Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+

[topcat_arg]

Hello ...

I was reading all the economic model.. again.. and i got some ideas of what you want...

i was reading the ideas around here.. and lead me to a complicated structure to see a few rows of data...

if i guide myself from the model, the actual screen doesn't feel like the model... I like the idea of not make every posible desicion, but this is a game, and things have to be easy...

Let's say, if I have just a few economics options, let's the screen face it.

I was wondering, what happend if im building 3 roads on a province, and start a 4 road???

did the first 3 slow down so every 1 receive the same amount of money?? or they give money in a queue type, like fifo???

every way, i should have a screen that let me know this fast...

let say something like this.. forget the trees, forget the tables, lets put some icons on the right, and every one is a type of economy (education, farming, etc.), evey icon change the left frame so you can see how your money is spend there...

and you have a final one with totals...

if a similar idea like the tabbed panels, but i think is more funny (because whe can use graphics...)


hope i give some point to the cause...

G.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gar, thanks for the update, and I'm looking forward to the sample when you have a chance to do it.

Gonzalo:

I hope everything is great with your son and family!

Originally posted by topcat_arg
I was wondering, what happend if im building 3 roads on a province, and start a 4 road???

did the first 3 slow down so every 1 receive the same amount of money?? or they give money in a queue type, like fifo???

AFAIK it is already fifo. Gary did the details on that, and I don't have time to check right now.

let say something like this.. forget the trees, forget the tables, lets put some icons on the right, and every one is a type of economy (education, farming, etc.), evey icon change the left frame so you can see how your money is spend there...

and you have a final one with totals...

The problem is that there are (will be) Many types of economy of the sort you talk about. Maybe ten or more. I also believe the trees will be good in allowing the player to essentially add one more item to the main screen that is the one of most interest to them. I think that's a good feature. I personally don't think I'd like the very limited amount of info presented with your approach, but I am an info addict, so we'll see what others think!

[Gar]

I've updated my site with a hypothetical economic interface. I've tried to capture most of the concepts I've seen. The various graphics are weak potentials, and the styles are inconsistent to show different things.

Please check it out, and we can get some dialog going on it.

As I mentioned above I am in the process of moving and will be getting a laptop for while I am on the road. My coming here may be eratic over the next number of weeks, but at this stage of moving I will be sans job (and TV0 for a while so will be able to spend more time on this project.

[topcat_arg]

Hello...

I saw your idea of the tree...

Now i like it

but still have the problem with the fields you have to input...

i don't see a slider fit in there... the only way to use one is if you have percentages or turns, because i think is complicated if every slider have to take care of the money you have left...

maybe mark can give a tip of what can we put there??

Gonzalo...

[Gary Thomas]

There are some constraints on the gui.

The screen must look all right in 800x600, but 1024x768 is preferred, so it should be designed for that size, but be reducible.

The map must be a reasonable size, not less than around 500x500.

All the components of the gui must be independent, moveable and resizable - too many people have quite different ideas of the ideal layout to allow a fixed layout. Presently they are implemented as internal frames, and a system is in place to remember any changes that the player has made, and use these settings. This is a feature that is too useful to abandon.

Also, visual elements should be used where possible - so the unit image needs to be used rather than "Phalanx". Also, units have individual names, "Old Guard" for example, which, preferably, should be seen.

The economic panel has, I feel, still too much detail. To have the possibility of changing the tax rate (something that will be done rarely, if ever) on the main screen seems to me to be a poor use of scarce real estate.

I would expect that there would be quite a few buttons on the gui, allowing drill down, without arcane knowledge of funny keys or mouse clicks.

Cheers

[Gar]

Not sure if what that screen concept was supposed to be came through or not:

I was thinking of it as a seperate screen array from the main screen. In that there may be extremely limited economic details in panels of the main screen, but when you click the Economic button you would go to this type of setup as opposed to the current double popup windows for economics.

With that in mind the map sized as it is there would be an abstraction of sorts, a zoom out, of the main map as was discussed in earlier messages in this thread.

