0.3 Production Screen

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:55 am

Tabs would be great... I didn't use them at all because despite BreadMan's original mockup having them, tzlaine's implementation just had buttons, and pd's mockup used buttons (though added two rows of buttons rather than the single row of tzlaine). So, if we wan't to stay as much as possible like pd's mockup, it would be natural to use buttons for this purpose. It's really a minor point though, as the "tab" graphics aren't really functionally any different from just having buttons.

There is also a slight advantage to buttons, in that you can toggle each category on or off independently, so could show both ships and cultural buildings, but not anything else, should you want to for some reason...

Obiwan's suggested method to move the project / palette up and down is kind of odd... we'd probly be better off using standard edge-of-window click and drag. And I'm not sure how they're supposed to work... do you click the up arrow, and the window extends up a line, meaning you have to move the mouse to click again, or is it click and drag but just on the icon? In any case, I had this functionality in my mockup, or at least mentioned it in the accomanying text, so the point is just the details of how it's done.

There's no point in having Save / Load buttons for the project queue. With research you can easily enqueue a bunch of stuff that includes stuff you don't have the prereqs for, but with projects, the idea was the you could only enqueue things you have the prereqs for... and regardless, the projects and where you build them will certainly not be the same between games, so there's no use in loading a previous game's projects queue.

Just pasting one of BreadMan / Mystiqq's resource indicator boxes onto the current sidepanel isn't going to be adequate IMO... we need more functionality and info displayed, as discussed in my previous posts.

Regarding using icons for projects, IMO we really should. We should be thinking long term in this regard... yes, we'll have to have someone make icons, but until v1.0, we can just use filler / generic icons for projects. This won't hold up the development of anything else, and will make the game much nicer looking and functioning long-term.

A list like Obiwan's mockup of projects, as an option in addition to my grid of pictures would be good, regardless of whether we use icons as much as I want. If we do use icons though, we should have the icon-based grid-list as well, IMO. And the discussed drag-drop functionality.

pd's shading scheme for items on the queue is fine.

IMO we're better to have a single delete project button at the top than one on each project at the top right, as that way it's much harder to accidentally click to delete a project. The icon for category for projects is kind of redundant, but could be left, I suppose... Obviously I'd rather use my design though, with the larger project-specific icons, though.

My updated top left summary panel is somewhat important... the format used for research is simply inadequate for production.

My top centre info panel also has various necessary / good improvements... If there are suggestions for changes or improvements, fine, but we can't / should revert to pd's mockup just because pd made it that way for research.

Basically, given the amount of thought and effort that went into my mockup, I think it'd be better if changes were suggested to it, rather than attempts be made to base a whole new version off of pd's research mockup. I specifically requested appearance reworkings, and comments / suggestions about functional changes / additions are also welcome. If I'm overruled on the icons issue, then the change to remove them is relatively minor.

Unless someone wants to completely redesign the production UI that is... in which case neither my nor pd's mockups would be a useful base.

Impaler · **Posted:** Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:55 am

I would sugjest a "Black Hole" (aka Trashcan) at the top of the Quee. To remove an item drag it into the Black Hole, this is also the mest way to shuffle the order of items as well. Everything is Dragging and Droping. Drag the Icons from the bottom of the page and drop them onto planets or systems. Or you could drag them right into the Quee and it will prompt you for a location.

I think the traditional tabs will be most effective. I personaly dont think it will be usefull to see a mixed list of items. When multiply groups are mixed its almost guaranteed that considerable scrolling will be needed thus removing most of the benefits. Scrolling should be minimized as much as possible. To this end it should be possible to Hide things I dont want or need anylonger (and ofcorse a "Show Hidden" button). Another problem with radio buttons for groups is that several clicks are needed to move fully from one group to another (turn Ships off, turn TaskForces off, turn Buildings on, turn wonders on....) tabs alow you to rapidly get to adsactly what you want. Also consider the fact that a player will usaly already know the general catagory of what they want to build before they are even to the build screen, its the most basic choice so it should reguire as little clicking as possible.

