I took the Field Tablet outside today. I wanted to find the scanner, equip it and actually use it without losing track of what I was doing in the game.
Actual Unity playtest footage, October 9 UI sprint.
The Tablet showed the microchip scanner as an item I could equip. The circular Bloom gave the tool a place alongside the actions I could take in the world.
In the playtest I went from opening the Tablet to using the scanner and reading its result. Travel, dialogue and autosaves were part of the same check.
I could also give a location its own map artwork in Workshop. The game could draw live markers over the map while I kept control of the art. Calendar variants could wait.
I learned more from following the whole action than from judging the Tablet on its own. The footage lets me see the interface in the context I was designing it for.
Outdoor gameplay from the October 9 Unity playtest, at 00:03.