FreeOrion

hi
This has been written with starlanes thought in, but for 0.1, ignore those parts. Comments, mistakes, something to correct, features to suggest? Small shipicons in picture should vary by sizeclass as in picture they mostly dont and their color is under thought. And mapwindow has some mistakes. But anyway I find this design simple but still allowing much options. Think it like windows filemanager where fleets are folders and ships are files.

Miu
FreeOrion Graphics Team Lead
Ps, it's 5am here, I'll better reread this after some sleep

http://www.evtek.fi/~k0201783/fleetwindowmockup2.jpg

Starmap

Starmapfleeticons
-Starmapfleeticon contains two parts. First a icon typical to that empire colored with that empires color. On bottomright corner of starmapfleeticon is located a dot-bar, that shows the strength of fleets.*
-Each starmapfleeticon represents a group of fleets. It has minimum of one fleet containing one ship.
-When fleets are stationary on a system, starmapfleeticon is located at top right corner of that system. If there are fleets from more that one empire, starmapfleeticons are arranged next to each other in top right corner at rows of 3.
-if fleet has other target than system it is located, then it is leaving the system and is represented on starmap at topleft corner of the system.

Selecting fleet and target choosing
-leftclicking starmapfleeticon selects all fleets contained there. Then leftclicking on system, sets target for selected fleets there.
-When clicking targetsystem for selected fleets, fastest way there trough starlanes is calculated and those starlanes are highlighted. If another system is clicked, way is shown there. Highlights are shown till player left-clics another object at map.
-around selected starmapfleeticon is drawn a cornerbox.
-ctrl-clicking on system, targets selected fleets to travel there directly on off-road course.
-when starmapfleeticon travelling on map, estimate time required to target system is shown at toprightcorner of icon with text "eta:number of turns estimated"
-rightclicking starmapfleeticon opens fleetwindow.


Fleetwindow

Fleet window contains titlebar, x-button, scrollable window, underbar and ship-button.
If fleet is not controlled by player, player can do viewing but cannot interact.

Titlebar shows empirename's fleets at systemname.

X-button closes fleetwindow and all open shipwindows. If mainshipwindow was open when x-button was clicked, it will be opened automatically when fleetwindow is opened nexttime.

Scrollable window shows fleets of selected empire at that system.
-it has two modes: listmode and iconmode.

Iconmode
-iconmode shows fleeticons in grid of 4x3. Next to fleeticon sized 24x24 is the amount of ships in that fleet. Fleeticon is tinted by empirecolor.
-In Iconmode, one box in grid has height 24 pixels and width of 24+minimum amout the font requires to show 3 numbered figure, approx width is 35 pixels.
-there's one pixel border between boxes.

Listmode
-In listmode fleets are show as list with each row containing information: 14x14 fleeticon, amount of ships in that fleet, fleetname, target system.
-Window has 6 rows. There's one pixel border between rows.
-In both modes ships are listed ascending by their fleetidnumber.**
-selected fleets are highlighted with box. Last selected fleet has cornerbox too.

Selecting:
-Single fleets can be selected by leftclicking them.
-Multiple fleets can be selected by square selection (draw a box), or by shift-clicking, that adds fleets to selection. Shift-clicking to selected fleet removes it from selection. This acts like ctrl-clicking in windows.
-By default, first fleet on window is selected.

Targeting
-leftclicking on a starsystem assingns that sytem as target to selected fleets.
-starmapview reacts accordingly.
-targeting can be done by selecting target-option from rightclick-menu.

Scrolling
-When there's more fleets in system that fits the window, it can be scrolled by scrollbar on by clicking on bar or by holding mouse above or below the mark in scrollbar-box.
-There's always one emty row at the end

Right-ClickMenu
-has options: target, open, rename, icon, list
Target***: opens a window where you can choose target system either by alphabetically by name, or from minimap. Useful when sending fleets far away.
Open: opens separate shipwindow next to to fleetwindow. Only one open window per fleet.
Rename: dialoque to rename the fleet
Icon: changes mode to iconmode
List: changes mode to listmode

Underbar shows selected fleet's name and target system. If more than one fleet is selected, it shows "amount of ships combined"/"amount of selected fleets".

Ship-button opens mainshipwindow for selected fleet. If mainshipwindow is open, clicking this closes it.


MainShipWindow

Mainshipwindow contains scrollable window and underbar.
If fleet/ships are not controlled by player, player can do viewing but cannot interact.
Scrollable window shows ships in selected fleet
-it has two modes: listmode and iconmode.

Iconmode
-iconmode shows shipicons in grid of 5x4. Below to shipicon sized 16x16 is it's typenumber**** which is colorcoded.
-In Iconmode, one box in grid is roughly 20x20 pixels.
-there's one pixel border between boxes.

Listmode
-In listmode ships are show as list with each row containing information: 14x14 shipticon, and shipname that is colorcoded.
-Window has 8 rows. There's one pixel border between rows.
-In both modes ships are listed ascending by their typenumber.
-Colorcoding: if ship is at good shape, text is shown white. If ship has unrepaired armor damage text is shown yellow, if there's unrepaired hulldamage, it's shown red.
-selected shipss are highlighted with box. Last selected ship has cornerbox too.

Selecting:
Similar to fleetwindow.

Moving ships between fleets.
-Drag and dropping transfers selected ship to fleet they were dropped at fleetwindow.
-If selection is dropped at empty slot at fleetwindow, ships will form a fleet of their own.
-Ships can be dropped to separete shipwindows as well, thus being added to that fleet.

