PLE Buttons

[NikNaks]

Okay, me and EF were discussing the best way to display the PLE filter buttons. The new buttons are marginally bigger than the old. So, here are the options (subject to change):

1. Squeeze the buttons onto the bar, removing some gaps.
   Pros: Would be easiest and quickest
   Cons: Would look very squashed and aesthetically poor
2. Remove the view button and turn it into an option on the options screen
   Pros: Frees up the space we need
   Cons: Makes it more difficult to switch between modes
3. Make some buttons "cyclic" (in the same manner as the view buttons are now)
   Pros: Frees up room needed, and also leaves space for more (presets?)
   Cons: Bigger learning curve to use and may take more clicks to achieve the effect you want
4. A combination of 2 & 3
5. Put the buttons on two rows (see post #2)
   Pros: Frees up the room, without sacrificing usability
   Cons: May look aesthetically odd. Mock-up coming
6. Turn the PLE filtering system into a menu-based one (see post #4), removing the city scroll buttons - Mock-up
   Pros: Removes the buttons, making it look less cluttered
   Cons: Makes it a lot harder to use and is less intuitive; Loses the city scrolling buttons
   Could also be used by removing the flag and button the menus there
7. The flying rabbit option
8. Other

 

[EmperorFool]

Make some buttons "cyclic" (in the same manner as the view buttons are now)
Cons: Bigger learning curve to use and may take more clicks to achieve the effect you want

At the risk of revealing my bias, let me expand on this one. It will almost always require more clicks to use cyclic filter buttons.

To see only healthy units now, you click the Healthy filter button. To return to normal you click it again.

With a cyclic button, you'd click it once to show healthy units just as before, but to return to normal you'd have to click it twice. The "almost" above is because you can always click the Clear Filters button to return every filter to normal.

Sure, that's not so bad. Where the learning curve comes in is that to view injured units, you click the Healthy filter button twice. Granted, we can use a gray plus sign for the Health filter. And for Foreign/Domestic we can use a gray flag (too bad, color-blind players).

So far so good. It's not all that ugly. Here's the real issue: what should the buttons look like for the other filter types when they are not active?

What symbolizes "filter civilian and military"? How do we fit a tank, plane and boat onto a single button for "filter domain", or what else could we use?

#5: Here's an option I had contemplated before but never tried: stagger the filter buttons on two rows.

Instead of Healthy and Injured side-by-side, we move the Injured button up and to the left so it's diagonal to the Healthy button. This gives some room for the filters to the right to slide left.

    P       m  I  S    M  F  
V  G U  C  M  H  L A  C  D

The letters should line up with the current buttons IIRC. For example, H is Healthy and I is Injured; M is Can Move and m is Cannot Moved; LSA are Land, Sea, Air. This would require shifting the unit icons up a little, but I think it would give us enough room.

 

[Dresden]

At first glance, I don't like removing the view button because there are times when I want to quickly change that to something else and then back in order to get a better view of the city screen or map; having to open up the options window to do that would just suck. Of course I could probably train myself to use one of the filter buttons to hide most of the units instead...

Just how "squashed" would they be under option 1? Is there a mockup we can look at? Also, could the spacing be somewhat dynamic so that they only get squashed on lower resolutions?

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

Replace the city scroll buttons (which I've never used) with combo PLE buttons that show popup menus with options. I don't really care whether they're next to the plot list or not, personally. Move the end turn button to the inside of the corner of the flag area.

That or you could just remove the stupid flag entirely and put something useful there.

 

[NikNaks]

Here's a mock-up of EF's idea. I think it looks reasonable enough.

 

[EmperorFool]

That's exactly what I was describing. I think it would only look nice if we built a little dock for them to sit in. I'd much rather find a nicer solution.

Oh, and to your question, Dresden, yes the widescreen version could easily spread the buttons out.

 

[NikNaks]

We could, as OnmyojiOmn suggested, remove the flag and put them there. Thoughts?

 

[EmperorFool]

The only problem with that is that the flag area is used when a city is selected, specifically in the City Screen. This is precisely when you'd need access to the non-filter buttons--the ones I'd rather put there if any go there.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

Then get rid of the 3D unit/building display in the lower-left corner and put a panel of buttons there that looks like the governor buttons on the city screen.

Or, hide the 3D display and move the city screen's governor controls in place of it, have the usual unit icon show when not in the city screem, and put controls for PLE/BUG in the governor/flag area.

 

[NikNaks]

That sounds like a neat idea to me.

 

[EmperorFool]

Putting some PLE buttons where the unit icon goes (in the build queue) would hide the promotions for the selected unit in the main interface. This okay?

 

[Dresden]

Personally, I don't like removing the flag to claim that space for PLE. I am one of the few people that actually uses the flag to open up my capital fairly often and since the 2 SDK mods I most often use (Better AI & UP) put their version strings in the flag hover text, I hover over it quite a bit to verify what DLL I currently have running.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

Putting some PLE buttons where the unit icon goes (in the build queue) would hide the promotions for the selected unit in the main interface. This okay?

Yeah, that would be bad because you can't mouse over promotions in unit popups. The text for unit stats in the lower-left corner can be condensed, and promotions can be laid out in horizontal rows underneath. Or, make an icon for unit level and display the three stats as icons and numbers to the right of the unit name.

 

[EmperorFool]

Okay, how about this new option for the 4 View Type buttons (currently cyclic) and the 2 Group Mode (cyclic), Promotion and Upgrade buttons (these four modes combined into a single set just like the 4 View Types).

• The button on the main line shows the current mode (just like View Type now).
• Clicking the button hides all the unit icons and draws the 4 mode buttons in a vertical or horizontal line centered above it.
• Clicking one of the new buttons switches to that mode.

​

Since the View Types are displayed as a single button already, this would open up the space of two buttons plus we could remove the gap between these two current groups.

 

[NikNaks]

I really like that. It'd make the interface a lot more dynamic, but it'd still look good.

 

[The Doc]

OnmyojiOmn's idea is really neat. The only downside I'm thinking of right now may be the lack of space when another option is added. Because such a box is a very tight concept and cannot be expanded easily.
EF's idea is quite nice, too. It's easy to understand and it reduces the maximum number of clicks you need to get to an option from 3 to 2. Plus if you accidentally clicked too often you don't have to cycle through all of the options again. I like it.