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The PCM GUI: Really!?
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| devnl |
Posted on 26-06-2012 18:01
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Free Agent
Posts: 104
Joined: 25-03-2008
PCM$: 200.00
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Let me start this 100th post by saying one thing in particular: I'm a fan of cycling and a fan of the series of games Cyanide has created. The following rant is not meant to burn the game and its creators to the ground on a personal level, but it is something that I want to get off my chest since PCM 2011, a game which had a worse interface then 2010 had. PCM 2012 has reignited that spark simply because it is even worse. As a matter of fact I'm reinstalling 2K11 as we speak to play that with the 2012 DB.
But what's so bad about 2012 you might ask yourself. Well, let me show you with some screenshots of some screens from the game.
Let's just take the basic main screen for example. The orientation of this screen used to be horizontal. Messages on the left, single message details on the right. Apparently, someone decided that wasn't going to work and opted for this approach, which makes no sense. More then half of the top part is empty space being wasted. The same goes for the bottom half where the actual message doesn't even take up half of the width. One might argue that my resolution is rather high, but it really is not that much of an exotic resolution. You're wasting useless white space for actual information (the message) this way. The message should be on the right, headlines on the left. Both items are vertically oriented components, and therefore it would make sense to put them next to eachother instead of below one another.
I cannot imagine there being a single person who thinks the screen on the top is the better one of these two. In the older versions you have the nicely boxed areas of information that belongs together. You can clearly see the seperate areas on the screen and the information has enough room between it to give it some "breathing room".
In the newer versions, this screen has undergone some seriously messed up plastic surgery. It has basically ended up being one big pile of text on a gray background with absolutely no clear indication of the seperate areas of information and no breathing space, making it one big messy block of info. It also pops up in some sort of overlay where you can see the information behind it as well, making it even messier.
Apparently, things weren't messed up enough because the training screen has undergone some changes too. Whoever came up with the idea to grab some random icons from the internet and put those on the map should really be slapped in the face. This screen used to just have a map with colored dots and a legend of what each colored dot meant. Now it's evolved into a mix of icons that aren't even in the same graphical style and tell you absolutely nothing on first glance. That's why the dots worked, you know exactly before you clicked it what you would get. These icons are just completely random. Note that this screen does not pop up in a seperate screen, nice consistency there.
When I first started the game, this screen popped up in my face. Besides the fact that it's absolutely huge for the amount of content it contains, it also lacks any kind of indication on what I should be doing with this screen. A description of what the fields mean and what I should be filling in. It took me a few minutes to figure out that "Spelersleutel" was actually just the game serial (which I had put in minutes before during installation and couldn't image the game needing it again).
It might come across as nitpicking from my side, but there's not a screen in the game that I think has reached its maximum potential. There's so much room for improvement it just comes across as amateur work, not something created by a team of guys that have had more then enough experience with their gamefranchise over the last few years. Making an interface for a management game is no rocket science, just a single look at e.g. the Football Manager series by Sports Interactive shows you what it SHOULD/COULD look like. If Cyanide changed interface designer between 2010 and 2011 I would seriously consider rehiring the guy from 2010. I'm even considering making one, free of charge.
A game is all about how you flow through it and how it informs you of everything that's going on. The 2012 edition just pushes me away instead of drawing me in. I for one cannot be bothered to play 2012 anymore and have, as I'm drawing to a close in this rant, just finished re-installing 2011.
Edited by devnl on 26-06-2012 19:02
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| R_Funk |
Posted on 26-06-2012 18:48
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Stagiare
Posts: 186
Joined: 12-07-2009
PCM$: 200.00
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Had the same feeling when i first started the game. I changed resolution compared with PCM2011 and thought it had to do with that. But the user interface is definitely not good.
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| jseadog1 |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:13
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Grand Tour Champion
Posts: 9595
Joined: 18-07-2010
PCM$: 13552.00
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Angry much 
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PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:17
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World Champion
Posts: 12986
Joined: 20-05-2009
PCM$: 530.00
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The mailbox is terrible, everything else I can get used to
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 22-11-2024 00:09
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Bot Agent
Posts: Countless
Joined: 23.11.09
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| andy222c |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:27
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Sprinter
Posts: 1537
Joined: 23-05-2009
PCM$: 200.00
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Haven't got the game yet, but still think it looks like a quite good interface.
