FGU UI ideas/feedback

[Swissman65]

Hello!
little disclaimer first: I'm a junior software dev, so I worked on a few interfaces of apps/software myself, and so I thought I should share my feedback about my experience with FGU and how I would like to even more "modernise" it and make it even more intuitive for the user. Also something to keep in mind: I've yet to use Unity, so I might not be aware of the limitations it poses...
I am using the default theme for FGU and the 5e ruleset

Launcher
let's look at the launcher first:
the thing that I noticed very early on is the way most buttons are displayed.
there is no hover effect when hovering over the different buttons, which has kind of a feel of a static, hard(but gorgeous) wall. which might intimidate a new user.
some buttons, once pressed, stay brightened to let us know where we are (that feels awesome!)

I would love to see those buttons updated just like the ones from the settings window (from the FGUUpdaterEngine) which brighten when we hover over them, even more, from the same window, under "support" those buttons, specifically, shrink while also brightening which feels really interactive for me. Btw the "game systems" appears to be missing it's top and bottom gold border, was this intended?
image.png

Towards the bottom, the box containing the internal/external IPs feels a bit weird with how the hover behaves: when the cursor hovers anywhere in this box, all of the copy buttons are displayed which, I can understand, is a great info like "hey, you can copy these!"
one thing that I would like to see would be also hovers, but on each IP box, to make them feel like buttons, NGL when I first tried to use those I thought they were text entries, so I tried to mouse select the IP :P (however I suppose these aren't the most used buttons compared to the others, so not really important)

if we look at the select campaign view (when "load campaign" is pressed): I love everything that it displays, the hovers that confirms what we're about to select (same for the extensions), and the greying of the background when selected.
However, when we move to the "Game Systems (Rulesets)" view (when"create campaign" is pressed) which almost looks the same, we're loosing all the nice hover features that the previous view has.

In game
Next, let's look at the UI in game:
some of my previous suggestions can also apply here.

we're faced with kind of the same solid/static, wall feeling but it's different here.

first, there are tooltips! which help, but appears to be redundant sometimes:
if we focus on the right with the list of menus, the tooltips pop up as we hover any icon, which is clearly the way to go for the minimized view of this menu, however for the default view it really feels redundant (exept for the "tool" tab, which is always icons only) in the sense that the icon feels interactive, but in reality the icon and the text alongside it are both doing the same thing. as well as displaying for example a tooltip "Encounters" right next to the text "Encounters" <- this one could be a small fix such as hiding them while in the default view
So, here again, I believe some hovers could do wonders! we do have also a visual feedback very briefly after pressing a button/icon which looks awesome here's a capture of it:

btn_pressed.png

It's a shame that it only appears when a button is pressed, in about a few miliseconds, I would definetly see an improvement if this was instead a hover for those buttons/drop-down-menus (maybe not the same colors, if we would want to stick to the previous hovers and their brighter aspect on hover it could work as well. IDK which would work better color-wise)

the same can be said for most of the common rectangular blue buttons in different windows, while there are not always tooltips, without hovers, some feel at first glance a bit more like some sorting toggles rather than buttons used to pop out a new window:

blue btns.png

next, there are a few already implemented hover actions that feel out of place or might be an overlook? I will still list them here (some might be 5e ruleset only):
- most dropdown menus have a dark blue arrow which lights-up when hovered. however some fail to do so it seem to be a certain type of drop down, those where the group can be selected (on a ton of windows)
- the search bar at the bottom of a lot of windows: when hovered, the cursor changes to the hand cursor like any link/draggable object. Maybe update it like the text box on the chat: the cursor stays normal as we write something, then if the text is dragged the grabbed hand cursor takes over

In summary
If I can summarise my whole text block in a few points:

• hovers could do wonders on buttons, most software/websites uses them a lot (discord,steam,websites etc) to bring even more visual feedback
• there are some difference between some almost identical drop-downs

feel free to add any other suggestion or if you disagree with what I'm suggesting and would like to add additionnals details!

[Laerun]

Please consider to bring in the Atlassian guides as a searchable book, into the Fantasy Grounds VTT platform. I don't know if users like to keep leaving Fantasy Grounds in the middle of a given session to look up base functionality, or such things. I realize that each data window has its own question mark that links to the Atlassian guides, but I rarely even use those and mostly accidently click on those frame shortcuts.

I think that the accessibility to information, and the lack of a preview thumbnail assets collection catalog for image assets is very limiting and not as user friendly overall. I think these can be handled differently instead of the scattered resources and multiple portals. Bouncing between the Atlassian guides, the FG Forums, inside of Fantasy Grounds, and potentially the FG official Discord is overwhelming and not intuitive enough for newer users, and annoying and rather frustrating for long term users.

[claedawg]

Please consider to bring in the Atlassian guides as a searchable book, into the Fantasy Grounds VTT platform. I don't know if users like to keep leaving Fantasy Grounds in the middle of a given session to look up base functionality, or such things. I realize that each data window has its own question mark that links to the Atlassian guides, but I rarely even use those and mostly accidently click on those frame shortcuts.

I think that the accessibility to information, and the lack of a preview thumbnail assets collection catalog for image assets is very limiting and not as user friendly overall. I think these can be handled differently instead of the scattered resources and multiple portals. Bouncing between the Atlassian guides, the FG Forums, inside of Fantasy Grounds, and potentially the FG official Discord is overwhelming and not intuitive enough for newer users, and annoying and rather frustrating for long term users.

I tried doing this myself with the 5E effects and adding in new effects from all of the extensions I ran. It would be most helpful if, at minimum, a book was provided for each ruleset with all of the effects and short instructions on how they work.

[Tempered7]

Please consider to bring in the Atlassian guides as a searchable book, into the Fantasy Grounds VTT platform.

1000 times This! And I should take it 1 step further: I always felt the need of having an in-app browser with which I can check some websites, too.

[boardgays]

Another point, but still on the topic of modernization, I believe that the character sheet could also be modernized (And talking here about Dungeons and Dragon 5 and in case some system has a very different design).

It seems quite outdated and suffers from several design problems, such as the size of the character image, the fields are literally lines to be written on and the buttons for spells and expanding information are not intuitive. Honestly, I have players who, even after years of playing, have difficulty using the program. I believe something along the lines of the foundry character sheet would be a good direction.



The shortcuts in the lower field could also be reimagined with a different design.