FreeOrion

It was.


It's simpler to write, but determining what it means is much more complicated, as it requires the player to be aware of meters as a concept and how they relate to resource production and population. "... per 10 population" says it all, without requiring meters as distinct from and confusingly mixed up with resource production.


These apply equally in either case. Every resource production altering effect would say the same thing "... per 10 population", so it would not be something you'd have to remember. And it doesn't actually have to be "per 10 population"; it could be "per unit of population", but using 10 makes the numbers nicer.


The relevant section of Orbital Gardens' description would be:

All planets receive +2 to farming per 10 population.
The planet on which the Gardens are built also recieves +5 to trade per 10 population.

... that wasn't so bad, was it? Most of the length was not to the "per 10 population" part.

Here's the equivalent for the tech Mining Engineering:

Bonuses depend on planet type:
Barren and Inferno recive +4 per 10 population of planet at mining focused worlds.
Desert, Radiated and Toxic recive +2.
Tundra and Terran recive +1.
Ocean and Swap receive no bonus.

(the "per 10" is assumed after the first time, but that's not important)

Well explained.
I withdraw my objection.

Updated mockup:



- added flag

Collapsed view:



- shows only primary/secondary focus

@ Silent: I like the collapsed view as well.

@ Geoff: I agree that a new user should not need to understand meters. However, I disagree that she should not be told about them at all. After playing the game for some time, she will want to know more about the underlying mechanisms of the game. We should essentially have an "advanced" section of our docs that explains meters, but emphasize resource output early on.

• The planet's name is better on a line of it's own, and i like the long underscore
• Population never exceeds 100
• You need to condsider contrast more carefully. Give more contrast to the things that are more important. Nearly white boxes around the elements make the divisions very prominent, but these divisions are not very important. Make the lines darker. On the flip side you tend to put everthing over a low-contrasting grey background. This seldom increases usability
• i don't understand why science should be greyed out because it's reached it's max. If anything it should be emphasized, not de-emphasized.
• I don't think the "-10", "+45" need to be in parenthesis
• Our planets are quite attractive, and will eventually look better. With city-lights and battle damage they will also provide information on the planets status. I don't think we should place icons and indicators over the planet, except possibly in extreme and unusual circumstances. It could start to turn out like some design project gone hideously wrong.

• I'd hoped that the collapsed view could hold more than two items.

• Have you considered how this will work with larger planets?

Game Rule Question:
what happens if a meter reaches it's max, and then the focus is changed to something else so that the new max is lower? An instant or gradual drop?

How about using the empire color for those outlines?


I read the greying out as: "does not need further care as it has reached its maximum." Anyway, I can dismiss it.


Fine with me.


Then were exactly would you put flags and planet specials? I second that the planets shouldn't be obstructed, however, I think that the flag's current position is ideal.


It would certainly be possible to cram all resources into it, but IMHO the solution in this mockup shows the relevant information and at the same time maximizes readability. And, you can still see the system's resource output.


I believe that this planet has the largest size, huge. If gas giants are larger, the width of the sidepanel ui can be reduced a little further.

No. In many cases (like full saturation yellow and red) that would provide more emphasis. If you must put these in boxes, outline them in medium-dark grey.


I don't understand what you are saying. If planets shouldn't be obstructed, than your current position can't be ideal. I would place the flag partially behind the planet, as in my previous mock-up . I don't know what to do with specials, because i don't know how many there might be per planet.


No. Gas Giant are larger.


EDIT: BUILDINGS


• Icon is colored with the Tech catagory color for easy clasification (colors not precise in this example)
• At 38px square there's just enough room for 5 without overlapping the planet.
• Incomplete buildings are faded out (here at 45%) and have a small progress bar. Box around icon is grey rather than colored.
- * I wanted to dispense with the progress bar and gradually fill up the icon with fuller opacity as per one of silent's early mock-ups, But i don't think that would work well with a wide variety of building icons.
• I was too lazy to round off the corners, feel free to imagine that part.
• Additional info in tooltip.

Here we go...