It would also be VERY cool if players could design and implement their own tab systems. Desiding the number of tabs, their names and their contents. Then mixed results would easily be shown under a tab for that purpose. Thus a tab system could achive all the functionality of a button system but with vastly more flexibility.

As for the use of Icons in the build list. I realy love it. The small 32x32 Icons will tell an experienced player all they need to know and make everything instantly accessable. But we will also need a "Detail view" that show 1 icon per line will all kinds of important information listed along side it. Newbs will need the detail display and once you have the Icons memorized you can switch to summary display. In any case the Blowup and full blown descriptions at the top of the page can display any random fact you might have forgoten.

In response to one of your thoughts a page ago, it would be good to have an indicator on the map of what system is curently shown. I can think of 2 nice means for that. First a Circular tecnical looking possibly spinning ring around the star (a similar thing could be the mouse pointer). Second very very long strait light rays could project out of the star in the 4 cardinal directions and extend across the whole map fading as they grow more distant.

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Sat Jan 28, 2006 2:01 pm

I'd like to suggest a few changes in the UI mechanics of the production screen.

Currently the system sidepanel and the sidepanel seen on the production screen are quite separate. They are slightly differently positioned on screen, and if you open up a system on thet regular sidepanel, this has no effect on the system shown on the production screen sidepanel, and vice versa. This is unnecessarily complicated and confusing IMO. It would be better if the two sidepanels were the same thing, so that if you pick a planet on one, then open or close the production screen, the shown system has not changed. This way, if a player is using the regular sidepanel and looking at a system or planet, they can switch to the production screen and keep the same planet in view, allowing decisions to be made about where to build something while looking at the regular sidepanel, and then easily implemented by opening up the rest of production screen in one click without changing what system is shown.

Additionally, the production screen itself should work as just an optional state of the sidepanel. Rather then clicking the "Production" button opening or closing the production screen, the "Production" button should be a toggle which determines whether all the production stuff would be shown while the system sidepanel is open. The sidepanel itself would be the same in both cases, but when "Production Mode" is active, opening the sidepanel would also open the rest of the production screen. When "Production Mode" is inactive, the sidepanel would act the same, but without all the rest of the production screen stuff.

If the sidepanel was open, production Mode could be toggled on or off without affecting the sidepanel, by clicking on the button at the top of the screen (which would highlight or otherwise indicate its state visually while Production Mode is active). Additionally, if Production Mode was inactive, double clicking on a planet on the sidepanel, or possibly single-clicking a button next to the planet on the sidepanel, or double-clicking on a system's star icon on the map would activate Production Mode. (Double clicking on the system star icon on the map would also open the sidepanel to the system, and thereby open the production screen as well by simultaneously activating Production Mode.) Single clicking a system on the star map would open the sidepanel to that system, without changing the activation status of Production Mode: if active, the sidepanel would open to the system with the full production screen visible; if inactive, just the sidpanel would open). Whether or not Production Mode was active, clicking on an empty section the starmap, away from any system icons, would then act as now to close the sidepanel fully. This would not affect the Production Mode status however, and single or double clicks on stars would open the sidepanel to the full production screen as long as Production Mode is active. Conversely, if Production Mode is active and the sidepanel is closed, clicking on the Production Mode button would just deactivate Production Mode, and not open the sidepanel at all. However, if Production Mode was inactive, clicking on the Production Mode button would activate Production Mode, and simultaneously open the sidepanel (to the full production screen) to the last system the sidepanel was open to.

eleazar · **Posted:** Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:19 am

OK, the side panel was getting diverted into a discussion of the production screen. My replies and ideas are here.

This image is a 1024x768 at half-size. The purpose is to show IMHO a better layout without getting into the messy details of the visual implementation. This layout is intended to work at various resolutions, but 1024x768 is the minimum.

Since interaction with the galaxy-map & sidebar is necessary for choosing where actual items will be built, the production info does not cover space with empty boxes.

A: the queue expands downwards as more items are added, otherwise the space is free for the galaxy-map.

