Misc UI Improvements

[outzenj]

Just started toying with OWM, and a few things jump out at me. Most of these are pretty minor though, in general OWM is working pretty well for me:

An option to auto-select the feature you just placed. I kept expecting the properties pane to affect the last feature I placed. It seems OWM expects you to set up your object properties, then place the object, which seems backwards to me.

Keyboard shortcuts for at least the most basic tools - I kept trying to use Space to switch to the Select tool, which was really disruptive.

Grouped objects should maybe show as a group in the Layer pane? That might cause issues with the existing type-based hierarchy though.

When drawing a shape, some amount of snapping to the origin point would make closing the shape a lot easier.

It's pretty standard for SHIFT+Click to be "add to selection", ALT-Click to be "remove from selection", and CTRL-Click to be "add/remove from selection". Looks like only CTRL-Click works that way right now.

I feel like the fractal factor should somehow scale with the length of the path section. I've got a few spots where I had to lay down a few path sections in a small area to route a road around an obstacle, and those sections end up much more detailed than the remainder of the road, which sometimes looks a little goofy.

It seems to be almost impossible to edit the bezier control points after using the bezier fractal pen. The bezier control points get lost among the path points, making them very hard to pick out. Also, it seems odd to me that, in general, you have to choose to edit "path points" in order to edit a bezier's control points. Maybe just a nomenclature difference.

[stefanstr]

An option to auto-select the feature you just placed. I kept expecting the properties pane to affect the last feature I placed. It seems OWM expects you to set up your object properties, then place the object, which seems backwards to me.

Keyboard shortcuts for at least the most basic tools - I kept trying to use Space to switch to the Select tool, which was really disruptive.

+1 Good suggestions!

When drawing a shape, some amount of snapping to the origin point would make closing the shape a lot easier.

You do know you can right-click to auto-close the shape?

It's pretty standard for SHIFT+Click to be "add to selection", ALT-Click to be "remove from selection", and CTRL-Click to be "add/remove from selection". Looks like only CTRL-Click works that way right now.

+1

I feel like the fractal factor should somehow scale with the length of the path section. I've got a few spots where I had to lay down a few path sections in a small area to route a road around an obstacle, and those sections end up much more detailed than the remainder of the road, which sometimes looks a little goofy.

There is a tool to reduce the amount of path points. I think it’d help in this case.

It seems to be almost impossible to edit the bezier control points after using the bezier fractal pen. The bezier control points get lost among the path points, making them very hard to pick out. Also, it seems odd to me that, in general, you have to choose to edit "path points" in order to edit a bezier's control points. Maybe just a nomenclature difference.

For me, selecting points is a pain in general. It seems like you have to make a near pixel-perfect click to select a point.

[Kanchou]

Just started toying with OWM, and a few things jump out at me. Most of these are pretty minor though, in general OWM is working pretty well for me:

That's great to hear for an Alpha version! And makes the team very happy

An option to auto-select the feature you just placed. I kept expecting the properties pane to affect the last feature I placed. It seems OWM expects you to set up your object properties, then place the object, which seems backwards to me.

We originally had it that way. However, consider the case where you want to add multiple trees. That would make it so that after placing each of them, you'll have to re-select the tree. Since the item is previewed as you move the cursor, it kind of makes sense for you to choose the properties first.

However, adding an option to be either or wouldn't be difficult, and I can see why you want to do it that way. Where would it be convenient for the option? Would you want it to be something you can change quickly from say a toolbar? Or a permanent program setting?

Keyboard shortcuts for at least the most basic tools - I kept trying to use Space to switch to the Select tool, which was really disruptive.

We were waiting to have the final tool dialog to add this in case we had major changes. We'll include shortcuts with Beta 1.
Since you're part of the alpha and giving feedback, do you have any preference on what keys for what tools?

Grouped objects should maybe show as a group in the Layer pane? That might cause issues with the existing type-based hierarchy though.

It would conflict with the type based and z-order hierarchy. Maybe have a way to indicate the items are part of the same group by their name?

When drawing a shape, some amount of snapping to the origin point would make closing the shape a lot easier.

You do know you can right-click to auto-close the shape?

Like Stefan said right click will close the shape and there is some amount of snapping right now (the radius of the dot). Should we make the tolerance radius for closing larger?

