FreeOrion

I tend to a agree, regarding the use of space. I'm however not friend of treating the hulls just like another part. After all hulls provide the base layout for parts and this should IMO be shown in the UI, by a different kind of selection.



As mentioned, I'd perhaps favor a drop list as well. I don't feel like the hull selection is separated from the design view though. But if this is the case for others, we might as well move the part selection to the bottom screen.


Putting the information together is a good idea. Perhaps information about the hull is either shown when a hull is chosen(from a drop list or whatever) or when the player simply clicks in the background of the design area and therefore deselects the parts.(note that clicking compared to dragging(to pan) is a difference).


Agreed.


Note that this is the minimum resolution(800x600). The size of the items in those list is supposed to be as big as an item in the tech queue is - this makes 8-9 items on screen or 20 items when using a high resolution like 1600x1200. Filtering this list is definitely a good idea. It might also be a good idea to present the items in an alternate collapsed way, which leaves just the names.
I'm not too sure, whether using an entire library page makes sense. The list itself makes use of most of the height of the screen already - there would only be a slight benefit in space when using an entire page. Unless of course, items on this page are not arranged in a list but in a grid. In this case, we could probably have an icon which enlarges the current list view to an entire page.


I was just trying to keep a consistency in design using angular forms and much weight in front. They indeed look a bit like (backwards flying) weapons, but just in side view. The actual volume is quite different. I wouldn't pay much attention to those though.

I think it is ok at the moment. It looks kind of nice there. Though if there is a more space efficient way then go ahead.


The disadvantage of a floating parts pallete is that if it keeps getting in your way, you have to move it out of the way. If it can be fixed in place where it won't get in the way, then that is a superior system. I think this is similar to the "no sliders" concept really. Maybe there should be no "floating pieces".


Yes, I agree. It should be a seperate page. There should be an initial ship design screen, then the ship design editor. There are other things to fit into the initial screen as well.
-Display designs
-Sort / Filter designs
-new / load design
-design templates eg autogenerate a carrier design or a assault ships design.


And, ships look better from above, but thats just me. I know that ships from the side takes up less space though, so I see why. I think a 3d view from the start (iso3d) would be ideal.

It's going to be pretty tricky to make modular ships. I mean, I don't have much of a problem modeling whatever ship, especially since the ones here I don't expect to be bogged down in extra detail. But if we make ships modular for the build, then I guess we 3D arists would have to know what the "skeleton" of the ship looks like, how the different parts are configured in space, before we can begin thinking of different things. I mean swapping out one part with another while maintaining a look of sleekness and coolness doesn't seem like an easy task. Although, if it's simply on a ship-by ship basis, I suppose it wouldn't be bad, really. Just tricky.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

This is going a bit off topic, but anyway:


First, welcome to the project! I'll be straight and tell you, that we don't need 3d artists at this very moment. This will however change in a couple of months. I want to approach this in a professional way and develop concept art first and then focus on building everything in 3D. What we need to do is develop entire ship lines. So the underlying form and design language needs to be fleshed out first. This should obviously take into account the alien race those ships belong to in first place.
In terms of detail I plan to make use of the available technology as much as possible, specifically normal bump maps. This means, there will be high resolution ship models needed to create those maps.


That's one of the main reason, that I was against a system which allows modular parts being visible on the outside of the hull. As it is decided now, there will be different kinds of hulls coupled with different engines. Everything else happens on the insides and we(artists) don't have to bother with it, when designing ships.

I'd recommend you, if you are only interested in creating 3D content, to just lean back for a while. Read through the forums and the wiki and get a grasp about how everything works. This (graphics) forum especially, is still missing a proper introduction thread and I'm sorry for it.

No problem. I introduced myself in the General Discussion board if you want to know a little more about me.

As for leaning back, certainly no problem there either. I'm currently working on a render that will take quite a while before I'm finished with it. However, since you need ship lines and concept art, I can do that as well. Granted a majority of it will be hand-drawn on scanned sheets of paper, but I myself (and my brother) are both capable concept artists and can certainly hash out ships in 2D. The only things required are restrictions. Obviously we need to know what sort of alien craft these are meant to look like (smooth, curvy, sharp and spiky, insectlike, cubic, spherical, etc. ad infinitum).

So thanks for the welcome, and I'm sorta glad I don't have to do any of the real hauling quite yet; it gives me time to get to know people and become acclimated to the place. I did see in another thread, though, that you said you would appreciate more assistance in regards to 3D, so when the time comes, I'll try to be here as best I can.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Hey, that sounds great.