B: The buildlist is anchored on the left to the production queue and to the top of the screen. But with the handle on the lower-right it can be expanded and compressed as needed (within reasonable constraints) It cannot be expanded to cover the sidebar or lengthened so that C covers D. Clipping off a bit of the sun doesn't bother me, since the sun is also cut off at the top. However having B completely cover the sun as in other mock-ups seems like a bad idea.

C: this only appears when an item on the build list is selected. It is anchored to the bottom of B.

D: The galaxy map... the final frontier

So, there you have it, a more flexible and resolution-independent configuration for the prod screen. It's possible that more aspects might benefit from user-configurability, but this is a good starting point.

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:35 pm

The user being able to resize the build details panel might be good, but doesn't really help at 1024 screen width, at which the current layout doesn't leave enough room at what would presumably be the max allowed horizontal size for the panel...

Having the panel be expandable vertically creates some other layout problems... If the sidepanel top section (system info, above the planet panels and planet images) is the vertical size it is now, then the details panel can't expand over any further right than the left edge of the planets panel, as this would cover up planet images (and not just the star). If the detail panel was of fixed vertical size, then it could fit above the planet panels, and extend further right if the system info is less wide than the planet images and panels combined.

Most of the other suggested changes are about moving around production screen panels. I don't see how this is relevant to making the UI work well at significantly different resolutions, and the changes have some problems...

Putting the build list at the top means that the build detail panel is moved down. This is inconsistent with the layout of the research screen, which has the details at the top and the tree below. But more so, having the two panels connected at the top of the screen means that the space where the map view is seen is left only at the bottom of the screen. This is rather awkward because one generally centres the map on something by putting it in the middle of the screen. The current production layout has the map hole in the centre, so that something centred with the production screen closed is also centred with production open.

Also, connecting the items list and the details panel veritcally at the top of the screen as suggested makes having the top panel expand vertically awkward. As suggested, enlarging one panel would require moving the other panel to make room, meaning the UI elements in the moved panel are displaced, maknig using the UI slightly more difficult than if everything was consistently located.

I don't like the suggestion to shrink the queue when not needed to show everything on it. Like with the details panel, it's inconsistent with the research screen to change the size of the queue. But more so, I think it's clearer what's happening on a queue if the space in which its contents is shown is always the same, but just the contents changes. The size of the space in which the queue doesn't have any significance in the game... For example, we could (but don't) have a limit on the number of items on the queue, and could illustrate this visually by changing the size of the queue. Also, the extra map view space made available by shrinking the queue vertically isn't very useful or nice looking. It's at the bottom, which perhaps motivated the movement of the build list and details panel to be both at the top, in order to connect to two open spaces... But as above, connecting the two panels isn't good. And even if the map hole was going to be at the bottom, the extra map shown due to the reduced queue size is oddly shaped. Also as above, the cetre of the map on the screen is what the player is looking at... so having a weird rectangular block off to the bottom left doesn't really help... It's like looking at those Hubble Telescope images that have the corner notch out... An oddly shaped working space or image just looks weird and wrong compared to a square or rectangular one... enough so that we're better off not having that oddly-shaped extra space.

eleazar · **Posted:** Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:01 pm

Geoff the Medio wrote:

The user being able to resize the build details panel might be good, but doesn't really help at 1024 screen width, at which the current layout doesn't leave enough room at what would presumably be the max allowed horizontal size for the panel...

huh? B would be constrained not to overlap the sidepanel, but at higher resolutions, it could be expanded.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Having the panel be expandable vertically creates some other layout problems... If the sidepanel top section (system info, above the planet panels and planet images) is the vertical size it is now, then the details panel can't expand over any further right than the left edge of the planets panel, as this would cover up planet images (and not just the star). If the detail panel was of fixed vertical size, then it could fit above the planet panels, and extend further right if the system info is less wide than the planet images and panels combined.

I don't get the point of this part either. B & C horizontally expand together. I'm not trying to exploit the small bit of space above the column of planets. There's very little value in doing so.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Most of the other suggested changes are about moving around production screen panels. I don't see how this is relevant to making the UI work well at significantly different resolutions, and the changes have some problems...

