[customizations][UI]Hud Overhaul + misc things

from Elemental Forums

First off i would like to state I'm impressed with how well this beta has gone with the developer to testers relationship, this shows just what a beta SHOULD be. Second every time I've had an idea or an opinion on how things should be done someone else always put it out there before i ever could, but this time i got stuff to share!

 

UI Overhaul

Lets take a look at the the current UI to start with

basic

 

It looks alright at first, but when i started playing i quickly noticed i had to look all around the screen to get the information i needed. The city and Adventurer information is split between the far left and the far right side of the screen causing a lot more work than necessary.

I propose we combine the Events tree on the right with the Kingdom/Empire tree on the left. I think that the events that relate to the item in the tree should appear off of that item. Here is how it would work:

  • City events branch out of the city icon itself. Such as finished buildings and trained units
  • Adventurer specific events would branch out from the adventurer
  • The other non specific events could go from top left of the screen and flow to the right(the the bar on the right and just rotate it to fit in up there above the kingdom/empire tree) i.e. spells, battle, diplomacy events

Basically any event that can be tied to a specific object in the empire tree should have its correlating event notification branch from the object itself in the kingdom/empire tree.

Now that I've stated the idea 3 different times hopefully you know what I'm talking about. What? you don't, well here's a poorly doctored photo that will help you out.

 

awesome

Seeing this now reassures me all those hours in mspaint were worth it :')  

Obviously the event icons would be standing upright individually instead of side ways but this should get the point across. While i would like to the move the center bar at the top of the screen displaying resources over to the left more i think it just gives a better feeling where its at and helps prevent the cluttered feeling.

In Sins of a Solar Empire you could expand a star system and see all the units and buildings in the system and click and order them around without ever going there. While awesome i don't think we need quite that level of assistance here but i would like to see the ability to expand a city to have it display the garrisoned troops in the Kingdom/Empire tree. I'll leave the visuals on that one to your imagination. (hint put them under the correlating circle)

I know this takes up more reality space on the left side of the screen but at the same time it completely frees of the right side of the screen. Anything that you may not be able to see because of the left side expanding out to the middle will be negated by moving your screen over some to capitalize on the extra space from the right side.

Anyone who's played wow (raiding, even non raiding) with to many add-ons knows whats its like to lose a ton of space to UI pieces being everywhere blocking your vision. but if you organized all the opaque/overly large things off the side and had a clean edge on the other side makes it felt much nicer than the tunnel vision of surrounding all sides and looking at your game through a scope made of add-ons

Clicking on the Event notification that tells me a unit has been trained to bring up the Training menu and queue up some more solders, while the other button would clear the event notification. The training window will be at the button as seen in the doctored picture. As for selecting the unit you could just expand the city in Kingdom/Empire tree to select him/her and then issue move orders. I would assume one click on the mouse selects them the other click selects and moves your screen to them.

 

Build Menu's

The only other real gripe with the UI i have is when have a city selected and you go to train units and then build some buildings or vice versa, it takes to much effort to switch between the two. You have to close the build window, click on the different tab for the city, then click on the button you want, AND THEN you can build/train what your after. The build button and the Train icon are always first no matter which build window you have open and i think you should be able to click on it to switch over to the opposing build/train menu. Or a toggle in the training/building menu itself for this.

One more thing is that in the building menu you can right click anywhere on the map to cancel it, but on the training menu you have to left click anywhere on the map, the which button is used for what should really be standardized through out the game (though i don't know where else there are discrepancies).

 

Adventurer Level up Notification

When your sovereign or an adventurer levels up you forced to place their stats before you can do anything else, and then afterwords you receive an event notification telling you that your sovereign/adventurer leveled up...  yeah that's a little redundant and the notification is in my opinion completely worthless with this setup. I would request it being removed. Although if you could level up later then it would make sense, but i think i should start a new thread to discuss that idea.

