FreeOrion

Ooh, I like this idea. Doesn't necessarily have to be hexes, but some sort of radial or just popup menu could clean up the clutter on the sidebar and open up space for all the new stuff that needs to be put in.

Of course, I still like my "levels" idea from way back when, but it never seemed to capture anyone else's imagination. (see here if interested)

Oh, and btw, hey everybody, what's up? I'm back. I'm gonna continue lurking, but I'll probably be back on task come June-ish when the current project at work is all done with.

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Yeah, I dig the idea as well. But, don't we need to display all the icons anyway....to indicate how much of a resource is being produced on the planet?

Yes

Ok.

I did clean up my mockup a little, its still WIP...

Im not sure where to start with this, but im using the same idea i thought of and mention earlier.

Heres the mockup...

[EDIT]
noticed a little error on the "turns left" part... so ignore it.
[/EDIT]

You are able to either first select the place you want to build or first start the project (which goes on top of the queue...) then go to a system/planet and assign the selected project and press "assign project"... The project will be then started in the selected (planetary system sidebar) planet. etc.

If the planet is not able to start select project, the "assigned project" button wont show, instead it says "unassigned project".

Im not sure if the projects queue should hide all projects that are not being built on in that selected planet, or should all the projects that are in development shown highlighted/other greyed out.

I was thinking that by selecting the system (the sun) or planet in the planetary sidebar, the actual queues would the show projects relevant to the selection. Like if i select the sun of the system, projects queue would show all the projects that are being build on every planet in that system.
Same thing if i select planet, it will show only projects in progress in that specific planet.

Not sure what is the best way to "select" to show global queue of projects...

The planetary sidebar here is in "planets only", you can "slide" open the whole panel by moving cursor on the right edge of the screen. It will hide again when you move out from the sidebar area.

Now it seems that i have the space to show the whole sidebar at all times...

Theres plenty of things missing here that ive planning to add, but havent yet figured out the best way of doing.

Its black and white since PD didnt like my blueish/magenta coloring...

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How do you select where to build if you can't see the galaxy map? How do you show ranges for buildings in order to pick potential build sites for ranged buildings (starlane jumps or direct distance).

I'd suggest not putting anything on the queue until it has a build location and a ... thing to build. It's confusing if things can be "sort of" on the queue... what happens if you leave the screen or end the turn with something on the queue and unassigned? If it's on the queue, it should be fully ready to start building if PP are available.

Why insert at the top of the queue? Shouldn't it be at the bottom...? You'd probably want to finish in-progress projects before starting new ones, if PP are limiting.


I suggesting showing the buildings at, or being built at, a planet underneath the planet on the sidepanel, and leaving everything on the queue visible at all times for clarity. When a planet is selected, you can grey out or remove the things that you can't build at that planet from the list of potential build projects (build palette, I called it...).

The list of buildings under planets could be expandable / collapsable, and available outside the production screen, providing space to interact with existing buildings from the main galaxy map / sidepanel (which will be necessary for any targettable buildings, or activatable / disablable buidlings). The other info on the sidepanel can also be togglable on/off, like resource production details, lists of specials, any future political / factional info. Each subsystem would be togglable on/off, allowing you to expand the sidepanel to show all info and taking up lots of (vertical) space, or just show the picture and planet name at minimum. The whole thing would also slide in or out, as you suggest... perhaps with buildings at a planet still showing when slidden in, just as icons or names, w/o the rest of their UI.


Since there's nothing else in that space, why not slide it open by default while the production screen is open...? The slide open idea works well for the standard map view (ie. no production screen open) though...

Create a project(s). Close the "project management" (Production queue is still visible). Select project from queue, now shows valid building locations etc. Select system/planet and press "assign project" button...

Or just select the system you want to manage and start projects directly...

Eventually the production queue will have infobox for showing requirements and whatnot...

The "project management" area (need better name for it) is purely where you create projects.

Also i want to say this now, i hate the whole idea of "starlane jumps/area" idea, its "imprecise" and stupid. Id rather have something like the constellation system i descripted and have these "area effects" affect whole constellation (static group of stars). You would know exactly what planets are being affected etc... Less "hassle".