Putting the build list at the top means that the build detail panel is moved down. This is inconsistent with the layout of the research screen, which has the details at the top and the tree below. But more so, having the two panels connected at the top of the screen means that the space where the map view is seen is left only at the bottom of the screen. This is rather awkward because one generally centres the map on something by putting it in the middle of the screen. The current production layout has the map hole in the centre, so that something centred with the production screen closed is also centred with production open.

Similarity with the Research screen is desirable, but less important than making the Production screen easy to use. However my proposal for the Research screen also moves the details box down.

The galaxy-map hole in the middle is a bad design for several reasons. B & C, two items which in concept and use are intimately connected are on opposite sides of the screen. This gulf increases at higher resolutions. The mouse/eye must travel between the bottom and top of the screen to peruse the options or actually build something. This is the worst aspect with the current production screen, and the first thing i wanted to change.

I believe it would be easy to automatically re-center the galaxy-map with the selected system in the middle of the empty space. When the production screen is dismissed the galaxy map might return to it's former position. This re-centering would be desirable no matter where the "hole" for the galaxy map is— at 1024x res the selected system has a good chance of not being inside the hole, no matter where it is.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Also, connecting the items list and the details panel veritcally at the top of the screen as suggested makes having the top panel expand vertically awkward. As suggested, enlarging one panel would require moving the other panel to make room, meaning the UI elements in the moved panel are displaced, maknig using the UI slightly more difficult than if everything was consistently located.

If the user moves something, he won't be confused by the fact that it has moved. I doubt players will frequently adjust the vertical hight, especially if the automatic centering is implemented. This occasionally "awkwardness" is certainly less of a problem for the user than having to constantly travel across the hight of the screen to build things.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

I don't like the suggestion to shrink the queue when not needed to show everything on it. Like with the details panel, it's inconsistent with the research screen to change the size of the queue.

If it weren't for the fact that the research screen has the left edge as the origin of the tree, i would propose the same thing for the Research screen. The empty space in the queue would complicate the tech tree if it was added, but on the production screen, it benefits the galaxy map.

Geoff the Medio wrote:

But more so, I think it's clearer what's happening on a queue if the space in which its contents is shown is always the same, but just the contents changes. The size of the space in which the queue doesn't have any significance in the game... For example, we could (but don't) have a limit on the number of items on the queue, and could illustrate this visually by changing the size of the queue. Also, the extra map view space made available by shrinking the queue vertically isn't very useful or nice looking. It's at the bottom, which perhaps motivated the movement of the build list and details panel to be both at the top, in order to connect to two open spaces... But as above, connecting the two panels isn't good. And even if the map hole was going to be at the bottom, the extra map shown due to the reduced queue size is oddly shaped. Also as above, the cetre of the map on the screen is what the player is looking at... so having a weird rectangular block off to the bottom left doesn't really help... It's like looking at those Hubble Telescope images that have the corner notch out... An oddly shaped working space or image just looks weird and wrong compared to a square or rectangular one... enough so that we're better off not having that oddly-shaped extra space.

I suppose you would crop off 25% of our images of these famous nebula just to get a nice neat square?

Having large parts of the screen filled with nothing, covering useful content, merely to remind players that sometimes information will be in this space, is generally bad UI design. The players of this game aren't computer novices, and will already be familiar with windows and panels changing sizes to accommodate more/less information.

For the same reasons, i propose that the sidebar, only extend downward until it's displayed all the info. In most cases that will be to the bottom of the screen. But with large screens or small systems, that space is better used for the galaxy map than black nothing.

noelte · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:46 am

I would like to introduce a new thinking. What's about using a complete production screen, rather than using the main window with galaxy map and sidepanel. I guess it would make it easier to design a good UI!? Or was there a design decision in the past about it, which i might have missed?

The Silent One · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:43 pm

noelte wrote:

I would like to introduce a new thinking. What's about using a complete production screen, rather than using the main window with galaxy map and sidepanel. I guess it would make it easier to design a good UI!? Or was there a design decision in the past about it, which i might have missed?