I was completely thinking these would be panels and be re-sizeable and scrollable to fit individual needs/tastes/graphics capabilities. This being just one instance of a configuration.

Text where I have it indented would be conceptually where a drill down tree structure could exist.

Gonna wait for some more feedback.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary, I'm not sure how you got the idea that what Gar was doing was supposed to be the main interface... He did what at least I thought we all wanted, an Econ Gui screen for the whole civ.

Hey Gar:

I think the basic concept looks pretty good! Thanks for squeezing this in amongst all your RL "experiences". I believe your tree idea should work marvelously, and keep things more on the one screen as you desired. Although we'd of course have to try it out to be sure. I also think that the general layout is one that will be amenable to handling many game areas like diplomacy, and technology. I'm not sure whether it would gracefully fit civ-level military control well. But we have yet to discuss that in detail so I'll leave that for another day.

I'm with Gonzalo that there needs to be sliders in there somehow, and also that the spending things should be settable in terms of % of income (at least as a first shot this seems best to me). And Gary is probably right that the unit stuff should use unit images instead of "Phalanx". At some point the "Tax on Labor" etc. should probably be icons also, maybe with the text kept and put in a similar place as the names for units when mil units are shown. But that is a refinement for later. The Advice area is a good touch! It may need to be expanded to show the picture of an advisor with the advice at some point.

I also think that the panel showing military activity (top one of the rectangular sub-panels in the military panel at lower right) is misplaced since this is supposed to be an Economic gui element, not a military control one. Do you think that "Detailed Military Control" would also become "Detailed Production Investments" for building farms and such, or did you envision having that as part of the tree structure at the left?

I personally could really use a brief description of what things are supposed to do what. I have guesses, and if it were a real gui element I'd try them out... but it didn't get me very far pushing on things . Perhaps you can label it so that people know they should look at the image first before reading.

I'll think about things more, but those are my comments after a bit of looking your mockup over and thinking about it a bit. Thanks for doing it!

[Gary Thomas]

Hi Gary, I'm not sure how you got the idea that what Gar was doing was supposed to be the main interface... He did what at least I thought we all wanted, an Econ Gui screen for the whole civ.

Sorry, I got fooled by the fact that the map was present. Is it necessary?

Cheers

[Gar]

For Round Two I'll put in some explanations and maybe try it with a more unified theme (shooting for tomorrow night.) I wanted to get some initial reactions to the contents fairly raw at first or cause I don't know what the heck any of that stuff means, myself Also, I want to put collapsing indicators with some full expanded and some not at all expanded in the left pane.

I don't know that the map is necessary, but sufficiently populated it is one way for a person making economic decisions to get an overview of what's what in the world. Imagining that your try to decide what resources to put funds into might be good to see where you control it. Also, if micromanaging by province you could select a particular province from that map. If the world map is greatly extended in a multi-opponent game it is a visual perspective on control and power of the territory. I think any of those things are doable via swapping to and from the main screen or the savvy screen manager could arrange the economonic overlay panels sufficiently to still see the main map.

I would guess, scope-wise, managing additional graphics features for such a shrunken-head map, which adds perspective but no additional practical advantage, is outside of demo 7 scope?

I threw it together with the concept of Slider vs. No-Slider. The arcane control for that being the <--> and # circle-like buttons in the upper left corner

Do you think that "Detailed Military Control" would also become "Detailed Production Investments" for building farms and such, or did you envision having that as part of the tree structure at the left?

Absolutely the first part, thinking that that panel becomes detailed control for top-level economic issues of the selected category. My thinking that more than just adjustments for next turn (or batch of turns) one might like a perspective on what one has already to factor into the decision process. More arcane controls here (and those, in fact, visually incomplete)... The 'magnifying glass' matches the miniature one over next to the military category in the left pane. Each top level category would have a magnifying glass which loads the appropriate 'fine control' pane to the lower right. I would also imagine a criss-cross link to go from the Detailed Military Economic Control in the lower right to pull up the Main Military pane to the left.

It may need to be expanded to show the picture of an advisor with the advice at some point.

