Good idea?

  • Thread starter Thread starter PatrickYEAH
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PatrickYEAH

PatrickYEAH

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PatrickYEAH
How about a dock, kind of like on a Mac running OS X, that allows you to switch between garage, events, dealership, tuning, GT auto, etc, and its at the bottom of every screen. I've found having to go Home everytime you need to do something a bit of a pain.
 
The entire menu should have followed some sort of design concept to begin with. It could limit some button clicks but it would also add more mess on the screen that you won't find similar anywhere else in the game.
 
A complete overhaul of the menu would be needed and if they do, I think they should consider a dock that is live everywhere except during races.
 
A menu system like in LMA manager (probably seen in other games, this just sticks in my head) would be good.

Along the top of the screen, you have effectively the 'dock' like you're describing. A row of icons that represent all the top level menus, Garage, Dealerships, Race, Tuning, GT Auto, Practice etc.

Along the bottom of the screen, a row of icons that are the sub menus of whichever top level menu is selected, so say if Tuning was selected, you'd have Body, Engine, Intake, Exhaust etc along the bottom.

R1 L1 moves right and left along the top menus, R2 L2 moves right and left along the bottom menus.

Worked so well, and so fast to navigate :)

If nothing else, GT5 needs a few 'hot keys' that take you straight to certain places. I.e press L3 to bring up the garage, R3 for tuning, that kinda thing...
 
I agree 👍

The menu system is a mess on GT5, sadly. Doesn't ruin my game, it's just a nuisance.
 
They should have hired a ui design consultant. The whole thing looks like it was built by an engineer.
 
It wouldn't be too bad if most of the menus were instant but they're not, I don't understand why it takes an age to load some things or go back and forth between sections.
 
The whole UI mess could be solved by hotkeys like mentioned. Just enumerate all the various areas of the game and allow us to assign these areas to any button from the options menu and voila. In a race but want to go straight to the dealership, hit the button and bam there you are.

Oh and my personal pet peeve, DON'T CHANGE BUTTON FOCUS UNEXPECTEDLY. Example: I'm done with a race, I hit play button to watch replay, the replay finishes and I'm back at the race menu, now the button focus is back on "Race" and not on the replay button as I expected, I wanted to watch the replay again so I hit the ok button but now it's on "race" so I start a race and my replay that I wanted to save is gone. This happens lots of places, huge UI design nono.
 
Absolutely agree with everything said above (I happen to be a UI Design consultant myself, so it annoys me a bit more than average I guess).

Also... in the tuning shop, when buying and fitting something to the car: why do I have to click through 4 dialogs for every item? Why does the game even need to tell me the item was installed correctly? How could it even go wrong? Grrr... needless clicking.
 
^ Yep, pointless "OK" dialogs for something that can't go any other way, why do I have to click OK again, can something go wrong and it won't install?

There's things like that all over the place, when I paint my car for example, after I've painted it why is there a back button? I can't do anything else so why not just take me back to the main menu?

Well at least we can use a controller on the PS3, back when I played Forza I couldn't use my controller and had to navigate with the wheel buttons, now THAT was aggravating.
 
The menus have always been bad in GT games. There are too many clicks required to purchase and install a tuning part, and to even get into a race.

A revamp is required, but that's not something we'll see in GT5, and tbh I doubt in any future versions of GT games. PD seem very set on certain things and this is one of them.
 
I hope someone at Sony have noticed how GT5 is obsolete in quite a few areas. Instead of adding support of new technology they should rather ensure that PD's work is in line with the basic things that people expect from a game in 2010. I sometimes get the impression that PD is mostly a bunch of car enthusiasts that happen to have some programming skills. Don't get me wrong, the menus look smooth in full HD but as I said they are a mess to browse through.
 
I sometimes doubt the menu designers EVER actually played the game through them until it was too late to fix it.

That you can't hot jump to the store and buy a needed set of tires, or a bit more oomph fro your car without leaving the race entirely, and going all the way back to the home screen is IDIOTIC. Same with getting a quick oil change before a race.

Only things you'd think of if you ACTUALLY PLAYED THE GAME...:rolleyes:
 
j8mie
PD seem very set on certain things and this is one of them.
Click to expand...

Maybe we just don't understand the japanese way of thinking about menus? Or maybe they simply don't usertest nor have a QA department?
 
brambos
Maybe we just don't understand the japanese way of thinking about menus? Or maybe they simply don't usertest nor have a QA department?
Click to expand...

Agree with you 100%.

It's just so annoying that on so many occasions you have to go through so many screens to get to where you want to be.

Did anyone at Polyphony actually play the final release version of GT5 for any length of time, or did they use any kind of independent or outside test subjects for feedback??

I don't think so.
 
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