Author Topic: Some ideas for more user friendly features  (Read 8568 times)

Nemnadogg

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Some ideas for more user friendly features
« on: March 11, 2016, 10:00:22 pm »
It would be really great if this game was a bit more user friendly. Sure there are shortcut keys to a bunch of stuff, but a menu option outside of the inventory would really be heavenly. Maybe some labels for the materials. A bit of an in-game manual/blueprint book. It just seems like this game was made for people who have experience with it already, and that just doesn't make sense.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great game, but as a casual gamer I want something I can just jump into and lose a few hours with. Going between the game and the manual is really immersion breaking, so some in-game instructions would be great enough that I could completely look past any other flaws.

Also I'm confused about something. The manual says that blackrock green can be found in the blue flat-zone, yet there is an entire zone made up of green. Is that just outdated information, or am I misinterpreting here?

Enigma

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Re: Some ideas for more user friendly features
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2016, 11:13:32 am »
It would be really great if this game was a bit more user friendly. Sure there are shortcut keys to a bunch of stuff, but a menu option outside of the inventory would really be heavenly. Maybe some labels for the materials. A bit of an in-game manual/blueprint book. It just seems like this game was made for people who have experience with it already, and that just doesn't make sense.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great game, but as a casual gamer I want something I can just jump into and lose a few hours with. Going between the game and the manual is really immersion breaking, so some in-game instructions would be great enough that I could completely look past any other flaws.

Also I'm confused about something. The manual says that blackrock green can be found in the blue flat-zone, yet there is an entire zone made up of green. Is that just outdated information, or am I misinterpreting here?

Hi Nemnadogg, thanks for your very good suggestions.

Yes, as you guessed well, the starting Blackvoxel's primary target are regular players rather than casual gamers.

With this kind of game it's not easy to start directly with casual users in mind. Making complicated concepts accessible is possible, but unless you have important resources, it always takes time.

But as a long term project, we are working to make the game gradually more and more suitable for less experienced players.

What we are planning in the future to make beginners life easier is to make ingame tutorials and game missions with progressive learning goals. These features will break the difficulty to understand the game and it's goals.

About making the game manual "in game", that's a good idea that was already suggested by some users.
Unfortunately, the cost in development time for this feature would be huge. That explains why in games manuals are so uncommon in video games.
But we hope that maybe a day will come where more users will support free video games and we'll be able to get resource to make such kind of feature.

At this time Blackvoxel goes already further than many games in providing direct connection between game and manual. Just press "F1" key while pointing a voxel and it will launch directly your web browser at the relevant page about this particular voxel. We suggest you to use windowed mode as it will help to make transition between game and your browser more "friendly".

Yes, the manual said Blackrock green voxels can be found in the blue flat zone... and that's true (it's underground).  But this information is intended only as a clue where to find it, not as a list of all the place you'll find Blackrock green. Maybe we should say it's not the only place you can find it.

We wish you a good game...

The Blackvoxel Team