GUI: Graphical User Interface

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
The folowing is, IMO, a very easy to improve the GUI:

I recommend getting rid of the event window popup altogether unless something really important happens. They are very annoying, and also seem to be a resource hog. There is a big patch of wasted screen real estate down at the bottom, to the left of the popuation figure and the turn and date, which would be a perfect place to put the treasury and growth rate information. If we eliminate the fairly pointless messages about tech growth, then the event window only has to pop up after battles or event-driven messages.

The events box was meant to eventually evolve into something like the newspaper in Civ1 in case that influences your feelings about it. The newspaper would have hotlinks like in the events box now that give more details on anything the player wants to know more details about.

We might want to move to something like in Imperialism (per Simon) or EU (scrolling message window at the bottom). Lets see what some of the others think.

The reason for the tech advancement and econ info is to give the player an idea of the progress their civ is making.

[vovan]

I agree with Richard in that would be a good idea to put the information about treasury and growth rate into the status bar of the main window right down there with the current date / turn number.

As for the events popup, I also find it annoying at times, especially since it does not stay where you put it, but appears at the default position on every turn. Every time I hit the end turn button, I wish I could run my popup killer in the game.

I do think that it is a good idea to do events in the form of a newspaper, as in civ (although I scarcely remember exactly what it looked like, I kind of have an idea). But in that case, there is no need at all to clog up the memory, and annoy the player by showing him a news bulletin at every turn, is there? I suppose, we could just not show it, and only make it visible on demand, through the button in the views menu.

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
scrolling message window at the bottom

While reading this thread I was thinking of several games where there was a scroling mesage-list at the bottom of the screen, and was about to sugest it. In some game (I don't remember witch) the list was not only scrolable, but sizeable, dragable, dockable, and supported hotlinks. Furthermore the important info came last so that it was always visible at the start of the players turn.

My suggestion is as follows:
Put a multiusage information/interaction pane/window at the bottom of the screen make it dockable, so the player can place it where he/she wants it, make it scalable, and give it a tab-page system.

One of the tab-pages in this pane would then contain the scrolable message window, another the units window, a third would show the tech overview etc. A portion would be set aside to displaying info on the square where the mouse pointer was, or the selected square.

To make it more costumiseable, it could be possible to make all the different views dockable within the pane, so they can be either tabbed or always displayed. Then if there is any new info on a tab-page the tab is highlighted.

Finally a note on skinns vs. standard windows. Personally I'd preffer a system where the game is played in a window compatible with the OS. In M$ Windows and Linux/X-Windows it is possible to make windows skinnable and as far as understand java, this is supported, so I think the game should be developed using standard windows, but with skinns in mind. Then if there is someone who want to create skinns by all means let him/her do it, as long as it does not interfere with the more important parts of the GUI design.

Edited to correct the origin of the quote

[Richard Bruns]

I am not the one who suggested a scrolling window at the bottom, but I agree that it would be better than a popup. Anything would be better than that popup. I only want to see a popup if something really important happens, and even then a fixed area of the screen somewherre would be a better option.

Tech advancement happens more or less constantly, so I think it is a mistake to alert people to every incremental improvement in knowledge. If they want to know that, they will go to the tech window. IMO technology messages should only be displayed in the message area when a new application or technology is developed.

A newspaper is good, but it should only appear when I ask for it. Of course, I should have the option of asking for it every turn, but it shouldn't be required.

Now for some more random comments:

I constantly find myself trying to give orders to units by right-clicking on them on the main map. Since right-clicking a map unit currently does nothing, I think it would be good to allow orders to be given this way if there is only one TF in that square. I don't like using the units box unless I have to, since it requires a lot of extra mouse movement. Right-clicking on an enemy unit in the units box automatically displays information about it, and it would be grand if right-clicking on a unit on the map did the same thing. If there are multiple enemy TF's, it could simply bring up two information wondows.

In fact, I would like to see the units box disappear completely, and I think it can be done. Clicking on a map square can bring up a window with seperate sections for each TF in that square. The left click brings up an orders window for each of the civ's TF's, and the right click displays the details box for every TF. It would be especially good if I could drag and drop units from one TF to another, or to a box that says "New TF," because the current system of assigning units is quite laborious.

The terrain details box wastes a lot of screen real estate by displaying a picture of the terrain. I think that this is unnecessary that that the box should be reduced in size as much as possible.

In my opinon, the ideal screen layout is one where the main map takes up the entire screen, except for a small information bar and a menu bar for bringing up other windows. The world map is fairly useless and I already get rid of it, and I should be able to do without the units box and the details box as well. But that of course is a long term goal.

[LDiCesare]

I think a log of events that happened permanently available would be good.

About the clicks, right or left clicking a unit would be good, but it requires coordination to click a unit and not a square, or a square and not a unit.
I think the TF box should remain, but maybe only if you ask for details: Instead of popping the text description we've got, details would show the TF boxes and allow player to reorganize the armies graphically. Until we have a better way of moving units, we are stuck with them.

[Mark_Everson]

[SIZE=1]As for the events popup, I also find it annoying at times, especially since it does not stay where you put it, but appears at the default position on every turn. Every time I hit the end turn button, I wish I could run my popup killer in the game.

This is a BUG, mine works just fine! Once I move it, it then appears there until I move it again. I wonder what is different for us.

I need to think about the rest, so will reserve comment until I have time to soak on it. But the discussion is good in terms of long-term directions for the interface. Thanks for all the good ideas!

[Richard Bruns]

I have a general question about the Java GUI. How hard is it to add a GUI display element that simply reads stuff off a text file and displays it in a text box? For example, could we add an option somewhere in the interface to display the last turn´s detailed combat report from the military.txt file?

[LFS]

How hard is it to add a GUI display element that simply reads stuff off a text file and displays it in a text box?

easy

[vovan]

Well, it is easy to do that, but I am not sure at all that writing militray information to a file, and then reading from it to display the information that same turn would solve any problems. In fact, it seems that it would slow the game down even further (quite a bit so, actually), because reading / writing to disk is much more time-consuming than from RAM...

[Richard Bruns]

The game already writes all the military and economics information to a file, as well as several other things. If I open log.txt during the game, I can see a list of everything that has happened so far. But the other files are too big to open in notepad, and wordpad doesn´t like to open a file while the game is still running.

Of course, that may be one of the reasons that the game is running so slowly now. The economics log file is especially immense. My last game generated a 759 kilobyte file.