Talking about interface improvements

The pedia and WB are 2 big projects.
Pedia is troublesome if you intend to keep sevo, mine and classic as choices under BUG. For me, I can't be bothered to analyze BUG to merge it in.

You wil have better luck merging WB than the pedia.
Xyth and magister merged WB easily into their HR and FFH mods.

Merging the builder wasn't on the objective list but I remember that some modders asked for it some months ago. I'll see what I can do. Let's begin with simple things!

Is BUG used for other things than interface ?

There is a BUG event manager, how does it work ?

dbkblk said:

Is BUG used for other things than interface ?

There is a BUG event manager, how does it work ?

Click to expand...

Yes, BUG replaced the default python event system. It parses the config directory with those XML files and registers event handlers for python files based on config directives.

As I said, BUG is highly interconnected with our mod and any changes are likely to be very difficult.

The main (only?) problem we in C2C have with merging anything from Platyping is the fact that we have two CvScreensInterface.py files and I don't know which is used or if both are. It is a file the BtS says you can do your stuff in to override and extend the basics they provide. It is the file that handles the input from the user for the screens, I think. Exactly what this file is about is what is stopping me merging much.

BUG can be very interlinked but mostly it isn't. There is the bit about the UI and the bit about modular python. They are separate. Then there is the BUG options screen which is all over the place.

To further complicate things we merged in some older versions of Platyping's stuff and he has improved it such that we need to remove some code to use the new. It just makes it a bit complex if you don't have any dedicated time.

Apart from this complexity, the main problem I have with python is I find it very complex to jump to a function definition. With VS and the DLL, it is easy to navigate through the functions and declaration.
Here, I must search everything with an external string search program. Do you have any IDE that makes your life better when tweaking python files?
Globally, I found python files also poorly commented :x

About BUG, we can try to make a diff from minor version 3.5 > 3.6 > 3.7 and integrate the change carefully. I don't know if it worth the work. Do you think the performance has increased a lot with the new versions ? or it's more stable ?
As BUG is also integrated into the DLL with BULL and Platy's work isn't, it is also tricky to merge them or to remove BUG. I find it wiser to grab ideas on each individual advisor and then tweak the main BUG interface without changing too much.

dbkblk said:

Apart from this complexity, the main problem I have with python is I find it very complex to jump to a function definition. With VS and the DLL, it is easy to navigate through the functions and declaration.
Here, I must search everything with an external string search program. Do you have any IDE that makes your life better when tweaking python files?
Globally, I found python files also poorly commented :x

About BUG, we can try to make a diff from minor version 3.5 > 3.6 > 3.7 and integrate the change carefully. I don't know if it worth the work. Do you think the performance has increased a lot with the new versions ? or it's more stable ?
As BUG is also integrated into the DLL with BULL and Platy's work isn't, it is also tricky to merge them or to remove BUG. I find it wiser to grab ideas on each individual advisor and then tweak the main BUG interface without changing too much.

Click to expand...

I found the Atom text editor works pretty well for the python files. You can open the entire Assets/Python directory and search through all the files fairly quickly.

https://atom.io/

I have just been using NotePad++ to edit Python which works but does not do projects. I am going to try Afforess' suggestion.

I merged BUG 4.4 into C2C. A number of things in there were things we already had; either from RoM/AND/C2C or RevDCM. I had forgot about BULL.

@DH: I'll look at your commit then! EDIT: Just by curiosity, how do you work for a faster merging process?

@Afforess: Thank you for Atom. I'll try that!

As a brief comment on IDE's, I use netbeans all the time. Though I have never used the python plugin some people rate it.

Okay. Let's tease about what I'm currently working on. It's about interface enhancements.

The BTS default interface was clean and polished but lacks several essential informations. With BUG mod, we have all the informations we need, but the city screen isn't fancy enough to me.

That's why I rewrote some parts of the main screen and the city screen based on ideas (and some chunks of code) from Platy -Platyping's- UI and from Civilization V. Working on this is a hard path of trials and errors.

The first part of the work (the longer one) is invisible to the end-user because I've cleaned up a lot of redundant code. Many parts of the city screen are now more flexible when it comes to margins and content size on the left and right panels.

The most amazing change here is the introduction of a "City watch" panel at the top left of the city screen, which will sum up all the main informations about food, production, commerce, science, culture, happiness, health, GP, espionage, stability and defense of the city.

It will print a simple value with a colored text to quickly check the qualities of a city. When the mouse hover over a text or value, it will display advanced informations (which I plan to reorganize in a second phase). Values and bar displays are still to be implemented.

Regarding the ergonomy of the city screen, I plan to focus on main informations, while keeping the ability to check for advanced informations.
Once City and Main screens will be done, I will focus on advisors.

Concerning the top city panel (under the name) and the right panel. You'll get more informations once it will be more advanced.

The other visible enhancements on the following screenshots are:
- The height of the bottom bar is smaller
- Enlarged building list

- New city order list with icons
- An experience bar for units and a small icon about the unit type

- New fancy multi-units selection

- A new research icon next to the research bar and adjusted bar sizes.


Let's hope you'll like it.

Awsome!!!! Very fancy!

A few ideas about screen #1:
Espionage should be after Culture and before Happiness
I also miss a separate Connectedness and Maintenance line (they could be above Happiness too)

@Sogroon: Thanks for the feedback. How Connectedness and Maintenance could be represented by a bar ?
For example, health and happiness 0 value will be at the center (with a tickmark) and the bar would extend from -20 to +20 (with red color when negative).

dbkblk said:

@Sogroon: Thanks for the feedback. How Connectedness and Maintenance could be represented by a bar ?
For example, health and happiness 0 value will be at the center (with a tickmark) and the bar would extend from -20 to +20 (with red color when negative).

Click to expand...

Ohh. I didn't know you're really gonna display everything with bars...

Still, IMO those are important infos so an idea: Those are always positive so you could display those as exponential bars, something like this:

0__1__2__4__10__25__50__100__1000

I don't think either connectedness or maintenance values will ever go above 1000 in a single city.

My first idea was to show something like "City connected to 3 national cities and 15 foreign cities" in the top panel. The maintenance cost would be included in the "Commerce" (maybe this should be renamed to Economy). A tickmark at the center and the value would be "Commerce - Maintenance". Nein?

dbkblk said:

My first idea was to show something like "City connected to 3 national cities and 15 foreign cities" in the top panel. The maintenance cost would be included in the "Commerce" (maybe this should be renamed to Economy). A tickmark at the center and the value would be "Commerce - Maintenance". Nein?

Click to expand...

Vielleicht gut für mich

Sogroon said:

Vielleicht gut für mich

Click to expand...

Aber ich habe noch nicht getan!

Looks good so far!

1) How much of this will be customizable? e.g. removing some of the bars or resizing the panels
2) Only thing I'm not liking much is the colored bar behind the unit experience. I feel that there is no need for a bar there. The numbers are enough to know how close you are to the next level.

Because this mod couldn't get better.

By the way, in the City Watch panel, would it be possible to toggle which bars to display and which to hide?

I like those graphics, but I am having a hard time visualizing exactly where in the main interface they are placed. Can you post screenshots of the entire screen?