Requests for new components (and features)

[EmperorFool]

You aren't alone in misunderstanding how the espionage for city visibility and investigation work. When I saw cities become visible on the map one-by-one, I assumed it was just a neat effect that Civ did once you achieved "the level".

I do understand your ideas for a level. One thing at least to make it easier would be to add two icons next to each city name to handle vis/inv. Maybe there's enough room to widen the list of civs and add similar icons for the other passive missions.

For vis/inv at the civ level, we could have two or three colors for the icon to indicate number of cities (red = one, yellow = at least half, green = all) or something similar.

 

[dimon157]

Hi!
I am the developer of Main Screen Mod (Thread on this forum | Thread on russian forum).
I have some ideas for your great mod:
1. Minimum health / happiness of the Empire (It's much more useful then current era)
2. Here is combat XP counter, but your XP bar is better.
3. Tips for Oxford, Wall Street, Forbidden Palace
4. 2 values for domination victory if we are close to it. No need to show them if we are not close to that victory.

5. Detailed GP bar

6. 3 panels for cultural cities if we are close to cultural victory. No need to show them if we are not close to that victory.

7. If AI is willing to trade techs (Beaker)[very useful], large amount of gold (Gold icon) or some amount of gold per turn (number in "()").

8. If AI is willing to trade happy / health resources in case if we need them (our min health/happiness < 0). Show only 1 for happiness and only 1 for health (so maximum 2 icons here).

9. If AI is willing to trade strategic resource.
Note: elephant is strategic resource for early and middle eras.

 

[dimon157]

10. If AI is willing to trade resources for our corporations. Show only 1 corporation icon.

11. Informing the player while trying to build a coal plant without coal

12. Informing the player if some cities have citizen specialist (so here player should wheap or build some building for better specialist).

13. Warn, if someone (player or AI) is close to victory:
domination victory, culture victory, space race victory

In case if you need source code, I attached CvMainInterface.zip

 

[Psyringe]

I just had an idea for an alternative for a better "Replay" screen. If we cannot (easily) mod the replay screen, then perhaps we can make use of another place where lots of the info that I'd like to see on this screen are stored already?

I'm talking about the autolog. Would it be possible (and perhaps even easy?) to add an option that makes the autolog log *all* changes, not only those visible to the player at that time? This would make the autolog a perfect companion of the replay screen. It would also make the autolog a very valuable protocol of AI decisions, a good resource for understanding what the AI does and whether it's working as it should.

I realize that this would allow players to "cheat" by peeking into the log, but they can cheat by entering the worldbuilder as well, can't they? It's always up to the player whether he cheats or not, so having an optionally "complete" autolog is no different from having an in-game worldbuilder, imho. (And if that's really a concern, then the "unknown" parts of the autolog could be encrypted, and the player then gets a password at the end of the game which allows him to decrypt those parts, or something similar.)

Further expanding on this idea: Do you see any chance to automatically add map graphics or screenshots to the autolog? My imagination is probably running wild right now, but I thought asking wouldn't hurt.

 

[Cammagno]

Some of these ideas are great, I hope we'll implement them.
I like 3 (maybe another location), 4-6 (5 seems similar to our, what are the differences?), 7-12 (maybe with some tweak in the icons), 13(maybe with red and/or bold text)

 

[dimon157]

I'm glad that you like this ideas.
But it's strange that you ignored first idea (min happy/health), marked as "useful".
I'll prove you why it is very useful.
Good playing style supposes that player will avoid angry population and, probably, unhealth population.
So he should look at F1 screen very often. Thus, the idea of health/happy info on the main screen will save much time.
Yes, player can look at alerts for this purpose, but permanent info on main screen seems more convenient.
Note: not only I think that this idea is usuful, but players from russian forum too. Just try this idea and you'll agree with me.

