UI modifications (suggestions and discussion)

I have a request that I already posted a while ago and AIAndy replied he might do this later:

Concerning the list of units/buildings/wonders that are available to build in the city screen: If I select buildings (button to the right of the list) could that be remembered by the game? It always comes back to units, even if I just close and open again the city screen. I need the buildings list about 100x as often as the units list and always have to roll down the list to the buildings again. This could really save me a lot of time!

Other options that would lead to the same goal:
  • Have the buildings and not the units on top of the list (building list is the default).
  • I help myself by clicking the "heroes" symbol which usually shows only the buildings as there are no heroes to build most of the time. This setting is remembered when closing and opening the city view but is lost when saving and reloading a game. Having this setting saved with the game would also solve my issue.
 
Sorry if this have been treated in other place.

When you hover over the city label in he map, in the left side, you can see information about the city (what is been constructed, benefits of new building, production, specialist, and other information).

If you have a large amount of specialist, the information reach the research, culture and espionage sliders, and then you can´t see, for example , health information.

The only way to come around this is using CTRL-I, in order to take out part of the UI.

I think a way to manage that is to show, specialist information, in another way, so, showing a number besides the icon. This is a way to control how up, the city information, is shown.
 
I have a request that I already posted a while ago and AIAndy replied he might do this later:

Concerning the list of units/buildings/wonders that are available to build in the city screen: If I select buildings (button to the right of the list) could that be remembered by the game? It always comes back to units, even if I just close and open again the city screen. I need the buildings list about 100x as often as the units list and always have to roll down the list to the buildings again. This could really save me a lot of time!
Much of that is hardcoded in the graphics engine/exe and we can't change.

Other options that would lead to the same goal:
  • Have the buildings and not the units on top of the list (building list is the default).
  • I help myself by clicking the "heroes" symbol which usually shows only the buildings as there are no heroes to build most of the time. This setting is remembered when closing and opening the city view but is lost when saving and reloading a game. Having this setting saved with the game would also solve my issue.

The first is possible we just switch the building and units list and the filters also. It would still say units for the first button and buildings for the second as that is part of the exe.
 
Other options that would lead to the same goal:
  • Have the buildings and not the units on top of the list (building list is the default).
  • I help myself by clicking the "heroes" symbol which usually shows only the buildings as there are no heroes to build most of the time. This setting is remembered when closing and opening the city view but is lost when saving and reloading a game. Having this setting saved with the game would also solve my issue.

The first is possible we just switch the building and units list and the filters also. It would still say units for the first button and buildings for the second as that is part of the exe.

Then I´d love to see this as an option. To have it as default probably would be too much for a change especially for first-time C2Cers.
 
I am looking into removing Cultures from Great Wonders and Resources and combining them into one new page probably called Cultures.

This will require a bit of XML work as well. I think that if we make all Culture resources have BonusClassType of BONUSCLASS_GRAIN and all culture buildings have SpecialBuildingType of SPECIALBUILDING_CULTURE that I can build a new page based/indexed on the culture buildings but displaying bits from both the current Great Wonder and the Bonus pages.

Attached are images of the current two pages and a mockup (very rough) of the new. The second requires was supposed to say "Requires in city vicinity:".

I have to check that the use of those classes above wont break stuff and it would need a way of getting the vicinity requirements into Python from the dll. We probably should change the building page(s) for vicinity also at some stage.
 
Next on my list of screens to work on is the city screen in particular
1) Extra Specialists from population, Doctors and Lawyers for a start. Also city specialist priorities.

2) Fuel gauge on main screen for the properties

3) an old request - a marker on the granary bar indicating how much food will be held over after population growth.​

My 3am idea on the specialists was to make the box containing the specialists a scrollable box and just continue with the single column. I have no idea how to do that yet or even if it will work.

For specialist priorities I was thinking of allowing one specialist to be prioritised in the city and one (or more) being banned in that city. This will require dll work, I think to remember these settings.

