Overall Clash Interface Design

[L o k i]

What better way to explain something than showing it?

Example

The first one is the bottom layer, completely pink. Anything that is THIS color, the main-map will sit on.

If I draw over the top of that pink layer, it will become the interface. Which ya can see on the 2nd image.

So if I want to put a circle on the top left corner, and an image in it, I can, and it won't interfere with anything.
[This message has been edited by L o k i (edited January 11, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Yeah, images is a good idea. We could potentially ship a bunch of different size and shape images designed to go with each interface. But when the user customizes, say the Diplomacy interface, once there are done and ready to save it, a routine could go in and put images were they seem to fit. Alternatively, the player could be made available with the images in the "image palette" and be able to put them where they like. Sounds great to me!

When you think of how much customizability we are looking for, think "sky's the limit". Essentially the user should be able to call up a variety of screens, and in each screen have whatever widget, of whatever size, and whatever position they like. These widgets will generally be controls (sliders, checkboxes, etc.), maps (small or large maps showing a variety of information), pictures (image of character "Governor" for diplomacy) and text areas. The reason a person might want a map in their diplomacy control screen, is that that map would serve a different purpose from the main map. It would probably be zoomed out, fairly small, and showing whole civs by their color, perhaps with their total military power shown by the size of a unit icon characteristic of their technology place on the map. It could also show the relative economic power of all competitors. Or it could show different alliance blocks. Whoever set it up, gets to determine what the map should show.

I think your idea of putting the main map always in the background will be good if the player wants a couple small windows showing different things. For something like a customized diplomatic interface, having just little bits of the map show up here and there would be more annoying than useful IMO. I'm sure you meant to use it as the former rather than the latter...

[L o k i]

Hey yo Mark, posting at the same time is too scary for me, don't do that again k? hehe

[Dobermann]

Loki, I liked the example but I have two points to consider.

1, The three 'menus'. Isn´t this what people complained about in CTP. They had to flip through several screens to get things done. (..with cities that is). Of course diplomacy isnt used as much, but it is going to be a big part of the game...no. But if this example is just one among many possible customizable screens then there not a problem..

2, How about being able to click and drag those menus out on the pink area, where it forms a separate window.
Ex, the sliders...u click and drag them unto the pink area. there it forms a windows. then u can choose to have the sliders horizontal or vertical

I like the idea of having the main map fully visable though

[Darren_McGuicken]

I see quite a few interesting points have been raised in my absence... excellent! Keep them coming! I'll have more time to respond properly and in more depth tomorrow, but for the time being, and for what it's worth, here's my take:

On Overlay Based Interfaces

As far as I'm concerned, at the moment this is something of a non-issue (no offence intended, Loki, the demo shots look great! ). I tried to anticipate this requirement when I was first putting down the window-based code, that's why I decided on a 'desktop' approach.

As the code stands now, when a new component is created it's automaticaly assigned an internal frame - ie. its own window. However, by passing a boolean value to the appropriate constructor, it can instead be embedded directly into the desktop, bordered or unbordered according to preference.

It's hard to know how just much sense that last paragraph made to non-coders I'll post a demo screenshot tomorrow at some point to show what I mean. Basically, yeah, both desktop & component backgrounds can already be set to transparent pink (as it were), so if a model interface, or even the entire game, runs inside one of my ComponentHolders, anything that would normally be shown in a window (even the main map, diplomacy controls etc.) can be placed straight onto the background without one, then any suitable graphic placed on top (I've still to write the code for that part).

It shouldn't be overly difficult, when we've finalised component design, to put together some kind of 'architect mode' into a ComponentHolder's main menu options. Something that when selected would set all windows into the desktop background, set all background colours to pink and then let the user paste on a graphic of their own creation...

However, and I think it's a fairly major HOWEVER, as some skeleton code already exists to do the job, and that kind of interface design depends both upon personal preference and quite a lot of fine-tuning, I say we leave it on the back burner until we have the more fundamental issues sorted. Sound fair?

What I really need input on is...

What Components Are

I realise I probably haven't made a great job of showing what I'm up to with the interface model in my hastily created demo & screenshots.

Think of a giant lego set. I'm of the opinion that any interface can be broken down into lego-like 'blocks' of information. Each block that goes to make up a complete interface can be modelled - eg. there'll be panels of buttons, slider bars and text displays. There'll be graphical elements and functional elements - and it's up to an interface designer to put the blocks together in an informative and visually appealing way.

Take the Diplomacy Governor. In the screenshots on my website, it's just a window with some slider bars in it. In the final Diplomacy Governor Settings Component (for want of a snappier title) there'll probably be:

[*]A Graphic Block - a governor portrait. Pure eye-candy.[*]A Text Area - titled 'Current Foreign Policy' or similar, showing, in words, what the main goals of our current external diplomacy are.[*]A Control Set - probably slider bars, each can be moved to set the AI tolerance to various diplomacy considerations.[/list]

NB. We'd also need a background image - given that block-built components are (for the meantime! ) shown in a window format within a model interface desktop, something vaguely diplomacy-acy to go on any potential window background would be nice. Again, pure eye-candy.

Does that sound like enough? Given that any interface will be built of these blocks - what kind of blocks do we need? What do you want them to do? How should they be arranged? What should be user-configurable?

Loki: any ideas on getting a consistant 'look' at the level of component blocks?

More sample screenshots are probably in order before we can really ask any meaningful questions - again, give me a day and I'll see what I can come up with

Other Stuff

Loki: I like the idea of colour-coding stuff. Simple & effective. Can we come up with a general form for implementation? A consistant colour-association scheme across multiple interfaces?

Doberman: rippable menus sound good, so good that I'd already coded them They don't work in my demo yet as I haven't set up the event-handling, but they will...