What benefits would there be? The player needs the galaxy map to decide where to build things!

eleazar · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 2:31 pm

The Silent One wrote:

noelte wrote:

I would like to introduce a new thinking. What's about using a complete production screen, rather than using the main window with galaxy map and sidepanel. I guess it would make it easier to design a good UI!? Or was there a design decision in the past about it, which i might have missed?

What benefits would there be? The player needs the galaxy map to decide where to build things!

Noelte, do you have more specific ideas? As Silent said, IMHO the production screen needs something very like the galaxy-map and sidepanel. Without reasons to do otherwise, the simplest, and easiest (for developer and player) thing to do is use what we already have.

I do think the information in the sidepanel might be profitably tweeked when the production screen in invoked. These are just guesses, but perhaps invoking the production screen should temporarily expand all the building subpanels in the sidebar, or something like that.

noelte · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 3:29 pm

Hmm, i was just following the thread and listening to the trouble with to less space. I'm well aware that production UI could use already existing UI elements as sidepanel / galaxy map, ...

I'm not a UI designer, but i think if you would design a production UI, you wouldn't for instance waste as much space for the planets as right now. And even selecting the system+planet where to build something is rather complicated yet (if you want to build at several places). You have to scroll/zoom the map to find the system. For instance, how about planet list which is sortable by some conditions, for instance by research output (to place a newly reseached reseach lab), free slots ...

And at the moment, the way production is assigned is not very clear designed!? Ok, if you know how it work you can do things, but i believe it could made better.

The Silent One · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:04 pm

noelte wrote:

For instance, how about planet list which is sortable by some conditions, for instance by research output (to place a newly reseached reseach lab), free slots ...

Actually, that might be a good idea. Now that you are mentioning a sortable list, I remember the colony list in MoO2 did its job very well. Also, a list will - as noelte said - allow us to get rid of the sidebar, which will provide further space. - I'll have to do a mockup over the weekend... :wink:

eleazar · **Posted:** Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:26 pm

noelte wrote:

I'm not a UI designer, but i think if you would design a production UI, you wouldn't for instance waste as much space for the planets as right now. And even selecting the system+planet where to build something is rather complicated yet (if you want to build at several places). You have to scroll/zoom the map to find the system. For instance, how about planet list which is sortable by some conditions, for instance by research output (to place a newly reseached reseach lab), free slots ...

And at the moment, the way production is assigned is not very clear designed!? Ok, if you know how it work you can do things, but i believe it could made better.

I agree it can be awkward to find planets from the Production screen. A sortable list is a very good idea. Also the Arrows on either side of the System name should scroll through your systems (or possibly systems where you have planets and/or ships). There's little point in scrolling through all the known systems in the galaxy in alphabetical order.

But i don't think a sorted-planet-list is only applicable to the Production screen. It would be very useful as an alternate form of the sidebar, useable anywhere. At this point in the development, i think it should have the same basic form-factor as the sidebar, but with dividing lines between each planet.

Because there is still benefit to sometimes having the normal sidebar in the production screen. Sometimes you'll make building decision based on enemy or neutral occupancy of planets in the same system. Or buildings with a system wide effect need to be placed with reference to the whole system.

I believe production is simple enough that it can be put up in one corner of the screen (as per my last mock-up) and let the rest of the screen operate basically as normal. This may be slightly less optimal purely for Production, but should be overall beneficial, as the player can perform all (or at least most) galaxy map functions with the Production screen up. There need be no switching back and forth between Production and Galaxy maps to find information, or get your bearings. If while placing buildings, you notice one of the planets needs a greater focus on food, you can switch it there, without stopping what you are doing.

eleazar · **Posted:** Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:21 pm

here's a mock-up of the production screen at 1600x1200 reduced to 25%. Larger resolutions will not be rare by the time FO is released.

On the left, my recent proposal, on the right something that in layout corresponds to the current game, and silent's recent proposal

I concede that usually there will be more planets in the sidebar, and more items in the queue. But i think this shows pretty clearly that the "hole-in-the-middle" plan at higher resolutions becomes increasing awkward to use, and potentially wastes more space with empty black boxes.