----------------------------

Now, I'd like to talk about usability.
I, as a developer of main screen mod, found that if main screen is overloaded with info, players ignore much info, thus, main screen becomes a bit uncomfortable for them.
Steps, that I have done to clean main screen:
1) I cleared a word "Research:"

All players know that here is research. Less unnecessary info is better.
May be, following the same logic, clear GP char in GP bar.
2) Info of ideas #4 and #6 (domination parameters and culture parameters) is shown only when player needs that info (when he close to that victory), but not always.
3) Graphical information is better than text info, because player reads it faster and it needs less space on screen.
You did it (changed text to graphics) with research of AI, that player can see, if he have enough espionage points. This is very good. And how about replacing text in research bar? (Probably, this feature should be optional)

 

[Cammagno]

I'm glad that you like this ideas.

But I'm only a doc&translation guy, so we have to wait for code guy to tell something about this... and to tell the truth I'm surprised that they haven't yet

But it's strange that you ignored first idea (min happy/health), marked as "useful".
I'll prove you why it is very useful.
Good playing style supposes that player will avoid angry population and, probably, unhealth population.
So he should look at F1 screen very often. Thus, the idea of health/happy info on the main screen will save much time.
Yes, player can look at alerts for this purpose, but permanent info on main screen seems more convenient.

Yes, I think that for me alerts and frequent looks at F! will be enough, and I personally like to see also the era name on the top of the screen, but it's ok, in particular if alternates with era name or if it is placed elsewhere.

Now, I'd like to talk about usability.
I, as a developer of main screen mod, found that if main screen is overloaded with info, players ignore much info, thus, main screen becomes a bit uncomfortable for them.
Steps, that I have done to clean main screen:
1) I cleared a word "Research:"
All players know that here is research. Less unnecessary info is better.
May be, following the same logic, clear GP char in GP bar.

I agree

2) Info of ideas #4 and #6 (domination parameters and culture parameters) is shown only when player needs that info (when he close to that victory), but not always.

I agree again

3) Graphical information is better than text info, because player reads it faster and it needs less space on screen.
You did it (changed text to graphics) with research of AI, that player can see, if he have enough espionage points. This is very good. And how about replacing text in research bar? (Probably, this feature should be optional)

Uhm... I'll add the image to text instead of replace text with it.

 

[NikNaks]

In all honesty, I don't see why MainScreen and BUG don't combine efforts. I'm sure the language barrier wouldn't really be a problem, and we could help each other out to an extent.

As for the ideas, I like 4, 6, 10, 11 and 13 the best and I think that someone could put those in right away. Ideas 7 - 9 are dealt with by Civ4lerts, and I think 12 could be done in that way, too. 1 and 3 are great, but I reckon they'd be better suited to placement either on another screen, or somewhere else in the interface. It looks a little odd there. Finally, I'd like to know where 5 differs from our bar.

I can help out with new icons if you'd like them.

 

[dimon157]

Finally, I'd like to know where 5 differs from our bar

Sorry, I looked on wrong screenshot. There is no difference.

1 and 3 are great, but I reckon they'd be better suited to placement either on another screen, or somewhere else in the interface.

The point about 3rd idea is that icons are shown on main screen for a short part of game. For example, Oxford icon is shown from the moment of discovering Education and until player builds it. Note: word "Ok" that opposite Oxford means that required number of universities are build but Oxford is not build. When player builds Oxford, icon is no longer shown.

 

[NikNaks]

Ok, that makes sense. I'd still like to see them somewhere else on the screen, even just as an experiment. I've made a font file with nicer buttons to use for them. I'll send a PNG if you want to see them.

 

[Dresden]

Random comments from one of the code guys:

Research Bar Icon:
EF is more knowlegeable in this area, but I thought there were some layout problems with putting images on top of the research bars. The GG bar didn't switch to an icon until we added a font symbol for the GG and all the stuff on the GPP bar are font symbols. And while I do agree that icons are generally more useful than text, the research bar is so large and has been text-only for so long that it'd look weird to me. But it's something to consider.

Oxford/Wall Street/FP:
I like this idea but I'd want to change the implementation some. For example, right now you've got all the needed buildings hardcoded which is somewhat inflexible; we generally like to try and keep things mod-friendly so a much better idea is to use CyPlayer.getBuildingClassPrereqBuilding() and make the game tell us how many buildings are needed. That way if somebody messes with the Oxford prereqs or their world size information, we still give correct information. You also hardcode building and tech ID numbers rather than using gc.getInfoTypeForString() and don't adjust for UBs. I wouldn't be surprised if the Oxford counter didn't work right for Korea because they build Seowons instead of Universities. So while it is a neat and useful idea, it'll need some tweaking to be added.

