Main menu not fully navigable with keyboard

[gluser2]

Hi Virtex Edge! I found some bugs while moving around the main menu with the keyboard that I thought I'd share:

• In Settings, the Controls and Audio menus can't be navigated with the Up/Down and Enter keys. Since the Profile menu can be navigated with these keys, this seems like unintended behavior. The menus should behave consistently.
• Settings>Graphics allows using arrow keys to change settings, but Enter will not activate either Apply, OK, or Cancel. They currently must be clicked with the mouse.
• The "Apply" button in Settings>Graphics doesn't appear to have any function. It should be removed to prevent user confusion.
• The Controls menu contents don't load at all until the mouse enters that sub-menu. This would be more user-friendly if the contents loaded immediately, and if the controls could be navigated with Up/Down and changed by pressing Enter to bring up the Press Any Key text.
• Sometimes when you press Enter to open a sub-menu, the wrong option is highlighted. When Settings is highlighted and Enter is pressed, Audio is highlighted automatically even though Profile is the first on that list. It appears that the highlight position is not being updated when it should be, as Settings and Audio have the same onscreen position.
• Finally, this is not keyboard exclusive, but Settings>Credits does not do anything. Is this going to be implemented later?

I understand these are only minor bugs, but I think fixing these and other little bugs you come across will go a long way toward making your menus more user-friendly!

[darkgriffin1986]

Just want to add my own experience to this one. The controller input has a similar issue to the above. I was playing in Big Picture Mode with a PS4 controller, and many of the menu screens wouldn't take focus except for the virtual mouse movable with the joystick. Thanks for at least giving us that as a backup, otherwise I couldn't control the game from on the couch! But the menu really needs to be better at "grabbing" focus when a controller is being used. For example, the planet selection screen doesn't seem to respond at all to controller input, leaving me fumbling with the virtual mouse cursor to select between earth and mars.

On a related note, the SUN looks like a planet selectable on the track menu. Perhaps change the sun graphic to an outline instead of a large poly-orb to avoid confusion? I just want to point out the sun was the first thing I tried to click on as it was the biggest "Planet" on screen, had I not tried clicking the earth after I would have thought the menu was broken. ;)

[virtexedge]

Thanks for the heads up for all these bugs! Sounds like I need to do another pass on the menus.

In terms of controllers, I've only implemented partial controller support right now, it needs some TLC and fixing in the menus for sure.

You're completely right about the Sun as well, I want to change it to be a circular outline along with having an outline at the outer edge to indicate that this particular set of levels ends there.

[gluser2]

Thanks for the response! A few more UI notes/bugs:

• On all Career mode screens, you can't back out of any screen with the mouse. You have to use Esc on the keyboard. If this is intentional, I think having text on the bottom of the screen saying "[Esc] - Back" would be helpful. If not, maybe a button you can click on with the mouse to go back a page?
• At the Career>Select Region screen, clicking anywhere onscreen with the mouse opens the Sol System screen. This will make it impossible to select other solar system buttons once they're added.
• Clicking anywhere turns the cursor blue; maybe it should only turn that color if something is selected? Clicking on text that doesn't do anything, like my Steam account picture, also makes a noise like it does something, which can be confusing.
• This silly bug when I rested the mouse cursor on the edge of a button's changing hitbox.
• "Tournament" and "Secondary" are misspelled, as is "yourself" on one loading screen. I know, I know... 🤭 but this contributes to the game looking professional.
• Sometimes when you click, the sound effect is extra loud. Could it be counting the mouse press twice?
• I think you should use the same sound for locked tracks as you use for locked ship parts. The one that sounds like "no, wrong". Muting the "good" sound effect when clicking on those will also make it clear you don't have them yet.
• At the start of a race, it says I'm in position 1 of 3 while I'm 3 of 3 (the two AI start ahead of me).
• Could you make it so when you pause (during a race or otherwise), the music and sound effects mute? It would make it easier to switch to another program and do other things like typing this bug report.

Thanks again! It's nice to be included!

[Fanglespangle]

Oops... I've effectively duped this issue but for controller... oh well. I found this issue you mentioned here:

"Sometimes when you press Enter to open a sub-menu, the wrong option is highlighted. When Settings is highlighted and Enter is pressed, Audio is highlighted automatically even though Profile is the first on that list. It appears that the highlight position is not being updated when it should be, as Settings and Audio have the same onscreen position."

Basically, it's retaining cursor position when you select an option. If you press confirm at this stage, the highlighted menu is selected (audio in this case) however, if you press up or down, it treats it as a fresh input and will select Back or Controls respectively.

Either it needs to refresh the menu and show nothing is highlighted or retain cursor position and react accordingly. Either is fine. But currently, it's very confusing and causing a lot of incorrect inputs for me.