World selection - UI audit

[ZeroInternalReflection]

Describe the bug

The world selection screen has several issues. These include:

Save management issues:
1] The list of worlds only seems to be updated on game start and on world creation. While I was only able to replicate these with direct folder manipulation, similar circumstances might pop up with permission issues/antivirus meddling/etc. This can result in two issues:
1a] If you copy a world over from another copy of the game, you need to reload the game to create a character in it
1b] If a world is renamed/moved/deleted while the game is open, the game will allow you to create a character in it, then fail to save properly (in the video below, the world folder was renamed while on the main menu):

World.selection.-.Missing.world.fails.to.save.mp4

Display issues:
2] It is possible, if unlikely, to have sufficient worlds for the list of pages to escape the border (Ukrainian pictured since it required fewer worlds than English):

Navigation issues:
3] This is the only screen I've found that uses a paged system that tabs back and forth.
4] You cannot select another page with the mouse, only Tab/Shift+Tab
5] The world selection screen only gives the name of the world and number of existing characters and does not give any further information on those worlds
6] No options are available for filtering available worlds
Accessibility issues:
7] The cursor is not set for screen readers

Steps to reproduce

1. Main menu
2. Ensure the specified number of worlds exist
3. Go to create a character (e.g. 'Custom character'
4. Observe the 'World selection' screen

Expected behavior

• 1] The list of worlds should be checked on creation of the screen, and the existence of the selected world should be checked on selection
• 2, 3] Convert to a fully paged system like the inventory screen, or a fully-scrolling system like uilist
• 4] If the tabbed paging system does remain, it should be mouse-selectable
• 5] Show basic information about the selected world before committing to creating a character in it
• 6] The ability to filter the world list would be helpful for users with a collection of different worlds on the go
• 7] The cursor should be set for screen readers according to accessibility.md

Screenshots

No response

Versions and configuration

Tiles

• OS: Linux
  • OS Version: LSB Version: n/a; Distributor ID: Arch; Description: Arch Linux; Release: rolling; Codename: n/a;
• Game Version: 90e1eb2 [64-bit]
• Graphics Version: Tiles
• Game Language: System language []
• Mods loaded: [
  Dark Days Ahead [dda],
  Disable NPC Needs [no_npc_food],
  No Fungal Growth [no_fungal_growth],
  Bionic Professions [package_bionic_professions]
  ]

Curses

• OS: Linux
  • OS Version: LSB Version: n/a; Distributor ID: Arch; Description: Arch Linux; Release: rolling; Codename: n/a;
• Game Version: 0.F-8820-g82afe217e14-dirty [64-bit]
• Graphics Version: Curses
• Game Language: System language []
• Mods loaded: [
  Dark Days Ahead [dda],
  Disable NPC Needs [no_npc_food],
  No Fungal Growth [no_fungal_growth],
  Bionic Professions [package_bionic_professions]
  ]

Additional context

For clarification of some of my UI terminology (e.g. scroll vs. fast scroll, column vs. pane), refer to my general notes here

[NetSysFire]

Impressive work auditing the UI so thoroughly! I can see you put a lot of effort into all the reporting and compiling of media demonstrating these issues and thank you for it. Please keep up the good work.

Also, I bet you will also find some fun edge cases with languages like chinese because afaik their characters are wider.

[ZeroInternalReflection]

There are definitely some fun bugs with display of Chinese characters. Here's an unrelated one I'm midway through fixing:

The one that's really going to require a lot of testing is if the Arabic translation (or another right-to-left language) starts getting supported properly.