It could probably also be made even more flexible and loop over all national wonders which have building prereqs. Perhaps even all buildings with multiple prereqs (like cathedrals) but then those would never leave the screen...

Pending Victory:
Another good idea, especially if it is only shown within a certain threshold. We've talked about domination counters before but it would make sense for culture and other conditions too. I wonder if potential rival victories would be better off in the same place rather than being put in the scoreboard. Regardless of where it's put, I don't know how intuitive those percentages are; perhaps there are clearer ways to present the information. There are also some hardcoding issues there such as with all the spaceship parts.

Warnings:
I'm partial to civ4lerts as a warning mechanism for things like trade possibilities, specialist assignments, health problems, etc. The messages aren't always on the screen but are always available (via CTRL-TAB) if you weren't watching so they help reduce the clutter and they also give details that you can't get in terms of the scoreboard such as the actual cities involved. A combination of civ4lerts and the domestic advisor is all I need to monitor health and happiness and so I wonder how useful something like that counter would be; I also wonder if there's a better place for it.

In summary, thanks a lot for both the ideas and the code. I'm sure some of them will see their way into BUG but it'll take some discussion and some tweaking.

 

[dimon157]

I thought there were some layout problems with putting images on top of the research bars. The GG bar didn't switch to an icon until we added a font symbol for the GG and all the stuff on the GPP bar are font symbols

I know about this problem. But even without font for the research images it's not a problem. For drawing research image x-coord is constant, y-coord depends only from (turns left for tech).length()

For example, right now you've got all the needed buildings hardcoded which is somewhat inflexible

Absolutely agree with you. When our russian team [2-3 guys ] developed mod, we didn't aim for flexibility. We wanted just to save time.

I don't know how intuitive those percentages are

I supposed in mod the following:
Domination
Here we need just 2 weight coefficients.
E.g. 20% for population and 80% for land (because land condition is much harder to achive)
Culture
arithmetical mean of 3 cities %
% of definite city = min[(it's culture / legengary culture); 1] * 100%
Space
0 % is when Apollo project is build.
% = (raw hammers invested / raw hammers needed) * 100%
"How much raw hammers needed?" is a good question.
Option #1: minimum
Option #2: maximum
Option #3: optimal for current game settings. For example, I build only 1 SS Engine at quick speed.

By the way, is it much work to translate this mod to russian?

 

[EmperorFool]

My lack of reply until now is simply due to lack of time. I wanted to a) see what others want as I tend to cater to the wishes of our users' first and b) wanted to be able to reply thoughtfully.

I've agreed with most of the comments so far, and yes these are very cool ideas.

#1: I have been thinking about how to make the alerts regarding happiness and health easier to use. My initial thought was to add icons at the top of the screen (next to the event log button, actually) that would appear if any city is unhappy or if any city will become unhappy this turn. They would have to be different icons, and the second icon would disappear when you fixed the last city.

However, I like the idea of showing the minimum values for each as well. I could use a hover for it, but that's not as nice. Any thoughts on how to combine these?

#3: Yes, I like these a lot. I'm constantly selecting a city so I can hover over the FP/OU/WS to see how many C/U/B I have left to build. Perhaps we can find a better word than "Ok". Do we even need a word? Wouldn't the icon with no info after it be enough to tell you that you now need to build the super building?

Also, its placement will not work as I've added the Min/Max Commerce Rate buttons which cause the numbers next to them to slide to the right by 40 pixels. I'm afraid the "x/y" text will get shoved into the on-screen messages. Can you please verify that? If it won't, then that place works for me.

#4 and #6: I think for this I would show the values only when both are close. In the screenshot, you're not anywhere close to the land necessary for a victory. It seems a waste of space to show that for 200 turns. Close should mean "close to a victory" not "close to 1 out of 2 requirements for victory".

#5: I assume that is BUG's GP Bar (the detailed percentage info at least). I'm totally fine with that, of course. I'm a big fan of cross-pollination.

