Foundry update changes the screen panels user interface
Channel 3 Entertainment has released a small but significant quality of life update for Foundry, adjusting how the screen panel user interface appears.
It might seem like a very minor change, but if you play a lot of Foundry, you’ll have come across a moment where you go to read the screen panel for a machine, and something else gets in your way, be it the field of view, or just a conveyer loader that you placed earlier. This update adds a new UI space panel, with “much larger, more readable, text”, says the developer.
As posted on the Steam blog post for the update, the problem is that: “We have done a ton of work to make these world space interfaces performant and scale with your builds- but in many dense configurations (or when playing on small screens like the Steam Deck) it can be difficult to both read and interact with these panels. Even more common, is that a friendly loader blocks you from getting right up against the panel.”
The solution came from Discord, and is as follows: “When looking at a screen panel you can now press interact (E) to open up a screen space representation of the UI. This UI is consistently placed in the centre of your screen and does not block other screen space UI interactions, like moving around your inventory.”
This new UI space panel has much larger, more readable, text. Your mouse opens at the centre of the screen each time, and the UI is consistently placed/sized, which means configuration movements will be consistent between panels. And for those prone to it, you also have a locked camera rotation helping reduce nausea.
Right now we have the interaction set so you need to look at the panel to interact with it. We did this because a few buildings have multiple panels, but it may be possible to tweak the system so you can interact with the panel simply by targeting the larger building. We are still unsure if the context of having interacted directly with the panel is worth the loss in usability of being able to sloppily interact with the building. I’m really looking forward to hearing different thoughts on how this should be rolled out.
The team closes the update post by saying: “We have received tons of feedback on how to make the minute to minute experience of Foundry better, but we are always looking for more. What’s the one thing you wish we would fix/improve/rework in Foundry to have a better time?” and links to the Discord.
Foundry is out now for PC via Steam early access.
