In the meantime:

Call for artists!
Although not strictly necessary for a functional Interface, appropriate pictures, backgrounds & icons would spice them up nicely!

Anyone up for it?

Specifics of what's needed will hopefully become apparent as model coders make it known what their interface will consist of...

To model coders!
If you could give me a very quick rundown of what kind of interaction you see the user having with your model, I'll check if the current Image, List, Button, Slider and Text ClashComponents are sufficient to do it!

Also, how will we work model-specific interface coding? If I just make it clear what ClashComponents can do and post a demo & source (for DiplomacyUI), can I leave it up to specific coders to go ahead & do their own thang?

For the normal game interface we will limit player interaction to the historical abilities of the rulers. We are assuming an ancient civilization, so I think the following data would be appropriate:

Tier 1 techs are simply not shown.
Tier 2 techs are sometimes shown if asked for.
Tier 3 techs and applications are presented if asked for.
Tech Tags are always presented, and are the main focus of the presentation.

There should be a quick overview of tech in the main civ status screen. This would have a basic summation of tech prowess, with quick descriptions for anything really unusual or important. This way the player should see any problems or advantages quickly. If no quotes appeared and the overall analysis was fine, the player would know they could ignore the tech system for a while.

For more detail, the player clicks on this box to go to the tech overview screen. Here, info is displayed as follows:

If no standard of comparison exists, the topic is not shown. For example, if you don't know about the infrastructure of any other civ, you won't have any standard or ability to analyze things and your people wouldn't even think to analyze them.

After a while, changes will be reported for some topics. For example, the advisor might say, "Our water systems are better than they were in our fathers' generation.

If you know enough about another civ, you are given comparisons. For example, "The Parthians have much better cavalry than we do."

To present this data, I think that we should also use the "advisor" approach where all data is presented as communications from some official. This could be pictographic when presenting overviews, and quotes when giving details. The pictographic could be something as simple as thumbs up or thumbs down. (Are the forum icons public domain? They would be a good temporary measure until we get an artist to do something better.)

So when you looked at a list you'd see something like this:

Farming:
Government:
Infrastructure:
Military:

Clicking on a part of the list would bring up a more detailed message and possibly a recommendation, like:

• Our ability to grow food is atrocious! The barbarians feed themselves better! We should capture barbarian slaves and make them grow food for us.
  
• Our government systems do not seem to be working very efficiently. Our allies are doing better with their government, so we should ask them what to do.
  
• Our methods for building infrastructure are about the same as everyone else's.
  
• Our military units are the best in the known world! We should exploit this advantage while keeping our secrets to ourselves.
  

Most games like this have rather primitive interfaces. It is often very hard or time consuming to get basic data about your civ. So I propose that we take advantage of something that is proven to be an effective way of managing complex things: A database.

I think a database would be a good way to deal with a big, complex civ. We should be able to make a QBE interface that allows players to quickly and easily discover important info about their civ. They could sort mapsquares by population, infraclass quality, research generation, garrison troops, or any other game feature. This could be used by both the player and AI to spot potential problems. For example, sorting the squares by unhappiness and police presence would quickly make a list of the places most likely to riot. Or the player could use the database to sort the squares by population density and quality of medical infrastructure to see what places are at the biggest risk for disease. With a good database, the possibilities are almost endless. I think the player's ability to query almost any information would make the game superior.

I think it could also help the AI. This kind of sorting could quickly alert the computer to potential problems, and it should take less computations than checking squares individually. It could also allow the player to define custom AI governors. The player would order the governor to do certain database queries and act based on the lists generated.

Obviously it would take a bit of work to set up this database structure, but I think the interface rewards would be well worth it. The player would have a quick and easy way to obtain virtually any data about the civ.

Now all we need to do is find someone with experience programming databases, preferably databases used by business or management. I wonder where we could find someone like that

Since i have some experience of programming database i'm just qurious if you are thinking reding in 'the database' when opening a game or having it saved in the file all the time. Considering how much space it will need on the disk versus how long it will take to read in.

I would say that it's smarter to read it in every time (why have the same information twice in every file). But you could also do it the other way around. Have the database first and 'create' the world from the database. I think this is even better.

Also, are you going to do this database with some of the usual tools like Visual Basic or Oracle?

I think that the basic save file could be the database. If it contains all of the data, the game could use it to load the world and there would be no need for a seperate ".sav" file. A big advantage of this would be that scenario designers could edit the save file directly if they needed to.

Of course, we would have to figure out a way to prevent cheating like this. Multiplayer games would probably have to be saved in a more secure format. (People might still be able to hex-edit things, but that's a different problem.)

I'm not a database programmer so I don't know about how the guts of the system would work. We might want an object oriented database so we could include the methods in there as well. It would be great if we could use some tool that allowed non-programmers like myself to do the repetitive work of building the world.

Would it be possible and useful to base the editing tools like the technology editor or ecology editor on this database? It seems like that would be a powerful, unified system for non-programmers to build the world directly.