#7: I'm a little hesitant about using these myself, mainly because in my games once I hit a certain point those icons will always be visible. Most every AI will trade Divine Right (no!), and my friends' enemies will trade gold (no!). But the main reason is that the scoreboard is getting HUGE.

Now, that's me. So I'm quite willing to add them for others to have available.

#8 and #9: Similar, but I think these I'm more likely to use myself.

For 7-9, I wonder if there's an easy way on the F4 tabs to denote techs and resources you don't care to receive and that should be ignored. That would be extra cool. These ones would also heavily benefit from adding multiple scoreboard views with buttons for changing the view on-screen. Heck, maybe even a default-view-by-era setup?

#10: Sure, same as #8.

#11: I don't quite understand this. Does it tell you that you used to have coal at some point, started building a Coal Plant, and now have lost access to coal? Or is it just telling you that you could be building a coal plant if you had coal?

#12: (Might say the same about #11) I would rather keep active-player-specific info out of the scoreboard given that it would never apply to the other civs. This seems very similar to #1. In any case, NikNaks has put the generic citizen icon into BUG's font file if you want to snag it for your use now. Pic == 1000 words and all.

#13: Hmm, BUG uses the orange fist for War Mobilization (WHEOOH) right now. I'd probably use the globe for domination since it's partially land-area-based and have NikNaks make us a cool rocket icon for Space Race.

Putting these into BUG

As I said I'm pretty short on time. I've been working on a few key things for BUG lately: 1) fix the problem with paths once and for all, 2) release a 3.5.1 in the interim, and 3) figure out a way to make the theme-based buttons easy to manage. That means it may be some time before I add the complex items here. I will probably tackle a couple of the easy ones just to feel productive.

I'd be more than happy to add them in if someone will do the work. I'd need a CvMainInterface.py file based on a specified revision # from BUG (you don't have to use the current version, but that would be so much easier for me), and the changes should be optional.

To make something optional, feel free to use "if True:" placeholders, and I will create the BUG options myself as I've made that dead simple to do now. If you do it yourself, please also provide the module config XML file, too.

 

[ruff_hi]

1. Minimum health / happiness of the Empire (It's much more useful then current era)
2. Here is combat XP counter, but your XP bar is better.
3. Tips for Oxford, Wall Street, Forbidden Palace
4. 2 values for domination victory if we are close to it. No need to show them if we are not close to that victory.
5. Detailed GP bar
6. 3 panels for cultural cities if we are close to cultural victory. No need to show them if we are not close to that victory.
7. If AI is willing to trade techs (Beaker)[very useful], large amount of gold (Gold icon) or some amount of gold per turn (number in "()").
8. If AI is willing to trade happy / health resources in case if we need them (our min health/happiness < 0). Show only 1 for happiness and only 1 for health (so maximum 2 icons here).
9. If AI is willing to trade strategic resource.
10. 10. If AI is willing to trade resources for our corporations. Show only 1 corporation icon.
11. Informing the player while trying to build a coal plant without coal
12. Informing the player if some cities have citizen specialist (so here player should wheap or build some building for better specialist).
13. Warn, if someone (player or AI) is close to victory: domination victory, culture victory, space race victory

1. this is more 'info' related - see later
2. no comment - pretty similar to BUGS
3. 'info' related -see later
4. 'info' related -see later
5. no comment - pretty similar to BUGS
6. 'info' related -see later
7. not sure about these - scoreboard is sometimes pretty cluttered as it is
8. see 7
9. see 7
10. see 7
11. see 7
12. see 7
13. 'info' related -see later

Info - there is an old 'info' mod that presents a whole bunch of data about stuff - very similar to alerts but it only fires when the user asks for it. It does spam the info panel which is one draw back. There was some discussion here about putting this stuff on a new screen (with panels) depending on what type of info it is. My view is that trying to fit all of this stuff on the main screen will be overload. Maybe we should code it up so that the player has the option regarding what gets displayed in the main screen (eg why care about religion spread when playing for a domination victory).

I'm thinking that we should have an info panel (transparent like the graph legend) that contains the stuff the player wants to show - just below the science et al spinners. Obviously hide stuff that is redundant.

Edit: Just saw EF response. Nothing majorly different between our views I think.

 

[dimon157]

#11: I don't quite understand this.

