Greetings capsuleers. Team Pirate Unicorns, a relatively new team with a strong focus on the new player experience (NPE), is here to talk about some new foundational contextual UI work that has been released on Tranquility today – new and improved tooltips.

Now, tooltips are a small but very important first step in radically overhauling and improving the experience for new players and those playing at all levels of EVE Online. This is because Pirate Unicorns believes that a strong and clear user experience underpinning the game as a whole, and useful to all, makes it much easier to provide an accessible new player experience.

The first piece in our new approach to the NPE is therefore to provide a much richer and wider range of contextual information, with one well-established means for this being tooltips. In today's release we have added new tooltips to a range of UI areas, replacing existing “hint”-style tooltips, and expanding the information available.

The areas covered by this first phase of tooltips are as follows:

• NeoCom sidebar buttons
• Character Sheet sidebar buttons (also new format applies to skills listing)
• Fitting Window elements comprehensively tipped
• Key Show Information window attributes for Ships and Drones
• Station Services buttons and tabs
• Star Map new format tooltips with better interactions and cleaned up information
• Selected Item window buttons
• Overview entries have tooltips showing icon, group name, and status information where applicable
• Brackets in space have mouse-over tooltips and groups of brackets close together in space are listed in a scrollable tip
• HUD buttons, hitpoint bars, heat indicators, speed readout, etc. tipped
• HUD module buttons in new format but with a higher delay than other new tooltips to preserve the usability as seen currently

To give an idea of these, we have prepared some composite images for the dev blog, but these changes are now live and can be enjoyed on Tranquility.

(click to enlarge)

This above image shows the new overview tooltips, demonstrating the status information that can be applicable in many cases (stations, containers, wrecks and NPCs are other examples), plus the new way of clearly presenting information on clusters of brackets in space. Notably, when the list of items is over 10, this interactive tooltip will be scrollable.

(click to enlarge)

The all-important ship HUD is shown above with a selection of tooltips in composite. The displayed hitpoint readout, heat, capacitor and speed readouts are also tipped. All the elements have a tooltip and the modules tooltips have had a sprucing up.

At this point, we should mention that in general the response time of the new tooltips is much higher than the old “hints,” but we have made sure to tune the response time of the module tooltips to preserve the significant delay on them that we know is important in this case.

We are also improving the tooltips for many buttons such as the NeoCom above, as well as station services, the character sheet sidebar and the selected item window as indicated in the list earlier in this post.

This is not all though. We also have tooltips for all the elements of the Fitting Window, as seen in the following image:

This work has also been extended into tooltips for the key attributes of ships and drones in their Show Info windows. For example, as shown below:

The Star Map system tooltips have been much improved, with some streamlining and cleaning up of information. Where relevant they are also interactive: for example, with station listings when set to display services.

As part of this cleanup we’ve removed the large extended information on orbital objects in the system, including stations that would pop up after a short delay. However, to make sure the station information for a system is still readily available, this detail has been added to the Show Information window for star systems under its own tab.

 

Predictive Mouse Movement

This release has a significant extra feature courtesy of some UI programming work done on the side: predictive mouse movement in menus.

Say what now? Well, what’s happened is that a method has been added to predict if the mouse cursor is heading into an expanded menu, preventing a mouseover update on other UI elements if this is predicted to be so. This is enabled for the NeoCom menu, context menus and the new interactive tooltips.

This is shown below – red is the old motion required and green is the new way unlocked by the prediction method.

(click to enlarge)

(In animated format)

This work has been built up from some initial A/B testing efforts and then a deeper dive into how tooltips and other contextual information can benefit all players and assist in crafting a much better new player experience.

This is the only just the beginning and we have plans to considerably extend the scope of new tooltips in EVE and to offer advanced tooltips in the future. We hope these improvements are useful to you all as you navigate your way around the many opportunities New Eden has to offer.

- @CCPDelegateZero

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Greetings capsuleers. Team Pirate Unicorns, a relatively new team with a strong focus on the new player experience (NPE), is here to talk about some new foundational contextual UI work that has been released on Tranquility today – new and improved tooltips.