I'm baaaaack.

Sorry to be out of pocket for the last week. Darned work keeps interfering with the really important things in life . . .

I agree with ya'll both. In fact, that is the architecture we're using for the final product. All the game data will be stored in a database. A serialized object named 'GameData' will store all the gamedata at runtime.

So, for practical purposes, the GUI interface can access any and all game info thru the 'GameData' object via simple 'getters' -- methods like getGameDate(), getAllMapSquares(), that kind of thing. This will make game tools like the tech builder a snap to make, as you point out.

Altho I would disagree about the 'saved game' -- I would rather save that runtime 'GameData' object out as a binary, serialized file, for a variety of reasons.

So perhaps some of the search functions could cost the player money. The player would order the search, and then an advisor would say something like "Finding that information will take the royal staff three years and cost 50 gold." Then the player could select "Send out Agents" or "Never Mind" The information would arrive at the beginning of the next turn, assuming five year turns.

The cost would be based on the complexity of the search, the size and abilities of the government bureaucracy, and the technology level. A big, advanced government staff could take a certain number of surveys per turn without additional cost. Of course, they would require a large annual salary.

After the information is gathered, it is stored and you can access it for no cost. But the information will grow out of date, often requiring a new survey.

I think this would enhance historical flavor, making the game seem like a business application. It would also be a poweful disincentive for micromanagement. If it costs the player to do detailed searches, then there will be no advantage to endlessly tweaking minor things. It would cost more than it helps.

It also prevents endless tweaks to find the perfect set of numbers. If it takes a turn for information to arrive, it isn't possible to indulge in excessive fine tuning of the numbers.

It'll have to be an 'advanced' option, I'd guess. I don't know if your casual player would like it.

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 10-30-2000 01:17 PM I have an idea for the search functions that could enhance the game and prevent excessive micromanagement. For most of history, information has been hard to come by. When the king of England wanted to survey the land, it took a lot of money and manpower to produce the Domesday Book.

Here's a radical idea...

Rather than using this idea for just searches, how about we use it for all economic, demographic, and governmental info? So endless tweaking is pointless since you are tweaking something that may have little to do with the game 'reality'. To get reasonably good info it would, as you say above, cost money or dedicated governemental resources. There would also be free updates available occasionally that wouldn't give the right values, but would at least report obvious changes. Like that Rome has grown from something like 100k people to more like a million.

This idea would also be an advantage for bandwidth of the client-server operations in multiplayer since the server need only report new econ/govt/etc. info when a survey is conducted. (Surveys of broad nature will only be common getting into the modern era.) That means relatively little info (mostly player orders for econ etc. and things like troop movements) will be needed each turn.

This idea might have some downside to it that hasn't occurred to me yet... What's everyone think?

Basically, my view of interface is as follows:

If the object at hand is something that the rulers cannot know, like raw technology or ecology data, is is simply not displayed. Data for these models comes in through an advisor-based interpreter that displays comparisons and simple status reports. See the tech model above. This would be more realistic, and a lot easier on the player. Instead of wading through a sea of numbers, the player scans a list of small pictographic icons. In the example above, the player would scan for the red faces that represent where the civ's technology has fallen far behind the neighbors. In the ecology model, the player might toggle a map layer that displayed similar icons: exclamation marks where there is a problem, checks where things are fine, etc.

For things that governments can be are expected to know, like economic or populaton data, the ruler must commission searches like real governments. They pay to do surveys of the civ, and the surveys arrive after an amount of time. The cost and time of the survey are based on the level of the civ's government and bureaucracy. The actual searching is done using a database loaded with all the relevant game data.

After the survey arrives, presumably in the form of raw data, the player should be able to do database-type searches on the data: For example: "List all tiles in descending order of the tax revenue they generate, and display the cost of maintaining the military units in those tiles." That way, the player could easily see data comparisons in a single list.

Some players Will want to see a big readout of, for example, all the tech levels. I'm one of them . The reason is that a lot of the effect of the technology Web depends on achieving specific numbers. If I am racing for Gunpowder, I want to know how close I am! It's not historically accurate, but its IMO and important feature in 4X type games. I agree that the kind of more-realistic interface that you are looking for will appeal to many players. But I think there are also many who will want more details. I expect we'll need to do both. Anyway, playtesting and opinions from the public are needed to resolve this IMO.

1)

Make the text box that displays messages display them in hypertext. If it says "Romans captured the square" then clicking on the "square" part should lead to the square being highlighted.

This can be expanded to include hyperlinks for information. (So if you click on odds you get the help info for odds.) "Hyperlinks for info" should be adjustable by the user, so that once he gets used to all the nifty things in the game he can turn it off and get a higher ratio of black to blue text.

Maybe the messagebox should be set to display only messages for this year, with a possible backlog.

2) The interface for managing provinces/squares must become better. After playig for 30 mins I still don't know if I was playing around with settings for a square, a province or the entire empires base settings.

