Cantr II Discussion Forum

Whelp, I resubscribed. Now waiting for PD to approve. The introduction tutorial is fantastic, it puts the game in a great place to introduce lots of players.

On the design upgrade... The community has been fearful of changing the design since the inception of Cantr. To make the problem more complex, no one person seems to have product stewardship or ownership over it - there's a programmer department but no design department.

While it's nice to have that almost MUD-like style, it might end up being what kills Cantr.

Cantr isn't just an RP game, it's also a society simulator. I play for both aspects.

Oh, and the argument that changing the web design would ruin RP is sort of defenseless. It's like saying you can't play Dungeons and Dragons because the host repainted their walls or got new furniture, and it's distracting.

If it makes it physically difficult to do anything with my characters from my phone, then yeah it would sort of ruin RP for me, or at least ensure I was able to play much less often.

I honestly don't see any problem with the UI as it is, or at least I've never seen a suggestion for anything better. It's simple and keeps the actual RP front and center where it belongs.

As for the colors, the green and gold and white all meshes well together, it's easy on the eyes, been around forever, and I see no reason to change it just for the sake of changing things.

*Wiro wrote:The issue with your design (if I may be blunt) is that you re-ordered the elements. You did a fantastic job on the artwork and then proceed to change things, like the position of menu buttons, that are just fine. I'd also reconsider the chatbox design. It's not very immersive and encourages chatting rather than roleplaying. I also think it isn't big enough. I'm not blind though and can easily say that it's a great design. I love how you got rid of all the toxic colours that have no place being so dominant on the screen (yes, I'm referring to green).

If you can make it happen, you should talk to Greek. It just takes one or two motivated people to get things changed in the game.

Yeah, great idea! Let's skip the normal channels and head right on to GreeK. Way to get things done?

Marian wrote:I see no reason to change it just for the sake of changing things.

To play devil's advocate (as I'm not necessarily for changing the design/color), the argument to change it comes from a position of marketing. New players can be turned off by having a 10 year old design and UI. A complete refresh aside, there is plenty to be done to improve the UX (user experience), such as putting the Unsubscribe X button away in some Account Settings page (does it really need to be exposed all the time?).

Plenty can be done from a UX perspective, but I agree that the argument for changing it for the sake of it is a weak one.

There would need to be a strong case for changing the whole design (i.e., new players report that they stopped playing due to the dated design), but I think the case is already there to improve the UX/UI.

Okay, so that design stayed way too far in the past! The actual need is for a face-lift, but to stay responsive and scalable for mobiless. All that's needed is maybe logo and a good CSS base to work on, and the rest can be done entirely with stylesheets. There can even be a mobile theme to make buttons and text bigger, etc, easily.

Plus maybe moving the location of a couple of bits... But that's it. I'll have another go when I get chance!

I think something more minimal would suit cantr better. Just threw this together, it's not a proposal just an idea of how you could do it.

Well hello, old troll *grin*

Thanks Cookie. I now feel well and truly oldskool.

But I like that a style lot more. Though I doubt people will go that minimal. In short, we can't change it too much.

She may have been referring to me. I remember you Rebma! I wish I remembered my old Forum account. Maybe someone can remind me... ha.

Cookie, that design is good. It's mobile friendly, with big thumb-friendly buttons and it's clear what each icon does.

returner wrote:It's mobile friendly...and it's clear what each icon does.

Highly debatable.

One thing I would change about the player page is I would move messages to another page and have a highly visible icon appear when you have new messages, something as visible as Facebook icons so you feel inclined to click on it. I don't usually delete the messages after reading but on a cellphone, it takes a long time to scroll past them. I think I would also increase the line spacing because you need to scroll way in to make sure you click on the right icon. Another option would be to make the icons larger in a mobile version and have the location and project information appear beneath the character name instead of on the same row.

Cookie's design is very arousing. Please!?

The symbols are very unintuitive to me (I've got four of them figured I think?) but I manage with the existing ones (the current 'drag' and 'attack' on people are no more intuitive than these) so I think Cookie's is really nice design. I love the colours.

I'd say I don't like pale text on a dark background but again, that's how things are already.

I would increase the contrast. That text is really hard to read.