UI modifications (suggestions and discussion)

K

Koshling

Vorlon
Joined
Apr 11, 2011
Messages
9,254
@whoever can - please sticky this

This thread is for discussion of UI changes. It can be suggestions or ongoing discussions, but topics and posts should in the main limit themselves purely to UI issues, not underlying game mechanics (i.e. - how things appear - layout of screens, hover text inf, that sort of thing)
 
Suggestion: split the pseudo-buildings that are actually 'effects' into their own list. Thus all the 'crime(XXX)' 'buildings' would appear in a separate 'effects' list (maybe the cultures too??).

The new list could appear in one of several ways:
  • As a separate tab on the panel that currently contaisn the building list
  • As a third tab on the right hand panel that currently already has tabs for 'properties' and 'resources' [this is my preference because it's a minimal chnage to the layout)
  • By splitting the current panel that contains the buildings into two vertically

The benefit would be lack of 'huh' reactions to seeing obvious not-really-buildings in the buildings list, as well as having the effcts in on place, making it easier to se at a glance what effects are currently present.
 
Koshling said:
Suggestion: split the pseudo-buildings that are actually 'effects' into their own list. Thus all the 'crime(XXX)' 'buildings' would appear in a separate 'effects' list (maybe the cultures too??).

The new list could appear in one of several ways:
  • As a separate tab on the panel that currently contaisn the building list
  • As a third tab on the right hand panel that currently already has tabs for 'properties' and 'resources' [this is my preference because it's a minimal chnage to the layout)
  • By splitting the current panel that contains the buildings into two vertically

The benefit would be lack of 'huh' reactions to seeing obvious not-really-buildings in the buildings list, as well as having the effcts in on place, making it easier to se at a glance what effects are currently present.
Click to expand...
Hmm, what about a category tag added to buildings that assigns a category string. For each such string used a corresponding text entry needs to be there (using a naming convention).
Then add a dropdown menu on top of the building list that allows you to select which category you want displayed (or all).
 
AIAndy said:
Hmm, what about a category tag added to buildings that assigns a category string. For each such string used a corresponding text entry needs to be there (using a naming convention).
Then add a dropdown menu on top of the building list that allows you to select which category you want displayed (or all).
Click to expand...

Maybe, but my original point was that certain things that really are not buildings should not be in the buildings list at all. Crime effects are only modelled as buildings (in the underltying game structures) because thats the way we happen to have to make them have an effect - doesn't mean they cannot be displayed differently though.

As a separate suggestion (or did you mean it this way anyway?), making the buildings list sortable and/or filterable, like the buildable-things list is now, might be nice.
 
Some criticism about the sort options. Especially in later ages I want to be able to sort based on certain criteria. However, if I for example hit "show food buildings" only, stuff like the "food processor plant" will not show. In a similar trend, if you are using civics which make trade routes give food or production any building giving you trade routes or improving your trade routes will not show up in the filters. This last thing could perhaps be fixed by adding a new category "trade routes".

Another small concern I have is regarding promotions. I'm playing on Monarch on a gigantic map and have a 1000 experience assassin hero unit running around. However, the number of different unit promotions completely clutter the unit and obscures stuff like "XP needed to level", "level" and most importantly: "strength" (ie. health). Could those promotions perhaps be made more compact. For example, in the mod "Fall from Heaven", stacking promotions such as Combat. Woodsman, etc. are all compacted in a single promotion. A lot less clutter!

Other than these two points, I thoroughly enjoy it! :D
 
XMrNiceguyX said:
Another small concern I have is regarding promotions. I'm playing on Monarch on a gigantic map and have a 1000 experience assassin hero unit running around. However, the number of different unit promotions completely clutter the unit and obscures stuff like "XP needed to level", "level" and most importantly: "strength" (ie. health). Could those promotions perhaps be made more compact. For example, in the mod "Fall from Heaven", stacking promotions such as Combat. Woodsman, etc. are all compacted in a single promotion. A lot less clutter!
Click to expand...

This has come up before I have made a suggestion on how we might go about compaction them but it would still eventually not be "good enough".

A. Icons on the unit picture.
Suggestion 1: only show the highest level promotion in a promotion line. IE only show Combat IV not I-III. Main problem her is that the hover over for that promotion on that unit would be wrong.

Suggestion 2: Promotions that are no longer valid or obsolete should be removed or just not displayed. Currently there is no obsolete tag on promotions.

Suggestion 4: If there are more than two columns of promotions replace all promotion icons with a special icon. Hover over text would be a problem.
​

B. Hover over list of promotions on the unit. perhaps show an actual summary of the promotions rather than each individually.
 
Dancing Hoskuld said:
This has come up before I have made a suggestion on how we might go about compaction them but it would still eventually not be "good enough".

A. Icons on the unit picture.
Suggestion 1: only show the highest level promotion in a promotion line. IE only show Combat IV not I-III. Main problem her is that the hover over for that promotion on that unit would be wrong.​
Click to expand...


Well, the contruction of hover text is under our control, so if we know that only th highest in a line is displayed the hover text can adjust accordingly by aggregating the effects from the line up to that point. This would require tags in the promotions XML to act as a 'line id' and 'line index' however (so that we know Combat 2 is in the same line as combat 1 and comes after it)​
 
I like the building filter and "effects" ideas, because it would make finding out a cities setup ( and problems) much easier. Especially if diseases are implemented.