How is it confusing? Its a project thats waiting to be "started". Not sure if we need a separate tab for these...

Leave the screen? These projects will stay there until either you assign it or end turn(?) Im not seeing much issues with this.

What do you mean by "...thing to build"?



Id rather have them on top and not need to scroll down everytime i create a project(s) then start finding location to build them on. I would think that finding someone to build/construct your project(s) would be some sort of a "top priority"?



Thought about it, but not sure if im gonna use that. Theres already queue that can be open most of the time, why not use that.
I want to use minimal of space and that includes eliminating things that shows exact same thing in two or more places.

Perhaps just showing that theres (number of) project(s) in development in that planet or something...

Is it possible to have 2 or more projects in development per planet?

What if production thats requirements are like "Primary Focus Farming" or anything that can be changed during the building? I mean what happens if i have this kind of thing in development?

These are on Wiki pages, on 0.3 requirements under production.
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/V.3_ ... Production



True, probably will if we dont need anything else in the production screen.

EDIT:
Also i was thinking of separate queue "tabs" to show "global" and "local" queues. Local would be the selected system/planet level stuff...

Another idea is that when research opens up new projects, you could have a button in "new reseach discovered" (possible) popup to add the project to queue... sort of "to-do" project thing i guess.

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Right there is a conceptual problem (or difference) with what you're thinking. The whole point of the global queue is that it's a *global* queue. When the issue of local vs. global building, queues and shared PP was discussed, this was the big point: It's a global queue. Not local. You prioritize and plan buildings on an empire-wide scale, so it's (arguably) essential that we keep it clear in the player's mind that there is a single production queue... not separate local queues for each planet.

It sounds like you're trying to make a system / UI that's half way between the standard 4X game system of having separate queues for each city / planet, and the one we decided on, which is only a single queue for the whole empire.

In order to make this clear and unambiguous, we should, IMO, not use any sort of "filtering" of the queue based on the currently selected planet. This would confuse the player, because it's unclear where the projects on the queue at any given time are in the overall queue (which is the "real" queue), and it might show projects that are at completely opposite ends of the queue as right next to eachother when filtered for a single planet. Also, explaining why projects get funded or not is rather difficult with a location-filtered queue, since there would be no visible reason on the queue why one planet gets 30 PP / turn, but another gets 80 PP / turn (eg. if the 80 PP planet had 80 PP of projects higher on the queue than the first 30 PP project of the other planet).


Why do you want to make several projects, and then assign them build locations as a separate step? IMO it's much clearer and simpler to have each project get assigned a location as soon as it is created... Since there's no way to build something without a location, why make it possible to have a project even be unassigned?


Calling it "stupid" is meaningless, and calling it "imprecise" is unclear. What do you mean? It's quite "precise"... if something's within 2 lane jumps, then it's in, if it's not, it's not. With appropriate graphical display of affected systems when picking a build location, this is quite clear.


There's no difference in the "hassle". You'd still have to show the player which planets are affected. The differences are in how those planets are selected and that using distance is more flexible and could be used to give the player more options (ie. place it here and get these 8 system, or there and get this one but lose that one... etc.)


It's confusing that it's on the queue, which is supposed to be things (build projects or research) that are actually ready to be funded, not which still need additional interaction before they can get going. As above, it seems like a pointless step. Why move stuff onto the queue, if it's not fully done and ready to be built? Make the queue for stuff that is ready to go, and the build palette / project management area for stuff you can build. Putting something onto the queue without a build location would be like saying "I'll probably want to build this"... but not actually saying "build this"... It's clearer conceptually to keep the queue for only things that are fully selected, assigned and ready to go, rather than two classes of partly and fully ready to go projects.

Potentially we could have a quick-bar or somesuch, onto which you could put a few projects form the build palette or project management area, and then you could close the palette / area, and pick build locations for the things (or multiple copies of them). But we did this, it shouldn't be done with the queue, as that compicates and confuses its purpose and meaning.


I just was referring to the ability to assign a build location first, then pick a project, or pick a project and then assign a build location. "thing to build" is which project to build.


Except that the position of a project on the queue already has a meaning, which is that it gets funded first, before any other projects get funding. If you start putting things on the queue at the top, then your previously partly funded projects would get bumped down, when the more logical place to put new projects, by default for the UI, would be at the end of the queue.

