Screen layout guide - Basic

A section for the Blind or Visually Impaired to chat and discuss screen-readers and Braille systems. When posting here please ensure you remember the target audience.
Post Reply
User avatar
Historical Archives
CE STAFF
CE STAFF
Posts: 114
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2014 2:22 am

Screen layout guide - Basic

Post by Historical Archives »

Basic information.

Core exiles is a complex game, and there are a lot of pages with a lot of information on them. Luckily, the page layout is extremely logical and free from adds, flash panes, popups and other nasties that make web navigation with screen readers difficult. nevertheless the shear amount of information and different screens to get used to can be overwhelming at first, so this guide is provided as a general explanation of some of the more commonly used screens and their layout, so that you can start straight in exploring the six galaxies rather than spent time exploring the games' interface.

i will try and make this as non program specific as I can, and thus of general use to any screen reader user, though if it becomes supernova specific in parts I apologize. i would recommend that you familiarize yourself with your screen readers ability to navigate around standard internet pages, and interact with features such as drop-downs, links, tables, buttons, headings and edit areas, since quickly knowing how to move around such things will vastly increase your speed and ease at playing the game.

Also, although once you understand the game and it's layout you can perform activities such as mining, salvaging and combat extremely quickly, Core exiles is a game where there is no need to rush. Taking the time to read pages thoroughly is usually a much better idea than clicking away like a demon and hitting the wrong thing by mistake (indeed, you'll conserve more ship fuel that way).
Note that this is just intended as a guide to the games' display and not how to play it, for that see the various topics in the help and guides section.

Top and bottom.

Like many games and indeed not a few other programs, at the top and bottom of the Ce screen are a number of stats, labels and controls that remain visible most of the time, which display vital information and give you access to some important game functions. Though not available everywhere in the game, most of the screens have these, so explaining what they are and roughly what they do is a good place to begin.

At the top of the screen is your current location ie, what planet, starbase etc your ship is at. under this is the name of the star system your in, it's faction and law level and whether you are currently docked or undocked.
beneath this is the news ticker, which displays some lines about what is happening around the six galaxies generally as well as within your local area, both in terms of what your fellow captains are up to as well as events that happen in the Ce world, (this is where headlines written in the monthly headlines competition appear).

Under this are two drop-down list boxes, one left and one right which will be the first things you come to in the game if you hit tab. these let you access various useful screens for specific aspects of the game, some handy tools and options.

The first, or left hand box contains options for viewing general information about the game and your account. possibly the single most useful item in this drop-down is the top one "refresh data"

In ce, using your browser's refresh function (say by hitting F5 in Internet Explorer), is disabled to prevent people exploiting the game, and will lead to an error if you try it. therefore, the "refresh data" option exists instead.
This is an incredibly helpfull option for quick navigation with a screen reader, since it will instantly get you back to the travel or promenade screen, and is often quicker and easier to find than looking for the "exit" option of whatever screen your on because it is the first item in the first drop-down you get to when tabbing through the page. I myself use it a lot when buying items, repairing my ship or refining ore, and indeed often find myself hitting ctrl home and then tab when I want to refresh pages outside Ce out of reflex!

Other note worthy options in that first dropdown include the ce data repository (cedr), where you can view information about most items and equipment found in the game, and the galaxy locator for looking up the locations of planets, starbases and settlements.

the second, or right hand drop-down lets you get to a lot of screens about your current activities in the game. these include viewing details about current types of missions you might be on such as combat, federation of mining (fom), or npc missions, also have access to various types of ongoing activities like viewing your extractors, mechs, pet, and drones, this is also where you can activate profession booster packs or put a contract on the general buyers market.

at the bottom of the top panel, under those drop-downs is your player name and various stats such as experience, shield, armour, hull, cargo credits on hand and fuel. The names of these are graphics, but are labeled, however knowing that they're graphics can also be a quick navigation method (I find hitting g to get straight to my players' stats very fast on several occasions). Being under the drop-downs and just above the main game content makes it easy to find and look at these stats, which is good, since you will want to keep
careful track of these throughout the game.

that is it for the top panel, accept if you have "tips" turned on in the profile options they will also appear here at the very top above the news.

On the bottom of most, ---- though not all pages are a set of links to handy things and some extra information arranged in a small group, these are also labelled graphics, but work quite fine as links to tab through.

At the top of this group is your mailbox where your in game mail appears. just under the box is the number of unread messages in it. If this reads as "zero" you know you've got no new mail, so this is an easy way to track when someone (including the game system), has contacted you.

Beneath this displayed in text is the game time and month, just above several more links.
Several of these links are particularly note worthy, and you'll find yourself using them a lot. The "help" link displays a new window with context sensitive help on wherever you are, while the "location bio" offers a text description of whatever planet or star-base your docked at.

The links you will be using most down here however are the ship load-out, personal load-out, ship store, pods, and skills links (the notepad can come in handy too). One particular advantage of such well used links as the "ship loadout" link being at the bottom, is that they are very quick and easy to find, since in most screen readers going straight to the bottom can be done very quickly, (in supernova this can be done with ctrl end), and shift tabbing back is a very quick process.

Another interesting point about those bottom links, is that they form a paragraph, meaning that one quick way to navigate to anything at the bottom of another screen is to go to the bottom and hit paragraph up (in supernova this is done with page up).

These elements appear at the top and bottom of most screens in the game, so being familiar with them is extremely helpful.

dark empathy, Nov 8, 2013
Dana Dawson
Data Recovery Tech
Historical Archives Division
Post Reply