Now, tooltips are a small but very important first step in radically overhauling and improving the experience for new players and those playing at all levels of EVE Online. This is because Pirate Unicorns believes that a strong and clear user experience underpinning the game as a whole, and useful to all, makes it much easier to provide an accessible new player experience.

The first piece in our new approach to the NPE is therefore to provide a much richer and wider range of contextual information, with one well-established means for this being tooltips. In today's release we have added new tooltips to a range of UI areas, replacing existing “hint”-style tooltips, and expanding the information available.

The areas covered by this first phase of tooltips are as follows:

• NeoCom sidebar buttons
• Character Sheet sidebar buttons (also new format applies to skills listing)
• Fitting Window elements comprehensively tipped
• Key Show Information window attributes for Ships and Drones
• Station Services buttons and tabs
• Star Map new format tooltips with better interactions and cleaned up information
• Selected Item window buttons
• Overview entries have tooltips showing icon, group name, and status information where applicable
• Brackets in space have mouse-over tooltips and groups of brackets close together in space are listed in a scrollable tip
• HUD buttons, hitpoint bars, heat indicators, speed readout, etc. tipped
• HUD module buttons in new format but with a higher delay than other new tooltips to preserve the usability as seen currently

To give an idea of these, we have prepared some composite images for the dev blog, but these changes are now live and can be enjoyed on Tranquility.

(click to enlarge)

This above image shows the new overview tooltips, demonstrating the status information that can be applicable in many cases (stations, containers, wrecks and NPCs are other examples), plus the new way of clearly presenting information on clusters of brackets in space. Notably, when the list of items is over 10, this interactive tooltip will be scrollable.

(click to enlarge)

The all-important ship HUD is shown above with a selection of tooltips in composite. The displayed hitpoint readout, heat, capacitor and speed readouts are also tipped. All the elements have a tooltip and the modules tooltips have had a sprucing up.

At this point, we should mention that in general the response time of the new tooltips is much higher than the old “hints,” but we have made sure to tune the response time of the module tooltips to preserve the significant delay on them that we know is important in this case.

We are also improving the tooltips for many buttons such as the NeoCom above, as well as station services, the character sheet sidebar and the selected item window as indicated in the list earlier in this post.

This is not all though. We also have tooltips for all the elements of the Fitting Window, as seen in the following image:

This work has also been extended into tooltips for the key attributes of ships and drones in their Show Info windows. For example, as shown below:

The Star Map system tooltips have been much improved, with some streamlining and cleaning up of information. Where relevant they are also interactive: for example, with station listings when set to display services.

As part of this cleanup we’ve removed the large extended information on orbital objects in the system, including stations that would pop up after a short delay. However, to make sure the station information for a system is still readily available, this detail has been added to the Show Information window for star systems under its own tab.

 

Predictive Mouse Movement

This release has a significant extra feature courtesy of some UI programming work done on the side: predictive mouse movement in menus.

Say what now? Well, what’s happened is that a method has been added to predict if the mouse cursor is heading into an expanded menu, preventing a mouseover update on other UI elements if this is predicted to be so. This is enabled for the NeoCom menu, context menus and the new interactive tooltips.

This is shown below – red is the old motion required and green is the new way unlocked by the prediction method.

(click to enlarge)

(In animated format)

This work has been built up from some initial A/B testing efforts and then a deeper dive into how tooltips and other contextual information can benefit all players and assist in crafting a much better new player experience.

This is the only just the beginning and we have plans to considerably extend the scope of new tooltips in EVE and to offer advanced tooltips in the future. We hope these improvements are useful to you all as you navigate your way around the many opportunities New Eden has to offer.

- @CCPDelegateZero

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

For Rubicon 1.1, Team Pirate Unicorns has been working on improvements to the tracking camera UI, and additionally the actual behaviour and movement of the camera when in tracking mode. Users of the tracking camera are likely aware that the UI is currently split up between two locations that are not necessarily related to one another. If you're not a user of the tracking camera, it may be that you are not aware of this relatively obscured feature. In general, we aim to improve the visibility of this feature and its controls so that players are able to easily switch in and out of the tracking mode according to their needs.