Another thing: If I select the "choose tech" option on a great person, I don´t get the techs tooltips in the list where i can choose. It is not the biggest problem ever, since i mostly choose important key techs, but it would be nice to have, in order not to choose something that suddenly oboletes soemthing important.

Edit: Just remembered: the religious advisor could use a size reduction for the symbols and spaces, to reduce scrolling.
 
I have a couple thoughts on keyboard shortcuts.

<C> is used for both "Center camera on unit" and "Automate City Defense". Could "Automate City Defense" be changed to something else? I hate when I accidentally hit C on a centered unit.

Keyboard shortcuts for mines and roads are also strange. Some mines are <M>, some are <Shift-M>, and roads are mixed between <R> and <Shift-R>. Could these all be unified and use <M> for "best mine available" and <R> for "best road available"?
 
That last I'm not agreeing on as I use R to place the lesser roads, and Alt-R "go to" command for the best available road. Come to think of it I don't actually use Shift-R and thinking about it Shift-R could be for building the best available road without needing to use the Alt-R build-to command on single plots. I still want R to be lesser road (except Trail, which for some reason goes after, perfectly).

I would like to see F shortcut removed from building Tree Nursery though. Don't know how many times I've pressed F to sentry/fortify my Workers just to notice later that they pop up after having built a Tree Nursery. Growl.

Cheers
 
Vokarya said:
I have a couple thoughts on keyboard shortcuts.

<C> is used for both "Center camera on unit" and "Automate City Defense". Could "Automate City Defense" be changed to something else? I hate when I accidentally hit C on a centered unit.

Keyboard shortcuts for mines and roads are also strange. Some mines are <M>, some are <Shift-M>, and roads are mixed between <R> and <Shift-R>. Could these all be unified and use <M> for "best mine available" and <R> for "best road available"?
Click to expand...

I like this suggestion alot, and also I for farms :confused:

Perhaps keys could be customizable?
 
I agree with the above two three posts: the amount of double key binding should be reduced. It is the main reason for me to use the mouse and click the buttons instead of using convinient keyboard commands. kind of defies the reason for having them.
 
wrong thread. deleted
 
I have a suggestion for making the F1 (City Status) screen more useful, at least in my opinion: Stop the list from re-sorting every time you make a change. For example, if you sort your cities by most productive, then change one city's production, the list gets re-sorted by how long you've had the city.

Likewise, if you have a city status screen that is long enough to scroll, and you change a production, the list re-sorts so that the city you changed is at the bottom of the visible list. This leads to a really annoying pause between changing multiple cities. I play with "Minimize Pop-Ups" on, so with F1, I can easily cities that need new production assigned, but it's slower with the pause between cities while the list re-sorts each time.
 
Two things regarding advisors:

Is there a way to have more than two advisors display on the city production pop-up? I like the advisors, because it makes it easy to see practical things to build, but one of them is always military, and I skip that because I prefer to have units come out of one city with every military instructor I can manage. I'd like to see more than 2 choices at the top.

Also, I think we could use a setting for "Don't advise building this EVER." The AI likes to recommend certain buildings when I have very specific plans for them. My biggest example here is the Forbidden Palace. Since I'm usually going for worldwide conquest, I want to plant the FP on another continent. This makes it really annoying when the recommendation on just about every city is build the Forbidden Palace. I'd also like to be able to turn off recommendations for any building that might cause a meltdown and a few others (Customs Office, Desalination Plant).
 
Code: 
<!-- Use the following to determine what building art
			is displayed on cities:
			0 = none
			1 = Wonders only
			2 = Wonders and city defences only
			3 = all -->

Is it possible to make another option in this showing city defenses only, but no wonders?
With the huge amount of wonders acumulated over a game I suspect that turning them off graphicaly would reduce my MAF. But i would like to see if and which wall an enemy city has nevertheless.
 
Il Principe said:
Code: 
<!-- Use the following to determine what building art
			is displayed on cities:
			0 = none
			1 = Wonders only
			2 = Wonders and city defences only
			3 = all -->

Is it possible to make another option in this showing city defenses only, but no wonders?
With the huge amount of wonders acumulated over a game I suspect that turning them off graphicaly would reduce my MAF. But i would like to see if and which wall an enemy city has nevertheless.
Click to expand...

Could change this value to be a bitmask??
1 = wonders
2 = defences
128 = other

4,8,16,32,64 reserved for future use.

That way wonders only is 1 (same as now), wonders+defences is 3, defences only is 2. That is trivial to do - work for you?
 
Ok, I seem to have understood the basic working of a bitmask: Assign what ever you want as single options ( in this case display of a certain building type) to a power of 2 so that reading it in binary gives a 1 for that option and 0 for all others. This way you get a 1 for several options at once if you enter something tha t is not a power of 2.
But where is this actually defined? the xml defines a variable to be read somewhere, but the meining of that number is only mentioned there, within the comment, not defined ?
 
Il Principe said:
Ok, I seem to have understood the basic working of a bitmask: Assign what ever you want as single options ( in this case display of a certain building type) to a power of 2 so that reading it in binary gives a 1 for that option and 0 for all others. This way you get a 1 for several options at once if you enter something tha t is not a power of 2.
But where is this actually defined? the xml defines a variable to be read somewhere, but the meining of that number is only mentioned there, within the comment, not defined ?
Click to expand...

The meaning depends on how the DLL interprets it. I need to change the code to make it interpret it as a bitmask. When I do I'll update the comment in the XML where the value is defined.
 
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