Lightsideluc
Member
I love this mod, it's easily one of my favourite mods released thus far. For this reason, I want to use my feedback to make it even better.
The first and foremost thing that comes to mind is the one major strike against the mod, or rather, how it affects the community: you're completely reliant on your teammates to have default-unbound customs enabled. The end result is a lot of gentle pushing eventually leading to admonishing or outright toxicity towards players who refuse to enable them, thus putting their team at a significant disadvantage (and is pretty much an albatross around the neck in two-player teams). I've heard Tyron might be making a mod that requires a player to input Custom 3 to join a server, which would certainly alleviate the main issue, but doesn't help if you have a player who still doesn't accept/send items or is AFK.
Thus, I would suggest the ability to hold the item key to either force-feed an item to the player currently the furthest back (it's hard to argue against getting a free souped-up item, after all) or give it to 'Charity' even if you're not by yourself. This could also be used by new players to request an item when their item field is empty without needing customs set.
On the topic of avoiding customs being a necessity, ult could be activated by double-double-tapping item and drift (input both at the same time, do that twice). It lacks finesse, but it would rarely be activated by accident yet is easy to perform, at least on a straightway.
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Next up is the UI. While others have said it's too busy, and you've said you don't intend to alter it, I would be remiss to ignore it since it's easily the first thing that's going to strike people, and it does take up a rather extreme portion of the screen. I have created a mock-up that I believe fits all of the important information in while maintaining readability at the same time as being quicker to reference while paying attention to the track.
The ult bar is instead moved below the kart, similar to the drift gauge UI mod. This would fill and evaporate as the current character portraits do with charging and using ult. I've noticed my teammates regularly missing they have ult with the current implementation, so having it closer to where they're actually looking might help them notice when it's available.
Your teammates icons would instead use the smaller scoreboard thumbnails below this, rather than being sequestered in the corners with full portraits that are difficult to glance at in the midst of a heated race. Beside each one is their current placement. Relevant text for bonuses (slingshot, transfer ect.) would appear beside their placement numbers.
As in the current system, whether a character has an item would appear in the corner of their portrait. However, to remove the necessity of the large bar appearing above your kart, the game instead shows an arrow: The arrow pointing up at the item field (as is the case in the top left) means the player has requested an item (incoming). The arrow pointing down means they're offering an item (outgoing). The time remaining on an item request or offer is represented by the arrow's colour draining from top to bottom.
The item cooldown would be shown as its current bar, only moved down into the space the arrow would otherwise occupy (since the two cannot occupy the same space at the same time by their opposing functions).
Since all of your ult bars charge at the same time, showing each character's ult progress individually is not necessary. Instead, it only needs to show when their ult is available, and how long they have left in it. Here I used the trademark R to show their ult is still available. If activated, the character portrait would be covered by the draining overlay (replacing the R), as is currently used in the game. Since knowing how long your teammates have left in their ult isn't of major importance most of the time, it being smaller is a fair tradeoff for all the other benefits.
Thus, all critical elements of the current UI system are available, iconography that's intuitive replaces text that was obtrusive, and everything is compressed into a single space where they were instead on opposite sides of the screen.
And now I'm sure someone is going to tell me why this is impossible due to the limits of the engine, but a man can dream, can't he?
I hope, at the very least, that this makes sense and could possibly work, possible engine limitations aside.
Edit: Oh, and the ending screen. There's a lot of empty space being used by the score bars. I feel it would be acceptable to squeeze them further to the right, thus making room for race times to be displayed beside the characters.
As a Nice-to-Have, the characters with Most Takedowns, Most Transfers, Most Slingshots ect. being displayed would also be nifty. Perhaps displayed as badges beside their names so they don't take up much space? Something like a 'helping hand' for Skimboosts, Amy's hammer for takedowns, for example.
The first and foremost thing that comes to mind is the one major strike against the mod, or rather, how it affects the community: you're completely reliant on your teammates to have default-unbound customs enabled. The end result is a lot of gentle pushing eventually leading to admonishing or outright toxicity towards players who refuse to enable them, thus putting their team at a significant disadvantage (and is pretty much an albatross around the neck in two-player teams). I've heard Tyron might be making a mod that requires a player to input Custom 3 to join a server, which would certainly alleviate the main issue, but doesn't help if you have a player who still doesn't accept/send items or is AFK.
Thus, I would suggest the ability to hold the item key to either force-feed an item to the player currently the furthest back (it's hard to argue against getting a free souped-up item, after all) or give it to 'Charity' even if you're not by yourself. This could also be used by new players to request an item when their item field is empty without needing customs set.
On the topic of avoiding customs being a necessity, ult could be activated by double-double-tapping item and drift (input both at the same time, do that twice). It lacks finesse, but it would rarely be activated by accident yet is easy to perform, at least on a straightway.
----
Next up is the UI. While others have said it's too busy, and you've said you don't intend to alter it, I would be remiss to ignore it since it's easily the first thing that's going to strike people, and it does take up a rather extreme portion of the screen. I have created a mock-up that I believe fits all of the important information in while maintaining readability at the same time as being quicker to reference while paying attention to the track.
The ult bar is instead moved below the kart, similar to the drift gauge UI mod. This would fill and evaporate as the current character portraits do with charging and using ult. I've noticed my teammates regularly missing they have ult with the current implementation, so having it closer to where they're actually looking might help them notice when it's available.
Your teammates icons would instead use the smaller scoreboard thumbnails below this, rather than being sequestered in the corners with full portraits that are difficult to glance at in the midst of a heated race. Beside each one is their current placement. Relevant text for bonuses (slingshot, transfer ect.) would appear beside their placement numbers.
As in the current system, whether a character has an item would appear in the corner of their portrait. However, to remove the necessity of the large bar appearing above your kart, the game instead shows an arrow: The arrow pointing up at the item field (as is the case in the top left) means the player has requested an item (incoming). The arrow pointing down means they're offering an item (outgoing). The time remaining on an item request or offer is represented by the arrow's colour draining from top to bottom.
The item cooldown would be shown as its current bar, only moved down into the space the arrow would otherwise occupy (since the two cannot occupy the same space at the same time by their opposing functions).
Since all of your ult bars charge at the same time, showing each character's ult progress individually is not necessary. Instead, it only needs to show when their ult is available, and how long they have left in it. Here I used the trademark R to show their ult is still available. If activated, the character portrait would be covered by the draining overlay (replacing the R), as is currently used in the game. Since knowing how long your teammates have left in their ult isn't of major importance most of the time, it being smaller is a fair tradeoff for all the other benefits.
Thus, all critical elements of the current UI system are available, iconography that's intuitive replaces text that was obtrusive, and everything is compressed into a single space where they were instead on opposite sides of the screen.
And now I'm sure someone is going to tell me why this is impossible due to the limits of the engine, but a man can dream, can't he?
I hope, at the very least, that this makes sense and could possibly work, possible engine limitations aside.
Edit: Oh, and the ending screen. There's a lot of empty space being used by the score bars. I feel it would be acceptable to squeeze them further to the right, thus making room for race times to be displayed beside the characters.
As a Nice-to-Have, the characters with Most Takedowns, Most Transfers, Most Slingshots ect. being displayed would also be nifty. Perhaps displayed as badges beside their names so they don't take up much space? Something like a 'helping hand' for Skimboosts, Amy's hammer for takedowns, for example.
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