Gui

[Gary Thomas]

The present (D5) GUI works as follows:

There is a large window, with some menus, containing:

• A toolbar, currently containing buttons, ultimately icons
• The main map, covering most of the area
• A task force or units box, conating army information
• A "details" box giving information about the currently slected square.
• An "information" box which, essentially, logs events as they occur.

I propose to add a world map soon. The only real function of this is to enable quick jumps around the map - clicking on the world map will centre the main map on the clicked area.

The biggest problem I have at present is that I actively dislike the information box. Normally there is an information overload, and things scroll past too quickly anyway. Many of the messages are obscure, and some are missing, for example there is no notification of a unit being destroyed. In any case, the whole thing is completely indigestible, and, in addition, grows arbitrarily large. I can imagine that in a big game it could become many megabytes long. A minor factor is that it has a persistent bug that causes bits of it to be written to funny parts of the screen.

I would like to take the space that the information box uses for the world map, and replace it with a button in the button bar giving a drop down menu of different kinds of events (for those of you familiar with Space Empires IV, using their style, but a bit more intelligent). In particular, there would be economic events, combat events, technology events. Clicking on one of these would produce a popup list of the events that occurred in the just completed turn. Clicking on one of these would give the details. Ultimately, I would expect some sort of peristent summary of events in previous turns, but the number of turns saved would be a settable option. The previous turns would be saved to disk. Although performance is not currently an issue, this is one area where it is guaranteed to become a problem as long as a huge log is kept in memory.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

[edit] I just realized there is an old thread that may be of use on interfaces. Here is: Overall Clash Interface Design from Waaaay back.

There is also some good stuff in a slightly less old thread:Demo 5 Interface

Hmmmm, well I agree the Info box is quite kludgey, but I find it rather useful. You can have the space if you want for the world map, but you have to give me something where I don't have to chew through 5 or more separate popups ever time a turn is cranked to see what happened.

How about this... at player discretion an info screen pops up over a fair-sized chunk of the screen when the turn is done. (Leave as much of the main map showing as possible) It can have enough room to show salient details on 5-8 areas of the game. If you want More detail then hovering over the small Econ area, FE, within the info screen will give you a popup with a more detailed report. To issue orders you click on the econ area. Eventually this could be made quite attractive with graphics that support the verbage so that you may not even have to read much of it.

There will also be a button or whatever for the player to get this screen whenever they want. So if they don't want it popping up they can call it when needed. In the future there could be a set of triggers as to whether it pops up or not that the player could set. IE come up when: war declared, disaster of x size, rioting of more than y people...

We can see if anyone else has some ideas from other products or their own brains... But IMO a t a minimum there needs to be some informational readout that can be accessed without having to push a button at the beginning of Every Single Turn.

[Dale]

How bout like in Imperialism where you had a "newspaper" info screen at the start of every turn. You could set it up like this:

- Have two sections of the paper: domestic and international.
- Each heading is a hyperlink to a new "detail info" window.
- Domestic holds everything happening to that player.
- International holds important world info ( other alliances, major battles, etc).

The beauty is it gives a chance for a fancy writer to come up with some funny/interesting stories for the headlines. They only need to be a paragraph long too. IE:

"Scientists discover gunpowder!"

"In a tragic turn of events, Professor Ipwich's quest for glory in
trying to discover the perfect beer has ended up blowing off his
hand in an experiment gone wrong. On the upside, the powdery
residue left over from the explosion is reputably highly volotile
and causes small explosions when hit with a hammer. Scientists
believe this could be made into a new and powerful weapon.
Meanwhile, Prof Ipwich refuses to comment from his bed in
hospital."

Another good thing about this sort of game feedback is it makes the player feel like they're influencing the world and making headlines. "Possitive Feedback" they call it. Game makers call it "The Player-Story" as opposed to the game's "Main Story".

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dale:

That sounds pretty good to me. Although being a science dweeb, my inclination is to cram as much information in as possible! But especially when there's not much to say we could throw some zingers in. Lets see what everybody thinks.

[Gary Thomas]

Now that is a good idea for D15 or thereabouts. There is a huge amount of work involved.

Hmmmm, well I agree the Info box is quite kludgey, but I find it rather useful. You can have the space if you want for the world map, but you have to give me something where I don't have to chew through 5 or more separate popups ever time a turn is cranked to see what happened.

Another way of doing it is to have a abbreviated list of events pop up at the end of the turn. As long as each entry is one line long. Clicking on the line will give a popup with more detail.

How many turns do you expect to hold in memory?

Cheers

Gary

[Mark_Everson]

In memory I'd say Max 10 turns. 5 would probably do.

[LDiCesare]

The information frame has proven invaluable for debugging, and it really helps. I agree that keeping more than 5 turns (maybe 10) is pointless. I usually expand it and use it much in order to have details about the output of fights. I definitely don't want to have to go through a popup for that. In later versions, other systems could be made to find out where battles occurred and how they fared, but currently a persistent text window is a must.

