User Interface Tweaks

Very good job.
Liked all the changes, if I may suggest something, make the working tile icon(little civilian) smaller.
Thanks you very much, playing with it now.
 
Amazing stuff all arround. I really enjoyed your work on the icons. The fact that a city can have only 3 tacjets and you made an icon for each of them is amazing compared to the old system.


Since you are so good at modding, I got a question: Is it possible to turn off movement/combat animations during AI turns? I want to see my animations only but i want fast AI turns.
 
A small question/suggestion to the author : do you know the Endless games (Endless Space and Endless Legend), if "yes" do you think it is possible to implement some element of their great interface (the right click thing in particular)?

Believe me, I would love to! Unfortunately, as a standard in the Civ games, right clicking is meant as a fairly safe thing to do, in that it will only ever open up the info screen on whatever you've clicked on. I don't want to take this away and possibly confuse people.


That said, I have no idea how many people actually use that feature... I know that for me, the tooltips give me enough information that I never need to actually look at the civilopediea.
 
Hotkey! Hotkey! :thumbsup:

Regarding citizen management. To remove the citizen buttons completely would definitely smooth out the interface so no more confusions regarding "what do I do here". To be honest, those buttons are extra anyway. For someone who knows to manually adjust citizens, using just the hexes might be better.

What kind of highlighting are you considering?
  • Like planetfall red-boundary? I think this is great for contiguous, connected plots. But say you have a city at 5 pop and spread out on plots that are not next to each other, it could look ugly?
  • Orbital unit coverage? I don't really like this as it makes the yields a little harder to see.
I guess this is something that can only be done by trial and error, to find a way that is clear yet unobtrusive.
 
What kind of highlighting are you considering?

When you mouse over each of the hexes, it highlights them with a colored hexagon. I was considering re-using those to display which tiles are being worked or are taken. It might look a little cleaner, as the big round citizen buttons are fairly obtrusive IMO.

  • Red - Blocked
  • Green - Is currently being worked
  • Teal/blue/grey (not sure which) - Is forced work
  • Faded Yellow - Can be purchased
  • Orange - Being worked on by another city

Looking at the existing code, seems they already coded up a similar system, but left it commented out.

On a similar line, I was also considering hiding all of the tile purchase costs, only display them when you mouse over the hex?
 
I'm not sure about using colors for different things. It means players have to learn extra rules regarding citizen management. But I think this idea is worth experimenting.

Firstly, for blocked, I actually think the original crossed swords is much better, it is a clear-no-mistake representation. You can't click on it to place citizens anyway.

For plots used by another city, maybe it's better to use grey? It's a plot that is sort of "out-of-the-equation" in terms of citizen management, but can be brought in if one desires.

Otherwise I think this really is something one has to see and actually play with, to know how it turns out.

For the tile purchase costs, I actually think these are really the biggest culprit. I'd definitely like to try a version that doesn't rely on these buttons. IIRC Civ V had us first click on a "purchase plot" then choose the plot we want to buy, wasn't it?

PS: also need to make sure the can-purchase plot highlights don't cover up the pink highlight that is used currently to show the next border expansion.
 
Looking through this LUA file, I notice they actually have a sort by science yield function but commented out. Another piece of clue that this game was rushed out the door.

I did a quick fix for more sorting options, edited at line 206 - 212 and 303 - 327.

To add more trade route sorting options replace ChooseInternationalTradeRoutePopup.lua and ChooseInternationalTradeRoutePopup.xml in: <steam dir>\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\assets\UI\InGame\Popups

@IphStich feel free to include that in your dlc if it is useful =)
 
This is actually very nice! I think I would actually prefer this over any kind of buttons hovering above the plots.

EDIT: Obviously the overlapped tile button is fine, you don't get that all the time anyway. The way each plot gets a citizen button is what causes the clutter IMO.
 
Your mod is amazing, thank you!

I prefer the green hexes rather then the big button over the tile.
 
