Guild of Writers

I see a number of posts about the KI so I thought it'd be worth trying to centralize it all.

Bugs:
- scroll issues: 1) Chat area suddenly scrolling back to the top for some reason 2) The player list also scrolling back to the top whenever someone links in/out etc..
Those bugs have plagued the game for litterally years under various incarnations, it's be high time for them to be flagged as 'type A bugs' and die a horrible death.
- general unresponsiveness: I'm not talking about those really busy game session with dozens of people connected slowing down the server and the client; I'm talking about *general* client-side GUI unresponsiveness. Scrolling through a list or browsing through the interface takes forever (much like in the Nexus interface BTW, coincidence?). Even when the players list doesn't suddenly scroll back to the top scrolling all the way down to click a name is a real patience test.
- Lack of mouse wheel scroll (both for the chat area, the player lists or throughout the ki) Although not technically a bug I always found that lacking as that'd be a great navigation help.
- No support for internationnal keyboards layouts: Not being able to type such basic punctuations mark as ? ! or even ( ) on non-qwerty keyboards is a serious problem, and unfortunately it concerns a large number of people. (And I'm not even talking about language specific things such as accents and specific punctuation marks).

Design issues:
There are probably some design issues (both visually and functionnally) but to me that's more of a personal perspective and taste. Some would like a return to the old beta Ki of which we have only a handfull screenshots.
A complete redesign/regorganization of the KI might be interesting to do, although difficult.

A couple things worth adding though:
- Tooltips: KI icons/buttons are often a bit baffling for the newcomers (and even occasionnaly for the old timers). Some good old tooltips would be useful (although a bit OOC to some people)
- In game documentation: There's been some very nice documentation published (by Cyan, the GoG, and others) maybe it'd be possible to integrate some in the game itself. So far suggestions include putting some basic documentation in various places (Cleft/Shaft/Hoods etc) along the same line maybe some more complete documentation could be put in the KI itself. A small [?] button in the corner or something like that.

Other wilder ideas:
- IRC linking: ability to bridge IRC and Uru chat. An often requested thing.
- Web linking: ability to display or link to web pages or files.
- Full HTML support: (not too sure about that one)
- Video integration: Video capture/display on top of regular screenshots.. (coupled with web integration)
- Return of the webcam: That thing was fun way back.

That's what I can remember so far, feel free to add to the thread. Surely there's plenty more to come in the next days and weeks.

Just as a general response to this thread, I think if you're going to tackle the KI, then it would be best if you started over from scratch. New GUI, new everything. Meaning: Delete xKI.py and start over.

I will advise anyone (or any group) wanting to do this that the KI is central to Uru, and many things other than the KI interface depend on it, so some things will obviously need to be backported. I'm not going to get into the spiderweb-ness of the Python code since D'Lanor has already informed you guys of that . You will also find that there is some C++ code relating to the KI... I feel that this will have to be updated to some degree (this is where I think part of the problem with international keyboards lie).

It would be nice if the KI used unicode objects rather than strings.

Can we just update Uru to Python 3.0? >.>

Well, I guess I'm the art guy. I don't know much about the issues related to functionality, but I know it needs some serious improvement. Strictly artistically speaking, I love both the more antiquated/D'ni look of the old one and its layout as well - it's more centralized and more in line with the design of the KI object itself.

But what do I know, I'm the "what does it look like" guy.

If we redo this, where the symbols for the polar coordinates are, how would we do the KI marker blips that are around the circumference?

I don't particularly want to drastically change this design, but it it does bear mentioning?

I see a lot of calls for the improving of the KI without looking at it from an IC perspective.

The D'ni continued to improve the KI model, the device became smaller and smaller, and you're saying the next model should be the old version? Thats like apple saying the next iMac will be the computer they first built all those years ago, the bing chunky thing.

The actual device is pretty sound, there is but one thing I would add (which is a specific area you have to click to move the KI, I got so damn tired of scrolling through friends lists on the side and having the KI randomly move to the other side of the screen), what needs improving is the GUI of it (by GUI I mean part that opens up and allows you to manage data).

From an IC perspective, the explorers, and for that matter DRC, don't have the technology to create new iterations of the KI. We just use the last version created and adapt the software to suit our needs. I think the tool tips idea is possible from an IC perspective as the KI is a holographic device.

Something I think needs to be updated, while not part of the KI itself, is the addition of the holo-display to the avatar animation. I just think you should see something other than a user tapping on their tiny KI.

We need highlight-able regions. So basically you click on an element (somewhere other than the buttons in the element) and it gets a little brighter. Then you can use the scroll-wheel or arrow keys to control drop-boxes, lists, etc.

greendragoon wrote:From an IC perspective, the explorers, and for that matter DRC, don't have the technology to create new iterations of the KI. We just use the last version created and adapt the software to suit our needs. I think the tool tips idea is possible from an IC perspective as the KI is a holographic device.

Something I think needs to be updated, while not part of the KI itself, is the addition of the holo-display to the avatar animation. I just think you should see something other than a user tapping on their tiny KI.

No that would be an Explorer IC perspective, not a D'ni IC perspective.

The KI has to have been modified in some way for the display language not to be in D'ni script this holds true for the Nexus as well. There has to be a point where we have a translation matrix unless we say that this is an integral part of the KI.

In an attempt to explain this in the story extension I wrote for UU (It ran for a short time on H'uru shard) I had the KI machine read the mind of the applicant and map to their brain making the perceived head up display in their own language. The DRC don't explain this but I put this down to the fact that the DRC are crap when it comes to dealing with the explorers.

Have you ever bought a new digital watch or a calculator and been able to figure out ALL the functions on the first day. If you did it was either

A) a very simple watch
B) a very simple calculator
C) You still have not worked out all the functions just your too simple to realise

Storyline goes gifted programmer hacks KI issuing machine and has it issue an upgraded KI I have a further explanation but you will have to wait till I get my extended storyline embedded in an age.

Tweek wrote:I see a lot of calls for the improving of the KI without looking at it from an IC perspective.

The D'ni continued to improve the KI model, the device became smaller and smaller, and you're saying the next model should be the old version? Thats like apple saying the next iMac will be the computer they first built all those years ago, the bing chunky thing.

The actual device is pretty sound, there is but one thing I would add (which is a specific area you have to click to move the KI, I got so damn tired of scrolling through friends lists on the side and having the KI randomly move to the other side of the screen), what needs improving is the GUI of it (by GUI I mean part that opens up and allows you to manage data).

From my perspective, when I first started the game, I spent 2 full days figuring out the darn device, thanks to the patience of the Guild of Greeters back in 2003 I think, and while I keep thinking that this is wrist watch like, the current model is clunky with 3 big buttons for which most the time I am sure people just don't use 2 of them )the third opens up the Big KI.

When the Big KI is opened it is a holographic device



The above pic shows that on the original Big KI that it has the symbols of the imager were used to at the top and bottom, makes it feel like its a holographic device.

Lastly IC, we have only seen the current model, so whose to say that the original design wouldn't be the new iteration of the device, if the majority of us who weren't the first beta all those years ago, never got to see or use the old design

At the very least the KI GPS coordinate tab should always appear even if you havn't upgraded the KI to level 2