Richard, your ideas sound good too. We can certainly try them on a trial basis.

What I think we should be attempting, is to have one main area of game play. (Most likely the main world map.) The more information we can display from that one area, the better. As it stands now, I get the impression that if I want information about this thing, I have to go to this window, and if I want information about that thing, I have to go to that window. Am I way off base here? I would almost picture having a central area that dynamically changes what information is being displayed based on user selection. Maybe a set of radio muttons that can switch between graphs of military strength, economic power, civ growth, etc.

Let me know if any of this makes sense, or if I'm simply describing what's already happening. I'm only a few days into this, so bear with me.

One last thing, in a lot of the posts the term "model" is used. When I hear the term model, I think of a 3d model. I'm getting the impression that is not what you all are referring to. When you say model are you referring to like the "Military" section of the code? Is it basically analogous to a package? Just want to make sure my terminology is the same as everyone else’s.

The technology model is dealt with by a seperate screen, as are several others. I can't think of any way to put that on the main map. There are several things that just seem to require a "paperwork" or "accounting" interface.

For better or worse, we seem to be following the civ2 method of interface. The database was actually meant to simplify interface. In civ, you had to click on every city individually and make policies individually. The database idea is an attempt to centralize all of that, so you can give a certain order to all regions with certain attributes.

So ideally there would be two main viewports: the map and the Government Policies section. The map would be used for troop movement and an overview of the empire, and the other would be used for setting policies.

Perhaps we could display information on the map in the form of Sim-City style colored overviews. Clicking an "Economic Data" box would overlay symbols or color graphs on the map showing the economic production of the regions of your civ. Then the player could press tab or something and the map would be replaced by the economic database in the policy section.

I don't really think it's possible to fine-tune the interface to make it friendly for first-time players yet. There's simply way too much of the development process yet to come... We've just got a different opinion on the kind of interface we like to work with. I like to have as much of the information in front of me as possible to see the big picture without needing to make a Single mouse click. It partly comes from my having a repetitive strain injury where a lot of mouse clicking actively Hurts. I think in the fullness of time we can put together an interface with various options that will make us all happy. A beginning player can start with a very streamlined interface, but an info junkie should be able to get their fix also.

So my proposition to you, is to devise a main interface that will keep you happy, while giving me little windows that I can leave on top that will show the various things that I want to see all in one view. Especially during playtesting we will need to make Lots of information available to the players, even sometimes things that they may not be able to see in the final game. You can either present your ideas on how to make your single-focus screen work, or just code it up and see what people think. But please also give the functionality of this stuff in demo 4 selectable as an option. Actually, as a bunch of individual options is better...

As Richard says, there are parts of the game that are going to absolutely require stand-alone control panels. But I think your vision of trying to try as much into one screen as possible can go a long way if implemented right.

Think of "models" as models of how a particular part of the world works, be it military, the economy, etc.

Richard:

I think that the game controls should use at most as much space as the interface on a web browser. This example would use less than that.

As I understand it, the game could basically be broken down into a finite group of functionality. You have military actions (moving troops, participating in battles, creating military units, etc.), Foreign Political Actions (Spying, treaties, trade policies, etc.), Academic Actions (basically the tech tree), Domestic Political Actions (Government type, quelling riots (military?), resource managements, etc). Am I missing any? Anyway, you design a standard window layout that is consistent across all groups. These standard windows then dynamically change what is contained in them depending on which group you are currently dealing with. For example, if you were dealing with the military group, the largest window would be the world map showing all military units. You would be able to move, engage in battle, and all other military actions from this window. The sub windows would then be responsible for giving the basic information you need. Troop formations, strengths, etc.

This could be implemented in a pretty straightforward way. The generic interface layout is simply the frame definitions. Then each group (Military, Foreign Political, Academic, etc.) has its own set of canvases, action listeners, etc. When a player moves from one group to another, we simply have to associate the appropriate canvases, action listeners, etc to the generic frames and we're in a whole new interface. All of this switch of functionality would be controlled through one frame along the top or bottom that is consistent across all groups.

I don't know if I'm explaining this clearly or not. It might be something easier to show rather than tell. I'll see if I can get some mock-ups made.

As a final comment, I looked through all the stuff on your page Richard, and really like the icon idea on the troops. I don't know what the general consensus was, but the more information you can give the player without them having to do anything, the better.

Hopefully at least something from the above is understandable, let me know were you would like clarification, and I'll try and get some pictures to help explain what I'm talking about.

I think your general take on it is pretty good. I'm not sure it has the ultimate level of flexibility that we'll need (at least that I want ), but the most important thing now is to get up something that does the job. In the long term I would really like the flexibility to put up whatever components I want together. That means they need to be able to share the screen even if they are from different areas of functionality.

The demo 5 code now has an overall appearance rather like the d4 version. This is Not the ultimate design goal, but rather is something that will let playtesters work with the existing models and give feedback on their quality and fun value. (fun of the models, not the playters )