That doesn't apply to full componets yet, but it should be do-able.

Also, Slider bars will indeed be configurable as to their orientation.

Um, OK, brain spasm, I can't remember what else I intended to say... so I'll post a follow-up to this tomorrow!

[Darren_McGuicken]

D'oh! Took the screengrabs but forgot to update the webpage & post here! Click here.
[This message has been edited by Darren_McGuicken (edited January 17, 2000).]

[L o k i]

How about a picture of the advisor on the background of its window?

Or maybe no background image, and instead an image of the advisor to the side somewhere. So that you can see it properly. Also the advisor would relate to the civilization and technology. So Japanese advisors will wear japanese clothes, and they look different as you go through the stages of technology, how about that?

And is it settled about having floating windows? I don't know about any of you, but windows floating in awkard positions is the 2nd most annoying thing about Windows.

I mean, when I use Photoshop, it's much easier to have the toolbars, etc, lying against something and out of the way, but still in touch.

[Darren_McGuicken]

I was planning on using a Governor portrait as part of the component itself... see here, for an example.

I agree, Governor portraits should be many and varied!

Re: floating windows - sorry, Loki, I'm notoriously crap at explaining myself One of my points in the long post above was supposed to be that 'users can decide'. If they want windows, they can have them, if they want components docked/embedded, then I'm certainly going to give them that option

[L o k i]

After looking at that screenshot with homer in it, I can only admit, it looks really really good. I see almost nothing wrong with the entire design. It's really good!

[LOGO]

I'm gonna go ahead and respond to this forum, hopefully I'm not going to be responding to out of date info

I really don't like the idea of our huge use of sliders, I hate sliders, in a game like this you need percision control which the analog feel of a slider can't provide. A slider interface could be very annoying when a player is trying to figure out how much he should move the little bar, also players (like me) who use ball mouses or touch panels HATE dragging and droping and would much rather have a series of clicks.

I really think many people might like the SMAC start button like interface, maybe we should have a number of default interfaces and then let the player custimize it.

I'm concerned that your system of microsoft word-like custimizable interface might be way too much clutter on the screen and the player might have too much information coming to him at once, don't laugh it means the player will ignore most of the important info.

I REALLY hate the idea of button windows just sitting there, this is a game not a OS, why can't we have a smooth and clean display? Although most people value function over form you must remember asthetics are extremely important at getting people involved and not having them become bored.
We should remember to treat information like the real world not just like numbers, that's alwase been my biggest turn-off in Civ. II, there are so much abstract interface systems I didn't feal like I was ruler, I felt like I was playing a video game. Most of the stuff I said was over all ideas not specific cricisms.

P.S. I'd really like a newspaper system, is that going to happen? We should really focus on making this game as believable as possible, the little things like newspapers could really be enjoyable to the player.

[Lord God Jinnai]

What you say your use of sliders doesn't allow is exactly what we want to avoid in most circumstances. In the few that it might be helpful to have the preciscion, we can have a small box which shows the number value and the player can input what they desire (in additon to the scrolling bar). The reason the player should not have such presciosion control on most things is because we want to reduce micromanagment a whole lot and if a player knows they can micromanage to get extremly great results they often will (except for people who wish to not spend so much time).

[LOGO]

Just on the govenor thing, there's nothing there telling you how much each slider is doing. It's very confusing and it feals like rather then micro-management you'd get lack of managment. The person has to know what his controls are saying instead of guessing what they mean, I think when your looking at something like a govenor which it's actual existance is to prevent micromangement as acting as a second you making decisions most players would be okay with spending a little bit of time on one turn so they don't have to worry about the govenor and don't have to keep coming back the the same window tweaking a bunch of slidders (okay just a little bit less, no a little more) I'd like it if you could set a series wide goals for the govenor and rank them at importance, mostly long term (create a strong economy, increase research, build a strong protection against barbarians, build a fortification ove the boarder etc.) but some short term (train three armies and choose a good leader and put them in a TF and send them here and give them thease orders in X turns) I think these could be in an advanced menu or something but it would really be kind of nice, and let me say you'd by far be seting mostly long term goals. Just throughing out ideas, any thoughts?

[Darren_McGuicken]

I suppose this is a good time to show my face around these parts again Sorry for the prolonged silence.

Re: Sliders - I think LGJ just made the most important point, but as to their look & use, I wasn't planning on very-detailed 100+-value sliders in the game. That degree of fine control would be completely out of place taking into account the group's desire to move away from fine micro-management.

If we keep it down to 5-10 positions per slider, then it should be obvious how far along a particular scale a slider is focused. We can turn on tickmarks & interval marking to show some guidelines. I was also envisaging some kind of generic slider tooltip - a little pop-up showing either raw figures (yuck) or, more likely, something like 'strong' or 'weak' or whatever to show what the current setting means.

LOGO: hopefully that answers some of your points on the governor sliders? Your later points on how sliders should work look spot on to me! There was a little bit of discussion on this a while ago, but it's entirely possible there should be more...

[LOGO]

Okay, I think words on the side that say "strong" or "weak" would be finel Just one last little thing, maybe we could have little buttons on the either side of the slider for people who have mouses that aren't conducive to draging and droping. A minor point but might make things a little easier.

How would a govenor balance a high empire rating with a high peace rating? Come to think of it how would the "peace" rating effect other things like "explore" and "economy"? When such things may make the civs angry at you in the game. Another basic question about "peace" is what effect would a single province have on the entire civ's foreing policy with this bar? I'm actualy having trouble understanding what this bar represents, a govenor of a provinces foreign policy? As the person or the province itself?
Why does a province need a foreing policy?