Player doesn't have coal.
Player builds coal plant.
Probably, it is a mistake. So inform him.

I'm thinking that we should have an info panel (transparent like the graph legend) that contains the stuff the player wants to show - just below the science et al spinners.

like this? (advice for culture victory)

 

[EmperorFool]

Cross-post ftw!

I thought there were some layout problems with putting images on top of the research bars.

The problem is that when you can embed icons directly into text, they are drawn a few pixels above the baseline of the text. It's ugly and I won't have it (don't ask, it's just not happening). For the GG bar the fix was easy since there was only one icon to handle.

For drawing research image x-coord is constant, y-coord depends only from (turns left for tech).length()

I think you mean the reverse (y constant, x based on length of # of turns text), and yes that would work. In fact, here I'd lax my perfectionism and allow the icon to be fixed and the text to be left justified next to it. Sure, the whole thing would be slightly off center in the bar, but the bar is so huge even I wouldn't notice it without counting pixels.

That being said, I think there's a point where you over-iconize an interface. I'd be happy with an option, though, for those that want it. I would still like to see Ruff's (IIRC) idea of showing multiple icons when you have several techs queued up.

Here we need just 2 weight coefficients.
E.g. 20% for population and 80% for land (because land condition is much harder to achive) . . .

I like these ideas of converting all of the victory conditions that make up each victory type into a single percentage per type. It would make displaying the information much easier, and the details are readily available on F8. We could use a single bar per victory type, and that's neat.

Another idea is to cycle the individual conditions like the clock can be (e.g. every quarter second): [land, pop, land, pop] or [city1, city2, city3, city1, city2, city3]. In fact, you would just have to cycle the conditions that haven't yet been met. Once you have the pop, only the land would show, etc.

By the way, is it much work to translate this mod to russian?

Unfortunately, yes. How much work depends on how tech-savvy you are. I haven't looked at how the Russian translation is done, but I can take a guess given that there are five language slots defined, and these are positionally-tied to the <Language> XML tags from what I could tell.

There are two methods I can think of:

Easy Method

Replace language X with Russian. All you have to do is edit all the CIV4GameText XML files, overwriting the Spanish translations with Russian ones et voila! The names of the languages for each slot are specified in a similar XML file so they can be displayed in the options screen.

Hard Method

Create a new DLL (is this actually required?) that will handle an additional language. I think this is how the community Russian translation is currently done, but I don't know for sure. Can someone that's installed it answer if there's a custom CvGameCoreDLL.dll file in it?

In either case, using an XML/XSLT tool might allow you to create the Russian translations separate from BUG and then insert them into BUG after installing it. I haven't looked into this, but easily merging data is one of the key features of XML.

 

[EmperorFool]

Player doesn't have coal.
Player builds coal plant.
Probably, it is a mistake. So inform him.

I thought you couldn't build a coal plant without coal. If I'm wrong, then yes I suppose it's a worthy warning. Again this one should move elsewhere as it will only apply to the active player. You shouldn't get to see when rivals are doing the same.

The reason I suggest this is that BUG's Advanced Scoreboard lines up all of the columns across players. In the regular scoreboard, the active player's line is much shorter since many of the items will never show for you (research, borders, network, attitude, war). This leaves a lot of space in your mod, but in BUG the active player's line is just as wide as everyone else's.

 

[dimon157]

I thought you couldn't build a coal plant without coal.

I made this mistake several times in 3.13. Not sure about 3.17

In my mod I hid civilization's names (and colored scores) and found it good to save space

 

[EmperorFool]

I'm thinking that we should have an info panel (transparent like the graph legend) that contains the stuff the player wants to show - just below the science et al spinners. Obviously hide stuff that is redundant.

I like this idea. I would probably put it on the right side of the screen, though. since it would probably be hard to read the stack-hover unit list with this beneath it. Of course, the right side has the scoreboard. How about the center of the screen, right below the on-screen event messages?

 

[ruff_hi]

I was thinking the info pane on the left, forgot about the huge list of units. A hot key to show / hide the info pane would fix that problem without too much pain.

Spoiler :

haha

Re the Russian translation - I am pretty sure the HOF guys did something for this - might be an idea to check their mod.