I won't give any restrictions. In fact I'm going to say, be as free and inventive as you can be, but design for a specific alien race. If you need inspiration: Eleazar has written up a great review of proposed races so far. If you like one of these, think about how they would build/create/grow space ships. You are free to make changes to the races, if you feel so - again there shouldn't be any restrictions. Keeping in mind or imagining how such a race would build(architecture), how they live, what they wear(cloth), etc can provide important guidelines for the ship designs.
If you don't like any of those, feel free to develop your own.

There isn't any set alien design in freeOrion yet, since it's on the roadmap for v0.7 - at least in terms of game design. So you are basically free to do what you want. I just ask for consistency and justified design decisions. Arbitrariness should be avoided.

Major changes: I've moved the hull selector to the left and changed it to a drop down list. This gives out a lot of space at the top to show information about the current selected part and/or about the chosen hull. I've also moved the part selection and its categories to the bottom.

Minor changes: The design list now features 3 buttons in the top right corner.
1 is used to display the list as it was previously: pictures, names and some basic info
2 is used to display a collapsed view(follow the arrow): just name and maybe something else
3 is used to maximize the design list to fullscreen - I'm still not sure if we really need a second window for this. It doesn't really KISS, does it? Besides, you can't do anything there, which you can't do the way it is now.
8 These are radio buttons to filter the list by role, type, size, whatever. Could be also on/off buttons.

4 is the new hull selection. Unlike using the design list, if you choose from here, an empty hull is presented at the right. Therefor we don't need a button for "new" anymore. It's replaced by

5 which is used to save a design. Hitting this will ask for a name and make the design part of the design list.

6 load a design or an entire design list(templates?)from the hard disk.

7 remove a design from the list.

Also, the part selector and the info list are re-sizable and floating(see the triangle?)

Questions: Are there going to be modifications to specific parts, like shield piercing or an achilles system as in MoO2? If so this could be managed in this huge window at the top. Selecting a part at the bottom or from the ship when it's already dropped, could provide some more options in the top window, besides the information.

What information would you like to be displayed in those UI items exactly?

edit: We could perhaps allow some items in the design list to be collapsed, while others are expanded. This would just require one tiny button per item and 1 and 2 would act as global buttons for the entire list.

I'm glad I have a library's worth of reading for different races, and that thoughts about them have already been semi-established. Only thing is, how many species are we going to implement? There's no way on Earth we're going to be modelling for as many species as are listed in that thread. v 0.4 would release sometime next decade. And I need parameters; from what I've seen of 0.3, I need to design a scout ship/fighter/cruiser/bigger cruiser/warship. Anything else?

BTW I will start working on concept designs for an alien set tonight based on the above 5 ship types unless those designations have changed.

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Photobucket account for FreeOrion and List of Techs and Icons

[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

The parts palette should have available / unavailable toggles, like the techs filter and list if production items on the production screen.

The hull selector seems out of place... All the rest of the designing is done on the right side of the screen, except hull selection which is on the left... It's also stuck between the list of existing designs and the summary of the whole selected design, which might have nothing to do with the current hull...

Could the hull selector be its own movable window, similar to the parts list?

IMO it'd also be a lot easier to use if you could expand the hull selector to show all the available hulls as images, similar to the parts list... You'd click the one you want, and it'd display the relevant info, and a double click would make it the currently selected hull...? Having a drop list makes it rather difficult to quickly compare different hulls' stats.

Perhaps the list of designs could be made essentially like the list of production items, with a little icon, name, a few columns of info, a description, and be made resizable?

Also, is there a difference between confirming a new design as one you want to make and use in this game, and saving the design to disk so it can be reloaded?

It'd be nice to be able to specify the design name and description before deciding to finalize it... I don't see anywhere in the mockup to specify these? If we have a "confirm design" button that's distinct from save, perhaps these text boxes could be placed adjacent to the confirm button? These widgets could be placed over the render, at the top left of that space? It could be set up like so:



With text-entry boxes next to the name and description label, and buttons to confirm the design or clear the parts already placed.

Some button or interface to automatically design a ship to fill some purpose might also be useful.

I didn't think of this. Will be added.


Beeing at the left side is actually not so much out of place. We are used to 'entering' an image or the screen in this case from the left(at least in the western hemisphere).Since choosing a hull is the first step in designing a ship, it makes sense to put it to the left and then go further to the right to the details.
Woudn't the summary show some basic information about the design, even if just the hull is selected? Things like speed, defense or stealth should be displayed, even if those values get modified by some parts later.
I agree though, that it still seems stuck in between.


I don't think it's a good idea to introduce yet another floating window. It seems like too much clutter to me.
The window, that's currently the design list, could maybe get 2 tabs. One listing all available(or unavailable) empty hulls and the second tab, listing essentially what is now the design list(stuffed hulls).
The window itself can be floating and re-sizable of course, but we still need to choose a proper size and position in first place, right?