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:55 am

eleazar wrote:

Geoff the Medio wrote:

The user being able to resize the build details panel might be good, but doesn't really help at 1024 screen width, at which the current layout doesn't leave enough room at what would presumably be the max allowed horizontal size for the panel...

huh? B would be constrained not to overlap the sidepanel, but at higher resolutions, it could be expanded.

The issue that was being raised in the thread you linked to was that at 1024, more space is needed in the details panel. Your suggestion doesn't help with this. Higher resolutions are not relevant (to this point).

Quote:

Geoff the Medio wrote:

Having the panel be expandable vertically creates some other layout problems... If the sidepanel top section (system info, above the planet panels and planet images) is the vertical size it is now, then the details panel can't expand over any further right than the left edge of the planets panel, as this would cover up planet images (and not just the star). If the detail panel was of fixed vertical size, then it could fit above the planet panels, and extend further right if the system info is less wide than the planet images and panels combined.

I don't get the point of this part either. B & C horizontally expand together.

Whether the detail panel and list are horizontally the same size is irrelivant to the point. The issue is that at 1024, we need the extra little bit of space that having the image over the planet images allows. However, if we make the details panel *vertically* expandable, or if it's moved down, then this can't be done. In particular, if it's fixed size, the buildable item icon can fit between the top of the planet images and the top of the screen. If it's moved down, the icon could never fit into the nook-in-question, regardless of resizability.

Quote:

I'm not trying to exploit the small bit of space above the column of planets. There's very little value in doing so.

At 1600, I agree. But at 1024, I believe I've illustrated its importance above.

Quote:

...my proposal for the Research screen also moves the details box down.

I'd still like a reason to move it though...

Assuming the list and the details panel are at the top of the screen, the user will want to have the list and the map close to eachother, as they are both things the user has to intearct with. The details panel is more passive information to be read.

Much of the rest of the post I'm replying to was argument that only really apply at high resolutions like 1600x1200. Essentially, the interface looks OK and works OK at 1024, but eleazar/you are thinking about how it would break at 1600. Unfortunately, the suggested fixes would break 1024...

In particular, having the map hole at the bottom is not workable at that resolution. Having the map jump around and recentre to that odd-shaped and off-centre strip would be very awkard and confusing. The strip at the bottom in 1024 also looks as odd and bad as the distorted versions of The Silent One's mockup you've posted.

I'll come back to that, but first I want to address an apparent conceptual discrepancy:

Quote:

...at 1024x res the selected system has a good chance of not being inside the hole, no matter where it is.

I expect that the most common way to select a system would be to click it on the map... Are you expecting to use the sidepanel to pick systems most of the time (suggested by recent sourceforge feature request regarding which systems to cycle through...)?

Quote:

When the production screen is dismissed the galaxy map might return to it's former position. This re-centering would be desirable no matter where the "hole" for the galaxy map is...

I think a better solution than having the map automatically jump around when opening / closing the production screen would be to optionally (checkbox?) zoom to systems selected on the sidepanel, regardless of whether the production screen is open.

eleazar wrote:

But i don't think a sorted-planet-list is only applicable to the Production screen. It would be very useful as an alternate form of the sidebar, useable anywhere. At this point in the development, i think it should have the same basic form-factor as the sidebar, but with dividing lines between each planet.

I like the idea of a planets list, and have suggested something simliar for the research screen (techs list, which is particularly helpful to find a tech by name, which is difficult now). However, I think it'd need to be larger than the sidepanel... Likely, it'd cover the galaxy map when the production screen is open at medium or low resolutions. I'd make selecting the planet on the list open that planet's system on the sidepanel (selecting the planet if applicable). The list would be just planet data, not eye candy like the sidepanel, so the two would work together, rather than the list replacing the sidepanel (if that was implied). There are lots of possible columns of data to sort by, so something much wider than the sidepanel (and perhaps freely resizlable, and movable like the fleet window?) would be useful.