Really, this is just the same mis-use of the queue issue. If you want a quickbar of projects to place or make build orders for with the palette / manager closed, then do it separately from the queue.


For the reasons above... the queue is GLOBAL... not local. Filtering it is confusing and inconsistent.

We also need to have a non-production-related way of listing / showing the buildings at a planet, including finished buildings. IMO it's easier to show the in-progress buildings at a planet the same way as the finished ones, rather than having a separate UI function, or misusing the production queue for this purpose.


The queue shows what the prioritization of the build project is relative to all the other projects in the empire. The list of buildings under a planet shows where individual projects are being built, where finished buildings are located, and provides space for UI functions to interact with those buildings outside of the production screen.


Yes. There have been no established limits on locations of in-progress or finished buildings or combinations thereof. Potentially, we could later have limited buildings slots per planet, but there would probably be more than one per planet.

Of course it is, but its not possible to have everything open and still have reasonable view space for the galaxy map.

Theres 2 things that comes into my mind. First is that you want to build things on a selected location, perhaps newly colonized world, to start things going on. Second would be that you researched new building project and want to build it someplace, perhaps a wonder giving bonuses to the whole "constellation" if you will.



Im aiming for the global queue, but also id want to be able to see the progress on separate system/planets if the players wants to. Not indivitual/separated queues per planet/system.



Thats why i had doubts whether it would be feasable to use such "localized" queues, it seems the answer is no.

How about having the same global queue for everything but highlighting the projects that are in development in the selected planet?

Damned, ive got to go. Ill check this later to day in more detail.

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Im gonna continue with the mockup when i fully understand whats going on.

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Come to think of it, this is like trying to make a 1000 piece puzzle. Ive got something like half of the pieces missing...

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How about:

You select a planet/system and buildings being built/queued in that planet/system get a border of different color around them.

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That's true... But do we really need to devote all the space you have to listing the possible projects? In my last mockup, the possible projects are shown more like in SMAC, or like the techs on the tech tree, as a "buildings palette" that has minimal info about each one. The details about the currently selected project (clicked on the palette, sidebar or queue) would be shown at the top of the screen (where the tech descriptions are shown on the research screen). There'd be an "Effects / Description" toggle next to this, and when it is set to "Effects", you get the list of things like "3 trade / turn maintainance, +3 to farming focused worlds in empire, requires access to freshly squeezed orange juice supply to be built" and such. (A feature similar to what I'd like to see on the tech screen). I don't think we need to show this info for multiple projects simultaneously... at least when selecting what to build and where. This way we can have the map and buildings palette and queue and sidepanel all visible simultaneously, making for quick and simple selection and display of available projects, build locations and queue positions. This allows you to pick the build location first, and have the buildings palette filtered to show just what you can build there, or allows you to pick something from the palette, and have the galaxy map and sidepanel highlighted or filtered (to be decided) to show where it can be built.

We can, and perhaps should, also have an alternate view in which to show many projects and details about them to compare like in your project management section, but in which we don't show the queue or planets or the mini-palette at the bottom.


This can be shown on the sidepanel, with progress indicators for incomplete buildings. Incomplete buildings won't need the full buidlings UI that completed ones do, since they're incomplete and presumably inactive, so we can use that space to show their progress bar, even when the production screen isn't open.


I have no objection to highlighting the queue to show which things are on the selected planet, or highlighting copies of the selected build project that are on the queue (or on the sidepanel), or if a building is selected on the sidepanel (if this is possible) highlighting that building type on the palette (or that building itself on the queue if it is incomplete). This isn't enough on its own though...

I think there has to be the "cost" and "building time" shown for each of the possible projects you can start, without clicking them.

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And its name, a picture or icon (ideally the same as what appears on the sidepanel, or wherever else the main buildings UI is), and perhaps a one or two word description of the purpose of the building... though I suppose we could give them clear enough names that that's not necessary...

Since i dont know anything anymore, we could as well use the mockup you did. I dont think this UI "design" is for artists at all...

But whoever makes the final decision, for god sake keep the sidebar simple.

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