At home I have a wide-screen where everything is miles from anything else, no matter which street I'm on. 
    At work I have a normal screen and only a few streets (vertical ones) give me problems, and then only if i have the ''Overwhelmed by Ancestral Nostalgia and a dozen cooldowns. 
    Lately I'm using a netbook and I have SERIOUS problems. There's no scroll, and even using F11 in order to see my bags, I have an extremely reductive visual. The possibility to close the chat would help no end; it takes up a third of my screen. 
    Posted 17 months ago by Zira Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have Zira's problem... at home, I use a 23" monitor and have no trouble at all with maps, buffs, turn-by-turn directions, etc taking up the top right because the screen is stretched so big that I can easily interact with whatever I need to.  When I play on my netbook, however, it is very difficult to play, even using full screen mode.  I usually turn off turn-by-turn directions and try to memorize the route I'm taking because it takes up so much space on a small screen.  Likewise, the left side announcements can be annoying on a small screen, and like you said, they're replicated in local chat. 
    I do like them, though, when I'm playing on the big screen, because sometimes I'm not quite paying attention to something, or people are bugging local chat so much that it's difficult to see the announcements before they get bumped up by chatter.  But it would be nice to have options that relate to this problem, like the ability to turn announcements on/off, and maybe even move the maps and directional assistance, buffs, etc, to some other part of the screen or turn off their visibility entirely. 
    Posted 17 months ago by Kross, the Empress Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Strange, I don't think I've ever had this problem. My screen isn't that large. Maybe I just have an eagle eye?
    Posted 17 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've had this problem, too, especially with the street signs. Also the chat box is on top of all the names of my groups and friends so that list is useless to me as well. I would like to be able to minimize chat, or at least make the window smaller so I can see the other names. Occasionally, I even wish I could simply turn off chat! When the game opens again, I'll try playing in full screen and see if that alleviates the problems. But really, that isn't the best solution for me, since I prefer to play using windows so I can see other elements on my desktop.
    Posted 17 months ago by Audaria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 Vortexae, yup, I have same problem, much more on the right side. When it gets to me the most is when I'm trying to play a music block for a crab and want a particular one and can't see my choices (the matter of the fact that I shall someday skewer a crab and eat it with butter, stingy little non-badge givers, is a side issue I must deal with:). I really like your toggle solution; seems as if that would be simple (to a non-tech person; mayhaps I'm wrong). 
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd like to see them make the mini-map draggable as in most of the modern MMORPG's so we could set it in our preferred position.

    @Hawkwell the F11 fullscreen works in Firefox as well and Opera iirc,  I haven't had IE connected to the 'Net in so long I really don't know if it does as well.

    ~~ TJ Fuzzybut
    Posted 17 months ago by Thaddeus J Fuzzybut Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Audaria - regarding your chat window being on top of your groups and friends list: is that after you click the arrow expanding that list, or before? (Just in case you don't know! If you look about midway down your chat box area, there should be a left-facing arrow / angle bracket which, when clicked, will expand the area that your groups and friends list are in.)

    It does frustrate me that I can't simply hide Local Chat from time to time.

    @Rascalmom - mmmm, crabs with butter...

    @everyone - looking forward to trying full-screen play when play-test comes back!
    Posted 17 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh hey, any of you know if F11 to expand to full screen will work on a Mac? I mean, duh, I can experiment with it next test, but if someone already know? :) Thanks!
    Posted 17 months ago by RM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Actually I spoke with staff about this problem before. They are aware of the problem and are working on a solution. I might be better to post this under the "Bug" forum instead though. That helps the devs find things like this easier.
    Posted 17 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink