View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017060 | Stars Beyond Reach | GUI | Jun 4, 2015 2:12 am | Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | |
| Reporter | kasnavada | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.871 (Wars of Aggression) | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.904 (Top HUD Redesign) | ||||
| Summary | 0017060: UI Improvement.: rework of building bar + top left window | ||||
| Description | Thread is here : http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,17663.0.html Basically... I feel like the current icons and placement of stuff in the main screen is counter-intuitive. I keep looking for stuff. I shouldn't be looking for stuff. It should be obvious where it is. Position of elements in the upper left bar. Again, reading order is important to me. The "first" information there is supposed to be the most important one, and then it would be nice if there was groups for dependant resources. I'm suggesting this: First line : Crown, "production", water, crops, food, population, max population, jobs (all of those are dependant in that order so they need to be grouped), and last housing. Second line : Energy first. It is the major resource for actions and should be easily seen on the start of the line. Then crime, pollution, wounded people, unclaimed bodies, and so on. I'm not sure of which are most important here, but basically indicators related to problems to solve should be grouped here. Third line : In order, the most important of those should be research, then social progresses. Research deserves a larger size here, like the quantity of research done per turn, the name of the research should be shown, and I've no idea where to put compatibility and temperature. "Right" of research might be good but still it needs to be grouped together. Having one on the left and the other on the right is confusing. Victory conditions can be moved next to end turn at the bottom right. It's really useless here in the resource subscreen. Position of buildings in the left bar. Ok... seems that lot of inspiration was taken from Skyward Collapse here. First of all the "current" order of buildings is very confusing for me. In my 45 minutes game I've got police, then military, then explorer camp, then housing... Let's take the same approach as was done in the upper left bar. Buildings are designed to allow a city to grow, so... Most important would be "allow more construction options". It's a city-building game after all. So here, you place most of industries and banks. It needs to stand out as a "mini bar" detached from other bars. The next group would be "population buildings", "food", These need to be the first ones in the bar. Again, as a mini-bar. Then, you've got energy and "problem reduction buildings". All those buildings related to the "problems" identified in the second line, top-left corner. The order in which the "problems" are solved needs to be in the same order as the problems are shown in the top-left bar. Again, as a mini-bar. Last, still following the pattern from the first bar, research and social progress buidlings. Again, as a mini-bar. Military buildings and actions should stand out in another part of the game, maybe on the right (those ain't designed to build cities). Including demolishing. For "mixed" building, I would not hesitate to place them twice. Interaction between the left bar and the upper bar. There currently is no interactions between both. There should be. When I have a problem with, let's say, not enough food, I'd appreciate being able to click on the food icon, which would in turn propose to the player all food producing buildings from the building "bar". | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| related to | 0017279 | resolved | keith.lamothe | Building / Job / food / crop / water even more unclear than before |
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By the way. Most of this note could be applied to Skyward Collapse as well. |
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There are some good points about the organization of the top bar. The reason for a lot of the current organization is because we used to have multiple cities, and so we had to separate out city stuff and empire stuff. Now that's more mixed together. In terms of the left sidebar, I'm not sure that I wholly agree there. At the time you wrote this, I think the organization was a lot more iffy, although I can't recall for sure. At this point I think it's solidified pretty well into sensible categories with a sensible order. If there are things that seem to be out of place still, that would be worth discussing. |
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* The top bar items have been thoroughly rearranged so that their order is a bit more sensible -- particularly given the new item up there and the two removed ones. ** More changes will still be needed to really be ideal, but this is a lot better; we have some interesting ideas coming up that folks will hopefully like, but we won't be able to try them out until next week. |
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Yes, by the time I wrote this the game was different. I've been thinking about other changes but not have had time to write them out. The left bar was exactly the same though. Maybe it'll get clearer if I "draw" what I meant. In any case, it's worth proposing I think. Thanks for those changes =). About the left bar categories, I needed about 5-10 hours of playing to recognize the logic behind them (about what things are in it, and why things are in it). About the order of the category themselves, I still can't figure out what the logic is. I can't for now figure what the logic behind the placement of buildings "inside" each category is either actually. Could you explain that logic ? Maybe it's logical for "most" and I'm the one with a strange mind. But my first "feeling" about that bar is that I kept reclicking to look for stuff, and (I think I'm at 30 hours of playing now) I still do. |
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More confusion on this issue from Steelwing: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,17820.msg0.html#new . |
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From Billick: I do kind of get the feeling that there is too much stuff in that main HUD panel right now. I kind of feel like some of those numbers could be pushed back in to their own menus which you can look at when you want to, and they are only shown directly when there is a problem. ref: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,17664.msg191590.html#msg191590 |
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My issue specifically relates to confusion about the "victory percentage" indicator. I had no clue what it was. |
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I think the suggestions for dividing the ui by category (population gets its own part of the ui for example), as well as making the various icons contextual (suggesting buildings to improve food production) are sound. I suppose there are many ways to improve the ui, but separating them and making what the various elements do very clear would be a great way to start. |
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Thanks! * The top left GUI has been redesigned to include more space, and to make the most important elements be on the left side of the screen. The end turn button (and its variants) are also now far more visible. If there's any more feedback (which I'm sure there may be), I'd like that to be in a new issue so that there isn't confusion about the old version and the new one. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 4, 2015 2:12 am | kasnavada | New Issue | |
| Jun 4, 2015 2:19 am | kasnavada | Note Added: 0041655 | |
| Jun 4, 2015 2:19 am | kasnavada | Note Edited: 0041655 | |
| Jun 4, 2015 2:20 am | kasnavada | Description Updated | |
| Jun 17, 2015 4:53 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0042313 | |
| Jun 17, 2015 4:54 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Relationship added | related to 0017279 |
| Jun 17, 2015 5:06 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0042315 | |
| Jun 18, 2015 1:56 am | kasnavada | Note Added: 0042322 | |
| Jun 18, 2015 3:17 am | kasnavada | Note Edited: 0042322 | |
| Jun 23, 2015 9:49 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0042403 | |
| Jun 23, 2015 10:02 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0042405 | |
| Jun 24, 2015 10:58 am | steelwing | Note Added: 0042438 | |
| Jun 24, 2015 1:08 pm | Tormodino | Note Added: 0042442 | |
| Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0042745 | |
| Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 0.904 (Top HUD Redesign) |
| Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Aug 6, 2015 8:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