Scrolling
Similar to fleetwindow, expect no empty row needed at the end.

Right-ClickMenu
-has options: details, refit, scrap, icon, list
Details***: Opens window showing details of selected ship. Available only when selection = 1.
Refit***: opens window so that ship can be refitted if suitable starbase on system.
Scrap***: dismantles selected ships and adds money to empire. Confirmation dialog.
Icon: changes mode to iconmode
List: changes mode to listmode

ShipIcons: Icons used here are ship-line specific icons that vary by the ships size.They aren't colored by empirecolor.

Underbar shows selected ship's name and typenumber. If more than one fleet is selected, nothing is shown.


Separate ship window
Has similar properties to mainshipwindow, but it has titlebar, x-button,and is not tied to fleetwindow and can be moved separately by dragging from titlebar.
Titlebar contains information: Fleet's name, target system.
X-button closes window

* dot-coding, see triangles vs. fleeticons thread for details
** fleetidnumber, each fleet has number by order when it was formed. [01, 02,...]
*** feature under discussion/uncertain/design not ready, probaply not in 0.1
**** Ships typenumber, eases way to assing ships in iconwiew. When buildt, each ship is assigned by one. Consist of two parts: type of ship and number of design.
CR - Carrier
IF - Indirect Fire
SC - Scout
LR - Long range
SR - Short range
SP - Support
So all ships using first IF design would get typeid IF01, when modifying/refitting ship, it last part of number would change to first free number available in that category.[/img]

_________________
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Scroll window is a big mistake. If it is that complicated, I highly suggest simplify the gameplay. I recommend just group them into catagories. Half the fun is not knowing exactly what your opponent have and duking it out to find out. If you are refering to your own fleet, I would do a sub-catagory of "updated ships" and "obsolete ships" and "space garbage"



Only if you got spys there. I think the other players shouldn't know exact detail for your fleet. Dots are perfectly fine.



I say pick one and stick with it. Right now, you got are in the third layer/window and then you got choices?! Two is enough. Three will drive ppl crazy as it did in moo3. I say don't bother.



Can I doudble click to select same type of ships?


Will there be a search somewhere on the main screen?

I assume scout will double as PD?

Do my ships have to target a system for travel? I can move to open space, intercept space monsters, or investigate specials?

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Overall it looks great! A couple of suggestions/comments:

- Add a shift-click to fleet destination selection to allow players to build a waypoint path through the stars. I could even imagine a shift-ctrl-click that inserts a forced-offroad waypoint but that might be going too far...

- I'm wondering if it might be hard to click on an empty space to do drag-select in the ship boxes (otherwise it does drag and drop of the ship). If this seems like it might be a problem, I'd suggest moving item-by-item select to ctrl and using shift-click for selecting a stack of stuff.

That's all that immediately jumps to mind.

I had an Idea for modifiying the Dot based aproatch that was resently proposed. Rather then using Dots you could use several sized ship shaps, the combination of which indicates ship strength.

Think of it as being a bit like Roman Numerals, each progressivly larger/elaborate glyph would be a greater quantity of flett size. The glyph's would be tightly bunked togehter and partialy overlapping giving the sense they are infact a fleet and yet the presise quantity of ships could be displayed to a very high degree of acuracy.

It might work like this, note that these could all be the same shape thats just scaled slightly for each level.

tiny glyph - about the size of the Dots your currently using = 1 point
small glyph = 3 points
medium Glyph - about the size of the glyph your using now = 9 points
Large = 21 points
Huge Glyph - about twice the size of the current glyph = 63

As you can see it is progressing by trippling (doubling or quadrupling might also work). So lets say a fleet has a "size" of 13. That would be 1 medium, 1 small, 1 tiny. A fleet of size 45 would be 2 large and 1 small. At most you can have 2 of any glyph and the maximum total would be 10 ship Glyphs which would ofcorse be very late in the game as it would be a fleet of size 194.

The "size" value of the fleet would ofcorse be determined by adding up the sizes of the ships in the fleet. A destroyer or group of fighters might each equal size 1. In the Early game most of your fleets would be under the 1 size level but ofcorse you have few of them at this point so you can easily remember whats in every fleet, as you progress into the mid and late game the glyphs become more informative which is adsactly when you need the information.

_________________
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Math is a bitch, huh?

On a more serious note, I should say something about this thread. I asked miu for ideas on the fleet windows' interfaces, and he has been very helpful. However, he and some of you others have put a lot of ideas out there that either are related to game elements which have not definitely passed, or are at least are not going to be in v0.1.

I'm not saying this is a problem, but I'm just giving you fair warning that v0.1 is fairly minimal, just designed to give the coders a goal to shoot for. So while the design above is very nice, it is not what Josh and I will be writing. For instance, there is no convenient way yet to make an icon-grid type of view like the one in the mockup. So we'll be using icons and text in rows. Some other things will also probably be pretty scaled-down and simple, but I just wanted to give you an idea, since up until now we have striven to make the interface exactly as the artist have drawn it. This time, we probably won't.

No problem

I thought about that when doing that mockup, as there are many undecided elements and things not certainly easily implementable in, I had options either do more final feeling suggestion or only for features thought in in 0.1. I't felt more sensible to do the whole design and put down all the ideas I had as they can be cut out for 0.1
And lots of good comments and suggestions in this thread. We'll see more about these when we polish UI for 0.2

Miu

_________________
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus