Demo 5 Interface

[Mark_Everson]

Cross-posting...

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.

As for the survey thing, all I can say is we'll try out that approach and see what people think!

[Lord Maxwell]

A few ideas for the interface:

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.

3) I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of information that slowly gets out of date. That would be one of the two things that set this game apart. (The other being that the bean counter have very little advantage here compared to the HUGE advantages that normally come out of couting beans in 4X games.)

[Richard Bruns]

I've found that the best interfaces are those that have the user left click to perform an action and right click to get information. So left clicking on a hyperlink would take the user to the proper dialog box, and right clicking would bring up a small help file box that explains that dialog box. Similarly, left clicking on a unit would give it orders, while right clicking would display attributes like power and supply route details. When playing a new game, I find this feature very helpful because it allows quick access to almost all the information I need.

[Richard Bruns]

Bump.

Eric, as you can see our ideas at this point are quite vague. We've basically been focusing on the kernel, the core models. What do you think about the above ideas?

[Mark_Everson]

Hmm, I missed Lord Maxwell's post somehow... I think his hyperlinking in the messages is a good idea. Its certainly worth trying a small test just to see what players think. The criticism about the econ system won't recur. With the new econ system things will be much clearer.

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

I will also dig up the old code that Darren got partly going and send it to One/Eric fwiw.

[One]

Considering I don't have a very good grasp on how all the pieces fit together, my first concern is screen real estate. My initial reaction to demo 4 when I first loaded it up was a bit taken aback. A lot of windows with a lot of information, and no clue as to what to do, where to go and what it all means. If your now looking to add what sounds basically like an in game spreadsheet, it's going to be even more overwhelming to first time players of the game. The icon idea helps that quite a bit, but I still feel the front end lacks a unifying element to bring everything together. This may not seem obvious to most of you because you have been so close to the project for so long, but coming in from the outside as I am, and things look slightly "off".

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.

One

[Richard Bruns]

A 'model' is our plan for simulating some section of a real life responsibility. It is a game design term, not a coding term. For example, the military model can be thought of as the stuff that the Defense Department worries about, and the Ecology model is the stuff that the Department of the Interior deals with. For now, each model has its own method of interface. The player deals with the military model by moving troops around the map and setting defenses and fortifications on the map.

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've quickly hacked together some crude pictures to give an example. Look qt the bottom of this page. What do you think of the general idea?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi One:

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 look at your examples, but I think they have way too much screen real estate just used up in an enormous array of buttons, radio buttons, and such. I guess I prefer a lot cleaner screens that you do, but lots more of them then One does .

[Richard Bruns]

Remember that the buttons are the same size as they would be in a full-screen game, but I showed them in a tiny example picture. The map and other info would normally be far larger. It wouldn't be practical to post 600x800 pictures.

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.

Hmm, that could be a very good model to go by. We'd have a menu at the top, and a single row of icons below that to represent all of the models and give single-click access to those screens. Then, the interface for each model loads up like a seperate web page.

[One]

Finally getting a chance to work on this stuff again. I'm still concerned about displaying the wealth of information and options in a useful manner. I have an idea that may work. Hopefully I can explain the picture I have in my head.

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.

Thanks,
One

[Mark_Everson]

Hey One:

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.

If you want to put in options for things like Richard's icons then go ahead and do it. But please get the stuff that's already set up going first, so that we can at least get the preview version of the demo out. The econ stuff has been ready for months and I haven't been able to put it out because the interface hasn't been up to it (not your fault of course!) Then implementing the little icons would only take a day or two more, and we can see what people think about the options.

[Gary Thomas]

I am not certain about how much the coding aspect of the interface is causing problems. I have a fairly deep knowledge of Swing, and quite a lot of utility classes I can provide. Particulary in the area of dynamic pick lists. Let me know if I can help.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Gary:

Thanks for the offer. Yes, please offer suggestions / critiques of whatever you see up here. Hopefully One is going to get specs up when he gets a little further along in design. But as you know, for now I'm just anxious to take what we have, bang it into shape, and get the demo out. That's so we can do the test case of what actual players think of the models! I'd view demo 6 as the right place to try a well-thought-out gui architecture, and I'm hoping you'll be able to help with suggestions .

[Mark_Everson]

Status Report:

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 )

Our discussions of the overall character and options available for the 'final' gui elements will of course be ongoing... The specs for them will no doubt continuously evolve as we get more into a playtesting mode in the near future.

[Gary Thomas]

I have been working on the GUI for Demo5. The basic layout has a number of internal frames within a surrounding Clash frame. The frames currently present are:

a single map frame
a units frame
a details frame (giving details about the currently selected map square)
an information frame, for general information and debugging messages
a potentially large number of economics frames

The idea is that a drop down list of these frames will be available, clicking on the list will bring that frame to the top. If permitted, it can then be deleted.

The other area under development is the units screen. Mark described to me how he felt the unit combining, splitting and reassigning should work. I have emailed him with my alternative ideas, and am waiting for him to return to get his comments. However I wouldn't mind some general comments from this thread.

My idea is to use the left mouse button to select a task force for movement (or whatever else one might select a TF for), and the right mouse button both to select a unit within a task force (for possible reassignment, etc) and to pop up a menu giving the possible options. Here is a quote from my email to Mark on this subject:

... the commonest use of the TF panel will be to select a TF to move, rather than to select a unit to reorganize the TFs. With this in mind I feel that the left mouse button should be reserved for that purpose, with the right mouse button use for special actions. This is in line with general Windows usage.

My second thought is that selecting a variety of units, then typing T is both mysterious and counter intuitive. My preferred action is to have a right mouse click both select a unit, and produce a pop-up menu - this is again in line with general Windows practice. The menu would have options like the following (all of which, I think, could be easliy implemented for D5):

Assign unit to new TF
Assign unit to slected TF
Assign whole TF into selected TF
Assign all TFs into selected TF
Split this TF up into separate new TFs, one unit per TF
Select this TF
Disband this unit
Undo last action

Some of these options will not be available (grayed out) in some circumstances, for example "Move unit to selected TF" if it is already in the selected TF. I have deliberately avoided using the word "move" as in "move this unit to the selected TF" as being misleading. Having to have the popup menu appear several times when a number of units are to be reassigned it not onerous.

Other options can be added for D6 (some of these are notional!):

Fortify this TF
Place this TF on sentry status
Place this TF on garrison status
Move this TF to a waypoint
Move this TF to the capital

My point here is that the system is easy to use and easily extensible. The user does not need to memorize key presses for things that are not done very frequently.

And finally, it is easier to code, and the code is easier to maintain. Not that I would consider that a primary consideration - ease of use is always my main aim. It is, however, a subsidiary factor when we are coding under time pressure, and with a variety of coders.

Cheers