Definitely I totally was picturing the question mark being replaced by faces. I think those would be a great ambience feature, much harder to cuss at question mark, imho.

I'll add % type control for round two (personally have some mental problems wrapping my head around thinking about things in those terms.) Also, I'll try to pull up some Swing GUI component visuals to try to unify the sense of control a little better and look for some places that favor traditional buttons. And if I find the time, maybe I'll hide a lil easter egg for someone who 'must' click on the poor helpless JPEG

For any concerned, I will be retaining this screen as reference and just add additional links. Guess round 1.5 should be this one with explanations, come to think of it.

Thanks for doing it!

Welcome! Hope it helps, even if nothing from it is used, if it engenders conversations and decisions then it counts as an effective mock-up to me.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Gar:

The plan sounds good to me! On the map, I think it could be useful for several things too. Anyplace where you want to compare provinces' characteristics, be they specials, tax revenues, etc. Whether its worth it in terms of screen real estate is what we need to figure out. Looking forward to seeing the next step!

[Gar]

Moving is chewing up much time, 9 hours til the movers arrive, yikes. Sorry, looks like an updated version of the screen will have to wait.

[LDiCesare]

Well, my last post got lost in the aether apparently
Here are a few remarks:
I like the GUI in general.
I think the following would be needed:
-Better knowledge of whether we see a province economy or the whole civ (it may be visible in the lower right pane, but I am not sure), and a way to browse through provinces.
-On military display, a level of detail should be available, so you could know how much cost the whole army, high level commands, task forces, or units. I don't know if other models have the same level of details. That could be done either with a detail bar in the detail window or additional levels in the tree view?

[Mark_Everson]

Well its too bad, but this seems to be going nowhere for now. I hope Gar and topcat will return here sometime soon. In the absence of a high-level GUI for D7, I think we should go with the old tutorial plan. The idea was to shut off lots of potentially confusing bits of the D6 econ GUI and slowly lead the player through it using Gary's events model to have event-based tutorial popups. Then the more advanced features of the GUI can be introduced to the playtester gradually without overwhelming them.

I have already implemented the shutting off of various infrastructure classes in the GUI. So we can turn off everything but building warrior bands and production investments for the start. My question to anyone who's interested is what else should I allow options to shut off? I have in mind to allow disabling of ROI, and elimination of one of the two "cost" columns. I might implement the time it will take to be built for mil units. Any other important simplifications people think will be necessary to minimize confusion of those players who can't bring themselves to read the manual?

[Gar]

Hi, Mark, sorry not totally gone away but am still in various stages of transit since putting all my stuff in storage on April 15th. Been travelling and visiting relatives since then, am using my mother's computer right now. The unfortunate thing in my planning is I did not get all my tools onto the laptop and the software is now in storage along with the base images of all I was working on.

I really intended to be working on things while on the road, but sans tools it is tough to do much of any value. I will be arriving in my new location around May 18th and should be able to get things started back up then. I was not sure what the time window for Demo 7 was.

Anyhow, not another flyby helper, I intend/would like to continue to be involved just freaky timing and a big goof on getting my tools setup on my laptop prior to hitting the road. I could do a clean layout that is graphic light and really emphasizes the reorganizing into the panels with trees approach.

On the positive side the book "Thinking in Java" has been one of my road companions.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gar, thanks for the update, and sorry to hear you're tool-less

I'd say if you've got the time to work on Clash, do what you think you can accomplish best without the tools. Discussion and producing graphically light layouts does sound like a good way to proceed.

If that turns out to be impractical, we can use comments on virtually all our current and old gui discussions. FE is the Events box proceeding in the right way, what about the units box. None are final versions, but does it seem like they are evolving in the right direction, etc.? You could find the discussions by searching on 'gui'. Glad to hear an affirmation that you're not the all-too-common fly-by-night type!

There isn't a solid deadline for D7, but I think its time to get it out the door asap. Of course if there is a train wreck on other issues, its possible that even with the current delays the new econ gui might make it. But for right now it seems more practical to make the high-level econ gui a D8 feature.

Cya,

Mark