Thank IphStich this is awesome. I'm using it in the DLC folder instead of Steam for the time being but will probably switch to the SteamWorkshop version for easier updates soon.

Anyway, I noticed one thing and not sure if it's intended or a bug, but I had two trade convoys up for renewal in one turn and there were two auto-renew icons (with two different previous route cities). I opened up the assign trade route options and both of those cities showed previous routes above their names. I selected one for the first trade convoy and then my second trade convoy unit turn popped up and there was just the single auto-renew icon and only one previous route in the trade options. It seemed that it if there is more than one trade convoy waiting assignment in once city then it shows both of the previous routes. The unit orders UI still looked clean and works fine so I don't think it's an issue but wanted to mention it. I didn't try the hotkey to see what would happen but I will next time. Sorry for not having a screenshot or save file (at work) but I'll try and get those posted tonight/tomorrow.
 
Anyway, I noticed one thing and not sure if it's intended or a bug, but I had two trade convoys up for renewal in one turn and there were two auto-renew icons (with two different previous route cities).

Working as intended. The alternative would be to hide only one of them. Unfortunately, the game doesn't bother to distinguish between which convey did which route previously.

I think it's better that people can make an informed choice on which route to keep, rather than hiding one of the two routes.

But I'm only one person. If you guys want me to remove the second button, it's really not hard.
 
I did a quick fix for more sorting options, edited at line 206 - 212 and 303 - 327.

To add more trade route sorting options replace ChooseInternationalTradeRoutePopup.lua and ChooseInternationalTradeRoutePopup.xml in: <steam dir>\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\assets\UI\InGame\Popups

@IphStich feel free to include that in your dlc if it is useful =)

Thanks! Sorry for the delay in replying. This is very useful, and I'm going to include it in the next version I upload.

There were just a couple things higher in priority so I ignored it till recently

:)
 
Yeah the two buttons comes from having two convoys available for orders in the same turn. In practice it doesn't really matter since the main reason for a Previous Route button is to streamline the "manual automation" of trade routes. That means we don't really care that much about slight changes in the yield.

For me I mostly just use the 'R' hot key and don't even look at the yields anymore. So the double button doesn't bother me.
 
Is it possible to add a choice of 1 trade route per city, reduced yield, no auto plant trade route (as in "better trade" mod) with this? I'd like to at least get a HoF record for my games and maybe even achievements from my game to at least get SOME reward out of the game. And as it stands now, this and "better trade" mods are the 2 essentials that would make me come back and play before patches start rolling.
 
Is it possible to add a choice of 1 trade route per city, reduced yield, no auto plant trade route (as in "better trade" mod) with this? I'd like to at least get a HoF record for my games and maybe even achievements from my game to at least get SOME reward out of the game. And as it stands now, this and "better trade" mods are the 2 essentials that would make me come back and play before patches start rolling.
Sorry, as mnf said, this mod is intended to be a purely interface mod, with no changes to the actual gameplay.


On a related note. How about this change for the trade route selection list:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13547679&postcount=9
That's not a bad idea...


In other news: NEW VERSION UP!

Changes:
  • Continued revamp of the city worker management system. Removed almost all icons to remove clutter. This can be turned off entirely by clicking the "simple view" checkbox at the top left of the city view.
  • Added a number of additional sort options to the trade route list. Special thanks goes to Cairdazar for this.
  • Added a map option that highlights all tiles that contain miasma that are outside of the fog of war. The miasma inside fog of war shouldn't need this (as it glows). This feature is defaulted to ON everytime you start or load a game.
  • You can now mouse over the minimap on the top right to enlarge it for a better view. Sorry it looks so bad, but I have no control over its quality. All I can do is stretch the image.
  • You can now set 'fast turns' for each player on an individual basis, and you can even do this for aliens. This is done from the diplomacy / relationships tab, by clicking the checkbox next to the civ you want to enable fast turns for. Fast turns simply turn on quick combat and quick movement when it reaches that player's turn.
 
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