(NOTE! THIS IS NOT A REAL MOD. THIS IS ALSO NOT AN ATTEMPT TO REPLACE OTHER MODS! THIS WAS NOT MADE WITH AI, IT IS SIMPLY A FUN LEARNING ACTIVITY)
For this redesign, I had 3 major focuses - reducing feature creep, increasing clarity, and enhancing usability and design. Let me lead you through and explain each decision I made.
First - the design. Imho, the original's was way too generic, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. At the same time, it has an issue that isn't even specific to vibe-coded mods, it just... lingers on your screen. Mods like CK's Graphics Settings handle this by using keybinds and minimize-able windows, but I opted to blend it in with the existing controls menu. I added a new button beside the already discreet, disappearing ones that shows the randomizer window.
But here's where things start getting pretty large in terms of creative decisions, because I noticed that half of this stuff wouldn't be useful or navigable to most users in a single session. How can I even be sure of what a "wild" profile is? How does this differ from the chaos level? How is a "stock cfg" involved, is it saving a new one, overwriting it, is it just choosing from stock configs, and if so, does that override other options? I'm already confused, and I'm not even to the Rainbowmizer-style "auto-roll" yet... which... would just stop your car abruptly, because from my knowledge, you can't keep your momentum while changing parts. It somehow over-explains itself as a UX while leaving so much confusion behind. Same with the branding, I don't personally need to know the name of the creator, the name of the mod, or the version when I'm just trying to use it - again, not AI-specific.
So, I tried reducing clutter (There is unused space, I will acknowledge this), and sticking to relatively straightforward features. Small things, like plural "cars", the forward arrow on "More filters...", and checks vs. sliders are supposed to make it exceedingly clear where the UI flow is going to go next for the user. I tried making sure this was all accomplishable if it was an actual mod, but some things might not be. I also tested the mod to rebuild the experience for actual use, so there's a clear "roll back" button for each option, I split up "randomize vehicle" and "randomize specs" (for lack of a better term) into separate steps, so you can get a clean stock config from a few selections before you randomize all of the parts. There's already an option for this in the BeamNG menu, so this could be improved on, I just know that I never use that specific button and it would reduce friction a lot if I didn't have to go through tabs or press esc, I just clicked a button.
I also focused on the direction behind it and maintainability. Adding a "safe mode" to the parts randomizer seemed like a good idea at the time, and from a UI standpoint, it is. However, if you consider mod cars, mods for vanilla cars, updates to vanilla cars, Automation, the list goes on and on, how do we know what parts work safely together always? What if a fender and a tire work together, but not with spindles? How would we even make a database for it? Simple, we don't - and we don't offload it fully to the user either. I added tooltips and a simulated response from one of them, telling you the risks of each category of randomization. For example, I chose to put the tooltips on only two of them, but if someone made the mod, they could add a warning to "Randomize drivetrain" that tells the user that enabling it could potentially fuck up the fuel tank. I also carefully considered adding a "Allow empty parts" selection, but again, this wouldn't be that maintainable, some mods literally name empty parts "Nothing" or don't have an option for it. So, for now, all parts are enabled, and it also reduces UI clutter significantly. By the time you get to submenus for if random liveries or spindles are allowed to be what parts, you've introduced way more feature creep than you've removed. At most, I'd put a "load configs" button that has specific vehicles, but even that's a bit much, so I omitted it entirely.
My own criticisms (you can add your own guys!):
- This isn't very controller friendly. What button do you actually press to activate it? I couldn't actually think of a way to make a mod like this controller friendly, and I wasn't about to modify the game's files to add a new menu tab (cache reasons, game integrity).
- Somewhat inconsistent spacing. Believe me, I tried using more boxes, making the buttons smaller, making the text on the buttons bigger, I couldn't get it to look fully cohesive, I'm still learning though
- I aimed to simplify it, but by having it as a UI app like this at all, it will inherently look more cluttered. Maybe I should have thought of a different solution entirely, but it's undeniable it's an eyesore (if better than the original) compared to the CTRL/ALT menu. I tried using the same design and branding by reading through the Vue of various existing BeamNG UI apps, but even so, it looks... off.
Tell me what mod you want me to redesign next! Or, you could ask me to design the UI/PoC of a mod from a description (even the BeamNG launcher itself, I've been considering that), I'll choose one for tomorrow.