 

MISC Things

For those of you have survived the wall of text from above, your reward shall be MORE text

these are in no particular order and i apologize if they have already been stated/addressed:

  • [Diplomacy] Ability to trade maps
  • [Diplomacy] Ability to share sight with another player (separate of alliances)
  • [Tactical] Adjust the animation speed in tactical battles(i find my self waiting on lumbering units)
  • [Shop] A toggle that will only display items i can equip, instead of just all
  • [Char design] Ability to rotate/zoom the view on your sovereign during character creation
  • [City] Look at the current bonuses on a city
  • [City] See the current bonuses on a city when choosing level up bonus
  • [City] Queue up buildings adjacent to buildings currently in queue/construction
  • [City] build from city nearby not connected resources

I still find myself snaking cities, you have to to get your city bonuses to apply to that resource. to fix that i would like to see the last one of both of the last two options listed implemented(though i would like to see the queuing one regardless). obviously there would be a limit to how far away resources could be, to directly build from city but that would be something to discuss. i.e. from city center or improvement edge.

Yeah i probably should have made more than one post but not sitting down to do this sooner resulted in, well this, i really look forward to every ones opinion on this and what we can come up with.

 

5,476 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Very nice, I really like your event notification idea and your example gj! I like most of what you said, and I believe they will start polishing the UI after they release the modding Beta and we all know the UI needs work. So keep up the good ideas :D

I liked your idea to need a diplomacy tech to share sight with other players, it reminds me of Age of Empires 2 where you would have to research Cartography to see your teammates. I always thought that was a cool feature and made feel unsafe till I got it because there could be a neighbhor that was the enemy, was sorta fun for MP :P

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I liked your idea to need a diplomacy tech to share sight with other players, it reminds me of Age of Empires 2 where you would have to research Cartography to see your teammates. I always thought that was a cool feature and made feel unsafe till I got it because there could be a neighbhor that was the enemy, was sorta fun for MP
End of quote

The prime example i think of is in Civilization 4. I played a lot of that with the Fall From Heaven 2 mod and Fall Further mod with 2 of my friends. If you didn't start as a team the only way to share sight was to form a permanent alliance, while not a big deal the issue was you could only form ONE permanent alliance and there were 3 of us playing. Which is why it needs to be its own deal apart from other diplomatic issue's.

CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top
  • [Diplomacy] Ability to trade maps (and any Relic type things we may find)
  • [Diplomacy] Ability to share sight with another player (separate of alliances) (why not, options are good)
  • [Tactical] Adjust the animation speed in tactical battles (i find my self waiting on lumbering units) (can't hurt)
  • [Shop] A toggle that will only display items i can equip, instead of just all (+ only ones I can afford)
  • [Char design] Ability to rotate/zoom the view on your sovereign during character creation (can't hurt)
  • [City] Look at the current bonuses on a city (absolutely - definitely needed)
  • [City] See the current bonuses on a city when choosing level up bonus (same as above)
  • [City] Queue up buildings adjacent to buildings currently in queue/construction (explain please?)
  • [City] build from city nearby not connected resources (currently, those resources outside the Cities borders provide 50% bonus and do not consume building tiles. Those inside, but not adjacent, provide 100% and do not take up building tiles. Do you seek those inside, and not adjacent, to use up building tiles when built on from the City build menu?)
Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

# [City] Queue up buildings adjacent to buildings currently in queue/construction (explain please?)
# [City] build from city nearby not connected resources (currently, those resources outside the Cities borders provide 50% bonus and do not consume building tiles. Those inside, but not adjacent, provide 100% and do not take up building tiles. Do you seek those inside, and not adjacent, to use up building tiles when built on from the City build menu?)
End of quote

I did not know that those outside of the city are effected by the bonuses from that city. However that is still only a 50% bonus instead of a 100% bonus. Currently if i want that 100% bonus (when feasible) i have to snake my city one improvement at a time to get to that resource before i can build on it. With only one city that is not that bad but when you start getting multiple cities and you have to go back to each city and queue up another building every couple of turns per city it adds a lot of unnecessary tedium to the game.

To fix that and let me build cities in fun shapes with minimal effort (dare i say fun level of effort) let me queue buildings off of queued/constructing buildings. This way you could make the line to the resources in a single turn and then forget about it for a bit while it does its thing. For further clarification, if i tell the city to build a hut i would like to be able to build a workshop on an adjacent square off of the hut i just placed.