It's pretty standard for SHIFT+Click to be "add to selection", ALT-Click to be "remove from selection", and CTRL-Click to be "add/remove from selection". Looks like only CTRL-Click works that way right now.

We missed that while writing the original spec and didn't catch it after. We will add it with Beta 1. Thank you!!

I feel like the fractal factor should somehow scale with the length of the path section. I've got a few spots where I had to lay down a few path sections in a small area to route a road around an obstacle, and those sections end up much more detailed than the remainder of the road, which sometimes looks a little goofy.

Good point. There are two approaches, variable amplitude and variable number of fractal segments. Right now only variable amplitude (relative amplitude check box) is implemented. We need to add an option for the number of segments to increase with the magnitude of the distance vector between the last point and the new shape control point (you kind of get that effect when you are in tile snap mode).

It seems to be almost impossible to edit the bezier control points after using the bezier fractal pen. The bezier control points get lost among the path points, making them very hard to pick out.

The problem is the tension value, the default is 10 for landmasses. This adds a very subtle curve to the fractal segments. Originally we had removed that setting and only used line segments but a) it doesn't look as sleek for landmasses and b) it looks bad for rivers and roads, which should be curvier.
You can change the tension to get curvier segments with bezier control points that don't overlap so much, or you can take the tension to 0, which will create line segments.

One change we already implemented for Beta 1, which will be the default mode, is for only the control points of the currently selected bezier “center” point to be shown. I also think that increasing the max zoom level pass 500% would help

Also, it seems odd to me that, in general, you have to choose to edit "path points" in order to edit a bezier's control points. Maybe just a nomenclature difference.

It was bothering us too. We changed it to “Shape Control Points” and “Full Path Points.” I think that makes a bit more sense, what do you think?

Thank you for all the feedback!!! It is of immense help to us!

- Alejandro

[outzenj]

An option to auto-select the feature you just placed. I kept expecting the properties pane to affect the last feature I placed. It seems OWM expects you to set up your object properties, then place the object, which seems backwards to me.

We originally had it that way. However, consider the case where you want to add multiple trees. That would make it so that after placing each of them, you'll have to re-select the tree. Since the item is previewed as you move the cursor, it kind of makes sense for you to choose the properties first.

However, adding an option to be either or wouldn't be difficult, and I can see why you want to do it that way. Where would it be convenient for the option? Would you want it to be something you can change quickly from say a toolbar? Or a permanent program setting?

My first thought would be a program setting, and then a modifier key on object placement to reverse the "mode". So if the program setting says to auto-select the last object, but you want to place a bunch of trees, you can (for example) SHIFT+click to drop a bunch of cloned trees. Though that might be awkward for anything other than features - when would you hold down shift when you're drawing a new landmass?

Keyboard shortcuts for at least the most basic tools - I kept trying to use Space to switch to the Select tool, which was really disruptive.

We were waiting to have the final tool dialog to add this in case we had major changes. We'll include shortcuts with Beta 1.
Since you're part of the alpha and giving feedback, do you have any preference on what keys for what tools?

Select and Pan are probably the only tools I would see using a keyboard shortcut regularly, but here's my first thought for all the tools in the current version:

Select - SPACE
Box Select - (now that I think about it, I think this should just be integrated into the Select tool)
Move - M
Rotate - Q
Scale - S
Edit Points - P
Zoom - Z
Partition - N
Pan - H

Landmass - L
Region - R
Water - W
Boundary - B
River - V

Road - D
Sea Route - E

Measure - U
Text - T
Link - K

Grouped objects should maybe show as a group in the Layer pane? That might cause issues with the existing type-based hierarchy though.

It would conflict with the type based and z-order hierarchy. Maybe have a way to indicate the items are part of the same group by their name?

Hmm, I don't know how well that would work. Maybe just an icon indicating that the object is part of a group (not even necessarily which group)? I guess I don't really even have a use case here; it was just something that made me look twice. So if there's no changes that's okay.

When drawing a shape, some amount of snapping to the origin point would make closing the shape a lot easier.

You do know you can right-click to auto-close the shape?

Like Stefan said right click will close the shape and there is some amount of snapping right now (the radius of the dot). Should we make the tolerance radius for closing larger?