Unless you can hover through the drop list, that's right.



I'll keep this in mind with the next mockup. I'm pretty sure, that the description will need to go to another(the big one at the top) window though, as it is with the production screen now.


That's a good point. I honestly didn't think about saving to the HD, which is weired, since I was talking about loading from it


Noted.


What is the difference here to loading a design from the HD? Are you going to really design by code or do you just load something from a txt/xml file?
What purpose can this be? How much user input is needed?

I'll be back with a new mockup in about 8 hours

Everything new is marked with a red dot. The three windows at the bottom left, are states of the same window(notice the tabs)!


There is a toggle button to choose between available/unavailable parts. As it is now you can choose between either one of those. If desired there could be 2 buttons as it is with the research window(researchable and unresearchable). I'm not sure if this is needed though.

You can now choose a name and a short description before finishing the design. Hitting the "confirm" button will now add your design to the design list(saved).

I don't think it's a good idea to have a "clear parts" button right next to the "confirm" button to avoid accidentally clearing everything, when one actually wants to finish a design. The position, that it is now is up for discussion.

The entire design area, including name, description and the two buttons should probably go into a re-sizable, floating window as well. Keep in mind, that panning around should still be possible.

The summary in the top left corner displays some stats and a description(I forgot the name). All or at least most labels are likely to be replaced with icons, providing more space as there seems to be now. Attack is at the moment 0 and the description is empty. This is because the Stapledon hull was just selected to start a new design. It has some base values like defense, stealth, speed and production time/effort. These are going to change, once parts are added.

Additional textual information as well as more detailed stats(if there are any) can be displayed in the information window at the top. Also an isometric render of the actual mesh, that is used in space combat could be displayed there. The mesh could also be rendered using opengl in real time.

As previously announced, the window at the bottom left has now some tabs(exclusive toggle buttons, if there aren't any tabs in GG).
The first tab, currently labeled "new", is used to browse through, compare and select hulls to start a new design.The extended view shows the hull name, a side (or top or front) view in a minimalistic icon style and a couple of basic stats like size, slots, defense and stealth. You can collapse the view to see just the names and stats. The pictures allow for easier recognizing and might provide a preview of the slot arrangement as well.

Going one step to the left, there is the same window, but with a tab labeled "saved" active. This is where all the designs the player has created are listed. Note that the hull name is now moved to the right and shown at a smaller size. More important for these items is the name the player has given to those designs.
At the bottom there are the stats. Size and slots are probably no longer needed. Attack, defense and stealth have changed(compared to the base hull) based on the parts that are stuffed into the hull.

There is a template tab, which is not shown active yet, because I need more information about how this is going to work.
I assume that it could work like this: The player selects a hull and a role, he want's the ship to operate in and based on the most recent research, the ship is stuffed with parts. That's it. Besides this, templates could also be pre-made designs, which come with the game and that are simply loaded from a txt/xml file. Input please.

The save button now saves a design(or the entire list?) to the disk.

Comments please.

What design templates are and can do isn't set in stone, but I think they would be best if made as an auto-design feature. Since the available parts and hulls will vary from game to game and over time within a game, and we already have planned the ability to save a finished design, we don't need another way to save designs called templates. Rather, the template would design a ship to do a particular job using the available parts and hulls. This design could then be modified or confirmed by the player as-is.

I suspect we can add a suitable interface to allow customizing templates using Python scripts. The script would be named according to the type of ship it would design. It would be given a list of the available parts and hulls and would return a ship design.

It seems a bit confusing to have two separate places where a design is described. Currently there is an info box at the top-left with stats and a description, as well as the name and description boxes over the render. IMO we should get rid of the info about a single design from the top left and put all info about the selected design in the render area. This way, the selected hull, parts and stats of the design are all in one place - the design overview. Details of a particular part or hull can be shown in the detail window when something is selected. This is also consistent with the research screen or production screen, where info about the empire as a whole is shown at the top left, and single tech or production item info is shown in the detail window.

I don't understand the objection to movable and resizable windows. If you don't want to move and resize them, then don't... they then act just like fixed-position windows. There's no more "clutter", and there is more flexibility.

Describing designs in terms of just "Attack" and "Defense" probably isn't very useful... Designs can have a variety of weapon and defense part types - long range, short range, fighters, point defense, armour plating, shields - so what exactly does "attack 50, defense 30" mean? I'm not sure what statistics do make the most sense to include on such a panel, but perhaps this will become more obvious with use / prototyping. It should be fairly easy to change later...