Of course there are some anoying graphical elements in the interface as always, but in fact nothing which scares me off and makes me think it's a bad interface.
btw. if you wanna make clear visible boxes around e.c. the stats screen and etc., you can go into graphical options and make the lines and contrast more visible. |
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| issoisso |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:27
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 22918
Joined: 08-02-2007
PCM$: 200.00
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I agree, the new interface is awful. Clearly they didn't do a usability study.
It wastes tons of space and information is either hard to find or plain unavailable.
The preceding post is ISSO 9001 certified
"I love him, I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense" - Bradley Wiggins on Lance Armstrong
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| T-Photon |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:28
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Domestique
Posts: 437
Joined: 13-02-2007
PCM$: 200.00
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@devnl: you are making some good points about the user interface, remind me to hire you when designing the GUI for my next game 
Follow our development team:
https://darkshiftstudios.com/
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| jsh312mufc |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:30
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Breakaway Specialist
Posts: 794
Joined: 05-02-2012
PCM$: 300.00
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Doesn't look too bad. haven't got it myself yet, but i dont really think that's a reason not to |
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| Faca |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:45
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Under 23
Posts: 52
Joined: 19-09-2007
PCM$: 200.00
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I myself work as a graphic designer, having done a lot of ui's for iphone/ipad and web apps. This is for me a clear case of "We don't need to hire a designer/ui-expert. Let the developers "design" it as they develop it.  |
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| Alakagom |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:59
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World Champion
Posts: 10891
Joined: 19-11-2010
PCM$: 200.00
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Gotta agree on this. They worked on this GUI as their main feature - and they didn't really do best on it.
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| VincentBlaak |
Posted on 26-06-2012 19:59
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Amateur
Posts: 2
Joined: 06-04-2010
PCM$: 200.00
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I agree, every fucking 12 year-old could have made a better PCM 2012 building from the 2011 version
and about the last screen, it took me like ten minutes to find out what the @$@#! I was supposed to fill in at the "adres bewerken" field. That means "edit adress" in english how the @$@#! am I supposed to know that I have to fill in my email there. OK if that was the only translational fail but sadly it isn't.
Edited by VincentBlaak on 26-06-2012 20:04
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| Schleck96 |
Posted on 26-06-2012 20:02
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Protected Rider
Posts: 1498
Joined: 10-08-2010
PCM$: 200.00
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This year's GUI sucks it's true. |
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 26-06-2012 21:51
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Tour de France Champion
Posts: 16429
Joined: 27-07-2011
PCM$: 10438.70
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It looks horrible. Especially the mailbox. Whose bright idea was it to waste production time on his? "If it ain't broke don't fix it." Same with online. They really made no improvements. They went back to the flashy, colorful appealing design that they got rid of earlier for the better. They want it to look more "catch your eye", they don't care about the workability. I could have done this. And I haven't done a day of designing in my life.
My ratings:
The mailbox = atrocious. Unwaranted. W T F
Player profile = Not good but dealable.
Training = Usually don't use it but just confusing as hell. Where are the sprinting icons? And cobbles? I can't tell.
Activation = Definetley more explanation needed.
Anyone thinking of making a little petition? It won't do anyhing to Cyanide, but it could draw out others feelngs and just put the point out thre.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| devnl |
Posted on 27-06-2012 11:46
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Free Agent
Posts: 104
Joined: 25-03-2008
PCM$: 200.00
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To be honest, I actually DO like the 3D-game interface except for a few minor things. One of them being that the tabs on the right of the screen don't stay expanded. They collapse rather quickly, which makes it quite annoying, especially if you use the fast forward controls a lot. Also, I don't like the new rider status icons on the left. These used to be blue, which gave a nice contrast with the rider info block. You could see in a single glance what every rider's task was. In the new version, they made it black, together with the background of the rider box. Now it blends in and makes it quite hard to quickly distinguish who's doing what.
Edited by devnl on 27-06-2012 11:46
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