Yeah, I totally missed the right-click option. Maybe if I play some more with it, that'll become natural, but for now my instinct is to manually close the shape.

And, after practicing some more, I don't even think anything needs to change with manually closing the shape. If anything, some visual indicator that I'm on-target would be nice - IE the dot turns red - but I consider that to be pretty low-priority.

It seems to be almost impossible to edit the bezier control points after using the bezier fractal pen. The bezier control points get lost among the path points, making them very hard to pick out.

The problem is the tension value, the default is 10 for landmasses. This adds a very subtle curve to the fractal segments. Originally we had removed that setting and only used line segments but a) it doesn't look as sleek for landmasses and b) it looks bad for rivers and roads, which should be curvier.
You can change the tension to get curvier segments with bezier control points that don't overlap so much, or you can take the tension to 0, which will create line segments.

One change we already implemented for Beta 1, which will be the default mode, is for only the control points of the currently selected bezier “center” point to be shown. I also think that increasing the max zoom level pass 500% would help

Also, it seems odd to me that, in general, you have to choose to edit "path points" in order to edit a bezier's control points. Maybe just a nomenclature difference.

It was bothering us too. We changed it to “Shape Control Points” and “Full Path Points.” I think that makes a bit more sense, what do you think?

After spending some more time with this, and getting a better feel for how the Edit Points tool works, I think I'm mostly okay with it as-is. I do have two minor additional issues with it though:

When drawing a bezier curve/fractal shape, there doesn't seem to be a way to add any curve to the first point. This can lead to unexpected sharp corners, though it's an issue that can be worked around in most cases. Maybe the first point should mirror any curve added on the last point? I think I'd have to see that in action to know how well that works though.

When editing points on a bezier curve/fractal shape, if any point has no curve, there's no way to add curve to it - the bezier control points are stacked under the point itself, meaning that any attempts to move the control point just moves the point. I'm not sure what the best approach here is - maybe a modifier key to pick out a control point?

[unklStewy]

Grouped objects should maybe show as a group in the Layer pane? That might cause issues with the existing type-based hierarchy though.
It would conflict with the type based and z-order hierarchy. Maybe have a way to indicate the items are part of the same group by their name?

Good Morning:

What About a Combination of Ideas:

For Items That Are 1st in Z-Order and Part of a Group (i.e. Objects #1, #5 , #7 are Grouped)
Item #1 - Display Group Master Icon (3 Solid Fill Cirlces Touching in Tangent maybe)
-Bold The Objects Text
-Make the Group Icon Clickable (Right Click Context for Editing individual member or removing it from group)
-When Clicked Items #5 and #7 Would Highlight
Items #5 & #7 - Display Group Member Icons (3 Circles with outline and no-fill)
- When Groups are Displayed have member items indented when the group master is selected
- Make the Group Member Icon Clickable (Right Click Context for Editing individual member or removing it from group)
- Bold Italicize the Group Member Labels

For Multiple groups you could have the Group Master Icon and the Group Member Icons cycle through hex color codes so each group would have a different color icon.


Something along these lines would allow everything to remain in Z-Order but would also highlight members of groups..

Casey

Casey A.

[Kanchou]

And, after practicing some more, I don't even think anything needs to change with manually closing the shape. If anything, some visual indicator that I'm on-target would be nice - IE the dot turns red - but I consider that to be pretty low-priority.

Very good point. We will add color changing/highlighting.

When drawing a bezier curve/fractal shape, there doesn't seem to be a way to add any curve to the first point. This can lead to unexpected sharp corners, though it's an issue that can be worked around in most cases. Maybe the first point should mirror any curve added on the last point? I think I'd have to see that in action to know how well that works though.

That's been on our minds too. We'll do some testing to see what we can do for it.

When editing points on a bezier curve/fractal shape, if any point has no curve, there's no way to add curve to it - the bezier control points are stacked under the point itself, meaning that any attempts to move the control point just moves the point. I'm not sure what the best approach here is - maybe a modifier key to pick out a control point?

You can also drag the path segments, not just the points. In this case you would drag the path segment which will create/show the control points to give the path the curvature needed to match the point you are dragging from.

Thank you again for your help!!

- Alejandro