I really really dislike it.. When you de-select something or otherwise click to preform NO action, such as canceling a building about to be placed or right clicking to avoid using a skill, you as a player and user expects there to be NO visual feedback from that. Because that's exactly in line with what you are trying to do, you're trying to avoid preforming an action. This is the first rts i've seen that goes against that, and actually provides a unique visual feedback (the yellow de-select effect) when the player tries to cancel or abort or deselect something. I'll be honest it confused me at first, and even now i always hate seeing it. It makes no sense to have it because it makes it seem as if you give an order, when in reality you're trying to NOT give any order. It clutters the screen and provides uneccessary conflicting feedback. Yellow is generally a "danger, aware" color in rts games, certainly not suitable for something as trivial as a player deselecting units. Tied to this is the unit sound when an order is cancelled or can't be completed, that sound almost sounds like if your unit is getting under attack. Far too obvious and "HELP ME". I've seen casters on youtube constantly asking "Where am i being attacked??!" when it was just that sound effect of an engineer not being able to build on a wreck, and cancelling the order queue for example. Especially if someone is playing on youtube.
Yellow is generally a "danger, aware" color in real life. But i cant come up with a single example of yellow being used as such in a rts game...
I never really thought of it too much, but this is a good point. Whenever i deselect anything i go back and make sure its not moving to where i deselected. Removing this would be something that i would be happy with, as it does confuse me.
Only give feedback when feedback is due. If I click in empty space, when nothing is supposed to happen (ala. no orders were given) and I see that little flashy effect I do a small mental freakout and wonder what the hell have I told something to do.
I always thought this yellow feedback thing was just an annoying bug because, you know, it's the Beta and there are lots of details to be fixed. But if it was actually intented to be that way, gosh, Uber, you really need to get fresh eyes on the UI because it will kill your game and efforts if you don't review it deep.
If it's already written down on the office whiteboard with the list of things to fix before release then all is well - we just need to be patient. If it's not on that list, then someone please pick up a sharpy and get writing.
Uber has built a rough working GUI. It has not even had a first pass for refinement. I agree that a broken GUI can potentially kill and amazing game, but the upside is that it is entirely still up for review As a "fan"/backer, I want this game to kick some serious ***. I know the GUI needs a lot of work and I'm collecting all your features suggestions here: Unofficial "Official" GUI Discussion Thread https://forums.uberent.com/threads/unofficial-official-gui-discussion-thread.52055/ Uber has yet to seriously engage us fans on the GUI. I think Uber is still engineering the framework for this game which is entirely ok. I just hope it does come, and when it comes, they build it bigger, smarter and better than Forged Alliance.
I'm sure they will remove it, what is worry me is that they've made it in the first place, and probably tested it internally and decided to keep that commit. Same for the ctrl-n.
I wouldn't worry too much. We don't know why it was added in the first place. Maybe it was added as a game design decision of some sort, but for all we know maybe it was added just to have confirmation of an input for testing purposes and left in. It's beta, a lot is still rough and there as a first pass, for testing purposes or just to get something in there to get it done planning to come back and clean it up later. For the record, I agree it's odd. It doesn't bother me like a lot of others, but all things being equal I think it should be gone too. Certainly the first few times I saw it I looked to see just what my unit was actually doing.
I'm not worried that it'll get fixed. The deselect being there in the first place doesn't worry me. Maybe just some old code they had lying around.