Moving the hull name around on the panel when comparing the hull panels on the new design tab and the finished design panels on the saved tab seems a bit confusing... Do we really need a hull name on a finished design panel at all? You can always select the design to see the hull and all the parts in it on the design details panel to the right.

I'm not fully convinced of the tab to select a hull to make a new design... It does make sense from a usability view: you make a design by selecting an existing design to work from, and this can be done by picking an empty hull, an existing design with hull + parts, or by picking an autodesign template; you then modify the design and save it. Conceptually though, I think of picking a hull as a step in the design process, like picking a part, so that it should be done more similarly to picking a part...

We'll need some way to distinguish external and internal part slots. Some parts can go in only one, and some can go in both, and what slot is what type and what part can go where should be clear. Filters on the parts list seems obvious, but slots need some indicator that doesn't involve hiding them. We may or may not have variable-sized slots... this is TBD... but external / internal is planned.

The "confirm" button could change depending on the situation:
- If making a new design: "Confirm New" or "Add New" -> adds new design, switches to design review mode. Description and name text boxes are non-editable, parts can't be edited.
- If reviewing an existing design: "Modify" or "Edit" -> takes to make new design mode. Description and name text boxes are editable and parts can be edited.

Or should editing a design automatically mode to edit mode?

Indeed, you are right. I've introduced the area in the top left to on the basis of the research and production screen. I didn't notice though that those only present empire concerning information that we don't have on the design screen.



You misunderstood. I don't have a objection to movable and resizable windows. In fact, most windows are in the previous mockup movable and resizable, even the window in the bottom left. We still need to decide on a standard position and size, which will work for everyone.
What I had concerns about was just introducing yet another window(for saved designs), which is why I've introduced the tabs.


This is just some bogus information and kind of a placeholder, based on the current versions of freeOrion. Obviously it will have to change.


No we don't, I just thought the player might want to see it. The difference with some hulls might not be too obvious, even with images that large(in the list), so having the name there does make some sense in my mind. Of course you can click on every design and see all the details, but putting the name there doesn't hurt either(unless we need that room for some other information).


I, at least, am fully convinced of the idea And as mentioned, hulls aren't just another part, but the base, the groundwork for all other parts, which is why I would like to treat them a bit different.


I'll address this in the next mockup. I really like the idea of having multiple sized slots and I hope they make it into the game.


I think switching the buttons is a good idea. Mainly because of the short description. The input box will be too small in most cased to hold the entire description. If we are in 'review' mode the full text could be displayed using a coupled of lines. When clicking 'edit' it will change to a single input box. If this could be handled differently, I would probably switch the modes automatically, but I think it could work quite nicely this way.

Here is the next one. Again, red dots mark the changes. Everything is shown in edit mode.


The information in the top left corner is gone and moved into the design area(bottom), This gives some more room to the hull/design/template list.

There is a drop down selector at the bottom of the design area to change the preferred role. When selecting an empty hull this should change to the optimal role. In review mode, this will change to just formated text, similar to the text boxes.
There will be a couple of new icons necessary which I'll open a thread for, once we are done here and we have some details figured out.

There are internal and external slots and parts now, as well as independent parts, which can use both slots. The more circular shaped part is an internal part and the X shaped one is eXternal. Independent is a mix of both, but I had just the idea to use a simple box instead, which will looks less weird and will still work with the slots.

I suggest coloring the different parts in relation to their category, if we decide to go with an icon style, just as we do with the research icons.
The slots could perhaps be different colored depending on their kind as well., but I think it's important to show this with shape alone and color as a bonus.

Whether external parts, should actually be placed only on the outside of the background image or not should be discussed. Especially with fewer slots, external ones will always be the superior number. In my example there actually would be no internal parts at all at this configuration. I think it's ok to "cheat" here though, because we aren't placing the parts in a real 3d environment anyway and the position itself doesn't matter.

The latest mockup is looking pretty good, I think.

Do the internal part slots need the shaded corners? A quick test in MS Paint suggests the two slot types would be easier to tell apart if they had more distinct shapes, such as by removing the corners.


Yeah, we don't need to worry too much about this... We're showing a 2D representation of a 3D ship, so "internal" slots don't need to be literally surrounded on all four sides by "external" ones. That said, we might as well try to make it a bit intuitive, by having the internal slots tend to be in the middle and bottom of the ship, and the external slots on the top and front / right and back / left sides of the image. Edit: which I think is what you tried to do, but the slot types are mislabelled on the parts list... "external" is on the rounder one. /Edit

I imagine it'll be set up so the hull data file includes a bunch of slot entries that let the designer / artist specificy whatever slot location is wanted on the layout / image, along with the type (internal / external), and, if added, slot size.

Slot size is an appealing idea, but I don't want to add it unless we decide we need the extra complexity.