Furthermore, the tracking camera controls and the indication to the user of which mode the tracking camera is in can be confusing and occasionally misleading. The composite image below shows the controls as they currently are, split between the Selected Item window and the Directional Scanner interface. You might notice the relatively small text indicator that the tracking camera is both on and in fact tracking. A problem we identified here is that when the tracking camera is on and ready to track the next selected item, there is no indication the camera is in that state.

Our main goals in this improvement effort were to consolidate the tracking camera controls into a single UI location that is more readily discoverable, and to make it clear to the user which mode the tracking camera is in at any given time. While reviewing the tracking camera, we also saw some room for improvement of the behaviour and movement of the camera while tracking, together with the transition to and from tracking mode, and we're including as much work on that into the coming release as we can.

In terms of the UI, we decided to make use of the radial button interface that was developed for the various scanning and probing functions. We saw an opportunity to use the existing 'Reset Camera' button and turn this into a general 'Camera Controls' radial that would include the tracking camera controls together with the reset camera function. One significant benefit of this approach is that the radial button itself can function as a clear indicator that the tracking camera is on and which mode it is operating in. The composite image below shows the various states of the radial button.

If we go clockwise from the top left of the image we have the radial button: open with controls displayed; in the tracking camera off state; showing the tracking camera on and using custom position; and showing the tracking camera on and using centered position.

Using the controls the tracking camera can be toggled on and off, the custom position set and used, the center position used or the view returned to 'Look at my ship'. This last is the 'Reset Camera' functionality which we have renamed to avoid confusion and to also better reflect what it actually does.

When considering these UI design changes, and also when looking at the behaviour of the camera itself, we had to bear in mind the important use case of combining the tracking camera with directional scanning. On the other hand, we also wanted to remove the confusion that was very often arising due to the 'dual controls' situation. We clearly saw that a way to reliably and quickly center the tracking camera position was needed to support directional scanning. We also wanted to support the uses players put the custom position to and so we provide clear controls for both – together with distinct icons to indicate the mode on the radial button itself.

As a final couple of notes, the default keyboard shortcut to toggle tracking on and off will remain the 'c' key and, while its state will persist across sessions, the tracking camera will be off by default for new characters.

The UI redesign has been implemented on the Singularity test server build and we would value your feedback. We have also made some changes to the behaviour and motion of the camera, particularly with regard to the issue of FPS and V-Sync having an effect on the speed of the tracking camera. With fixes to address the undesirable linkage with graphics settings and performance we felt able to increase the speed of the camera for all users.

- CCP Delegate Zero

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Greetings Capsuleers!

While all kinds of space goodness has been under development, your friends in Team Mammon and Team Roundhouse Kick have been working to improve and expand on our popular Buddy Program – so more of you can experience that good stuff alongside your friends, comrades and fellow space bronies. We're now ready to go live with just the first of those improvements, with more in the pipeline. Up to now the Buddy Program has worked as a one-to-one invite system, with rewards of game time or PLEX for those who's friends upgrade from trials to full accounts. While direct invites work well for small groups of friends, and will remain an option, today we are introducing another option for those wishing to cast the net wider: open invites.

The open invite system, using a URL that can be used over and over again, introduces a public one-to-many option for inviting friends to join you in EVE Online on a Buddy Program trial. Most importantly, the open invites gain rewards for friends upgrading in the same way as direct invites. For every player who obtains their Buddy Program trial through a given URL and then upgrades, the player who put out a public invite using that URL will gain a reward. The process of upgrading and gaining rewards is of course subject to eligibility as set out in the terms and conditions of the program.

That brings me to another important change. With the introduction of open invites we are removing all limits on Buddy Program invites and removing the PLEX-for-PLEX reward option. That is, if a Buddy Program trial is upgraded using PLEX the inviter will not be eligible to receive a PLEX reward as a result of that trial upgrade. We're sure you can understand that this is a necessary measure to protect the integrity of the Buddy Program. We are examining options for widening the pool of available rewards and rewarding those who succeed in attracting many friends to EVE through the Buddy Program.

We'll keep you notified of future developments and are keen to receive feedback and ideas on this topic. In the meantime, remember: Friendship is Magic!