[Dale]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Hey Dale:

That sounds pretty good to me. Although being a science dweeb, my inclination is to cram as much information in as possible! But especially when there's not much to say we could throw some zingers in. Lets see what everybody thinks.

That's the purpose of the hyperlink headings. They open a small child window with the important game details relevant to the heading. IE: Click on the headline "Construction Discovered!" from the newspaper opens a child window as below:

"Construction Discovered!"

"New buildings:
- Aqueduct (Allows size 9+ cities)
- Wall (Defense +50%, aborts slavers)
- Capital (Allows rebuilding/moving capital)

New Units:
- Construction Team (Builds roads)"

Whereas the first page will hold a short blurb. Eventually, players will know what each message means and only read the headlines, like when you know from memory what advances allows what buildings/units/improvements/etc. In this case, the details don't need to be on the turn summary screen, but is easily accessed via the hyperlink headlines to refresh the memory.

[Gary Thomas]

My take on all the comments is that the Information box is a useful debugging tool. There are, of course other debugging tools available. At present they are accessed by a command line switch. Is there any objection to the information box being accessible that way, while a more user friendly version is the standard?

Dale: the program uses Java Swing, not a browser. So hyperlinks are not available - after all somewhere the resulting HTML data has to be generated. However, popups will achieve the same effact.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Gary:

My problem with your proposal is that I consider it user-hostile, not user friendly, to have to plunge through several popups to get simple overall information on what is going on. I'm easily annoyed by such things, as you may have noticed For debugging purposes a command-line switch would do fine. Both for debugging and play I would prefer to have a fair amount of critical information up-front in a single view.

But we still need to agree on something that keeps both of us happy in the short term and the long. I already offered an alternative where a refined version of the information frame could either appear or not at user discretion. And you can pursue the approach you've wanted. But I do want an optional holistic information screen as a long-term part of the GUI. Not just a debugging tool. What is wrong with that? Now if you want to do your new thing while giving me the info box as an option short-term, while agreeing to support something like the newspaper long-term, I've got no problem with that.

[Gary Thomas]

As far as I can see, the main difference between my latest proposal and yours is that yours has all the little details in it, making it extremely difficult to find specifics. Mine will have, in effect, main headlines which can be clicked on to provide detail if required. So it would look like:

Combat in [5, 7], Carthaginians vanquished Romans
Combat in [6, 9], Carthaginians and Romans, inconclusive
New Carthaginian Phalanx built in [5, 8]
Army reorganization, Carthaginian army Hanno II formed

Cheers

[Simon Loverix]

Is it possible to use hot text or hot windows (just appearing when you move the mouse pointer over them). It would give you the headlines (+saving screen space) and require only one move and no clicking to see the info. With optional clicking of course if you wanted to make the window permanent.

[LDiCesare]

What about a customizable information output?
Qe could have a preferences/settings somewhere, and decide we want in the output window information of various levels:
e.g. Military 3/3, Econ 2/3, Tech 1/3...
I suggest 4 levels, which could be termed as (0)none, (1)minimal, (2)default, (3)maximal.
You'd get a window with all text according to the level of output specified, and, if the level is less than 3, an option to get a popup window by clicking in order to get more information. That way I combine everyone's needs in one window with just a settings to change. It could even be an option to change the settings at run-time when you realize you are always opening one kind of pop-up by clicking somewhere in that pop-up to say you always want more detail.

[Mark_Everson]

Yeah, I like Laurent's suggestion for long-term.

Gary, I have no problem with your syntax for getting military (or other) info to the player. I think we actually reached agreement, and then I lost track of part of it. I glossed over in my mind your following :

Another way of doing it is to have a abbreviated list of events pop up at the end of the turn. As long as each entry is one line long. Clicking on the line will give a popup with more detail.

This is indeed basically what I wanted, and is Fine

What I thought I was still dealing with was:

In particular, there would be economic events, combat events, technology events. Clicking on one of these would produce a popup list of the events that occurred in the just completed turn.

The latter I dislike because this means (provided I understand your description) that to find out what is going on I need to go to this button/menu item and
1. Click on Economy, view,
2. Click on Military, view,
3. Click on Diplomacy, view,
and it goes ON and ON
And as I said this is ok IMO as an option, but should not be forced upon everyone.

So I think we're back in reasonble agreement and just need to work out a short-term spec for what information is shown.

Cya, Mark

[Gary Thomas]

Simon:
That is a good idea. I will check it out.

Mark:
Yeah - I discarded that almost immediately, but didn't make the fact explicit. Sorry.

Otherwise, I am glad we agree. I will get onto it.

Laurent:
That is a reasonable idea, but I don't think our code is sufficiently developed to use it at present. Unless we have a pretty clear idea of what we want in terms of categories, and what goes in each level of each category, I think we should leave it for later.

Cheers