For the fuel gauges for the properties I was thinking that they would be similar in nature to the revolution fuel gauge showing the expected change (red for getting worse and green for getting better) plus the current value with some text saying good/bad and a hover over with more detail maybe with eventually clicking on gauge bringing up detailed information on the property and what is affecting it in the city.

Having said all this I am wondering if I should not give the C2C options screen a higher priority. What I would want from the options screen is an all in one place type thing that
  • shows all the options in related groups
  • has defaults for them
  • explains what they do
  • suggests which should be on when 9eg no need for neanderthal spawn or subdue animals if you start in the galactic era
  • has a sets of defaults that can be set by one click on the type of game you want.

So for example the part labeled Barbarians would have all the options relating to barbarian units
  • No Barbarians (= no barbarians, no animals and no Neanderthals)
  • Barbarian Civs
  • Raging Barbarians
  • Barbarian Generals
  • spawn rates for animals, neanderthals etc.
  • No Animals and No Neanderthals would set the spawn rate to zero for those for example.
 
For specialist priorities I was thinking of allowing one specialist to be prioritised in the city and one (or more) being banned in that city. This will require dll work, I think to remember these settings.
Ok. Not a problem. I'll put it on the high priority work list. Will be within weeks I should be able to provide this for you then. It's an easy job if its just reporting to python the on/off switches and the status.

Adding an Options category class and a tag on the Options is something I had planned too so I'll try to work that in at the same time.
 
Im really liking the culture civlopedia page idea. It always annonyed me how cultures were under great wonders and resources.
 
@DH: I was thinking about the specialist prioritization and began to wonder... how possible would it be to make this a function much like the espionage assignment against other leaders, a weighting method?
 
Thanks to Platyping we have specialist stacker that I designed few months ago

1 handles 3 columns of specialists types
2 show number of each specialist directly
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497337&page=2

Now we Can have up to 21 specialist types.

At first glance this may mean a complete throw out of what we have and a merge of the various bits back in again :sigh: I have a more through look at it later. It may solve the problem that the screen was letting you move free specialists when you could not which may have been the cause of the problem people were having of their specialists being moved around. We would at last need an indication on that screen as to how many are free and thus can't be moved.
 
Why is it so difficult to give the specialists a panel of their own that can scroll? (I'm no python modder so I'm just honestly asking here.)
 
Why is it so difficult to give the specialists a panel of their own that can scroll? (I'm no python modder so I'm just honestly asking here.)

That is what I wanted to do, but we aren't writing an interface we are telling the interface writer what we want and that is more difficult. Just look at the problems with the resources in the Foreign Adviser screen, it is easy to get the resources to scroll but not the numbers which tell you how many of the resource you have free.
 
Thanks to Platyping we have specialist stacker that I designed few months ago

1 handles 3 columns of specialists types
2 show number of each specialist directly
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497337&page=2

Now we Can have up to 21 specialist types.

Merging it in is beyond my skill level. The problem is that the bit of code being changed was also changed by the BUG mod, RoM and RoM:AND so I am not sure which bits are good and which not. I can figure out all but the last bit. :(
 
This is how the BUG one looks in HR mod, not sure if it still the same as C2C.

Since both are modifying how Specialists will show up in City Screen, obviously they will use the same bits of code.

Thus, if you prefer my version, you can pretty much replace the whole chunk there.
Since my version has a number directly, you no longer need
1) disabled/enabled icon
2) stacker icon
3) highlight borders

which is why I get rid of them all.
 

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Now that I have fixed the BUG Automations tab </link> problem I realise that many of those things being automated are not for workers but for captives.

This means that they should not be there at all or maybe there needs to be a new area on the screen for the captives. I think I should remove them from this screen. Agreed?

Also there are some improvements that are limited to specialist workers in particular
  • Place Machu Picchu - wonder unit (needs some work)
  • Inscribe Geoglyph - wonder unit (needs some work)
  • Build Moai (not implemented yet) culture unit Maori Worker only
Do these need to be highlighted in some way?
 
@DH

So we have 3 columns specialist stacker already implemented?
If not. what else must be solved to make it happen?
 
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