Quote:

I believe production is simple enough that it can be put up in one corner of the screen (as per my last mock-up) and let the rest of the screen operate basically as normal. This may be slightly less optimal purely for Production, but should be overall beneficial, as the player can perform all (or at least most) galaxy map functions with the Production screen up. There need be no switching back and forth between Production and Galaxy maps to find information, or get your bearings. If while placing buildings, you notice one of the planets needs a greater focus on food, you can switch it there, without stopping what you are doing.

The implication here is that you can't already do this... which is incorrect. Presently, the only thing that changes on the galaxy map when the production screen is open is that you can't select fleets. This was done because at lower resolutions, fleet windows covered up too much screen space when the production screen was open, though this obviously wouldn't be the case at higher resolutions.

But, there are longer-term reasons for not treating the production screen as a just regular windows like the fleets window or the sitrep... I'm not sure this is a good idea. Presently, what happens and is displayed on the map depends on what window is open. If the user has a fleets window open to one of their fleets, moving the mouse around the map will animate lines from that fleet to the potential destination the user is hovering over. Later, we'll likely way overlays on the production screen for building ranges or valid locations on the map. Other windows might have their own overlays. Having all of these open simultanously could be a bit confusing and cluttered, and might make it difficult to know when clicking where will do what, if there are conflicting uses for buttons between various open windows. If the production screen closes all fleet windows, then this can't be a problem.

eleazar wrote:

...I think [the mockup] shows pretty clearly that the "hole-in-the-middle" plan at higher resolutions becomes increasing awkward to use, and potentially wastes more space with empty black boxes.

I agree that fixing the details panel and list to the width of the screen minus the queue and sidepanel looks awkward at high resolutions, however this needn't be the case if there's that much space. It also wouldn't look so awkward if you increased the font size a bit, and showed something that's got a big more text in the description panel. Also, in later versions, there's more information in the list, so the list isn't just black space over most of its width. Also, at this resolution, the fraction of the width of the screen occupied by the queue and sidepanel is quite small. I don't see any pressing need to free up that space...

But regardless, it seems that being able to move the buildable items list, and perhaps the details panel, around the screen, as well as resize both, would be useful to making different resolutions workable. At 1024, one can be at the top and one can be at the bottom, so the central map hole is centralized and everyting's usable. At 1600x1200 or higher, the list could be moved up top of the screen. The map could stay centred as long as the list doesn't cover up the centre of the screen (just like opening / closing the sidepanel doesn't require shifting the map around). We might need a special-case docking condition for the detail panel at the top right, though, in order for 1024x768 to get the above-illustrated extra bit of space to make its text more readable.

Craigy · **Joined:** Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:14 pm **Posts:** 10

I posted my complaints with the current production screen, and my suggestion to improve it. Pd asked me to make a mockup and post it here:

Attachment:

ProductionViewMockup.png [ 244.93 KiB | Viewed 961 times ]

First of all, I am not an artist or UI designer, but I tried to show the picture that I had in my head.

Now some explanation:

I used a screenshot from the list view as a starting point, because it has items grouped by effect type. If the techs can have effects in-line like this, why not production items? Just imagine that the research items are buildings. :wink:

To get an idea of how narrowing down the choices will be accomplished, I renamed the filter buttons and colorized most of them. They should probably be organized and grouped into separated windows. I think perhaps only one of the Buildings, Orbitals, or Ships buttons should be active at one time.

Of course, using this model comes with a price: I have removed the galaxy view, and put a view of all colonized systems in the side panel. My idea to make this work: only allow the player to see colonized systems and colonized planets in those systems. Also, only one planet in one star system will be selectable at a time. So, you could have 30 systems in the panel, but only one of them will be 'expanded'. The rest will have small star icons and the name of the system. Same thing for the planets, they are only partly visible if the system is highlighted and only one is fully expanded at a time.

If the player wants to produce at a planet, he will double click on it from the galaxy map and enter production view. From there it will be easy to find the desired buildings or ships.

Taking the galaxy view away is a minus, but I think allowing players to find buildings much more easily is more important. This will be especially critical if hundreds of buildings, ships and orbitals are available. What do you guys think?

FreeOrion

0.3 Production Screen

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