- planet special and flag position changed (@eleazar: [planet] by obstructed, I meant obstructed by too many graphics; a single flag in the top-left corner does hardly obstruct the whole planet)
- correction of meter/resource figures (research white again), repositioned construction
- dark-grey boxes (@eleazar: the boxes are supposed to establish a sense that several ui elements belong together, let's call it "grouping": resources, pop&health, military...; they can be collapsed in a logical fashion
- added gas giant to prove that sidepanel ui is not too wide
- eleazar's buildings

Comments on Silent's latest mock-up later.

Here's something that doesn't make sense to me.
If i understand it correctly Mining and Industry have absolutely no value on their own. That there is no sane reason you would want anything other than equal production of both because, until they are paired into PP (production points) they are worthless.

Is this correct? If it is, i wonder why both aren't abstracted into a single meter? It seems to be against FO's design goals to make the player manage something that provides no strategic options, and could be managed by the computer without a problem.

Even if i'm not entirely right, PPs seem to be neglected everywhere but the production screen. To design the GUI properly i think PPs need to be displayed more prominently. Exactly how they should be displayed depends on if mining and industry have any independant value or not.

Mining and industry should have independent values, because one planet may be mineral rich, or may have some other mining bonuses, that make you want to focus on mining there, whereas another planet may have some kind of industry bonuses that make you want to focus on industry there. PPs (the pairing of industry and mining) are made at the empire level, whereas industry and mining points are made locally. Also, minerals are stockpilable, and industry is use-it-or-lose-it.

Industry points and PP
OK, then i propose the following way to present the industry points / PP to the player:

Industry points that cannot be paired with a mineral are worthless to the player. It's also conceptually odd to think of the factorys churning out a something that evaporates if it cannot be paired with raw materials, and thus turn into something useful.

So we need never trouble the player with the concept of industry points. Industry produces PP. The player does need to be made aware of the point at which any additional industrial activity is pointless because of a lack of minerals. So i propose the following GUI indications:



On the industry meter there's a vertical red line. This marks the minerals that are projected to be available next turn (production + stockpile). It will fluctuate over time as planets are added and focuses change. If any planet's industry meter crosses that line industry points will be wasted from lack of minerals. Bars turn red past that line. In the first example above, the tip of the green projected-value-next-turn bar turns red to indicate there won't be enough minerals.
The example at the bottom shows industrial production is currently being wasted (by 10 meter points).


Also i previously neglected to do the display for when max production is lowered to less than current production. Science provides an example for that.

I'll probably suggest better color values for the different parts later after i've stared at it in game, but colors are easy to tweak, and these provide workable proof-of-concept.


Silent One's latest mock-up:
We're making progress...
• Are you indending that specials be placed after the planet name as icons or written out? Either way i think that's a good place— space allowing.
• Well, i think you've demonstrated that there are worse places to put the flag than over the upper left corner.
• Infrastructure might as well have it's own bar, since that space isnt' being used. But it should be differentiated somehow from the production meters.
• Your gas giant is a bit smaller than the ones in the screenshot i took from the previous release. Has the size changed?


Other remarks on Buildings:
• When i did the mock-up for the buildings i hadn't considered the three magnitudes of buildings: 1) special buildings, 2) empire wonders, 3) galactic wonders. It would be best if you could tell at a glance which catagory a building belonged to. Size is the most obvious method, but that would either mean shrinking the icons for the lesser buildings, or fitting fewer buildings in a row.
Can anyone make a ball-park guess as to how many buildings will realisticly be built on a single planet?

I'd like to have individual icons for each special. Mouse-over reveals the description.


I'm not giving up... you'll see.


I could imagine to put the construction icon inside a collapsible box together with the buildings.


You're right, the gas giant is from RC4. However, it'll be no problem to reduce the width of the resource bars to free up some space.

Here's the next mockup:



- red: dispensable space
- new flag position
- special icons
- buildings collapsible(?)

Quick comments:

Infrastructure has no gameplay connection to the buildings, but it does effect production, so i think it needs to stay in the same box with production.


the big question is, what does it collapse into? I can't imagine buildings-icons half that size being readable. Simple colored squares of various colors and sizes? That's pretty abstract. Or just a total "Buildings: 2 (4)"

Other things to Consider:
• It was previously decided to add rings to some planets. That would look pretty cool, but it could interfere with these GUI elements. I suppose the best thing is to simply put it behind all the numbers and icons.
• Eventually we'll have Shipyards and possibly defence satelites. It seems reasonable to reserve the outside corners of the planet for the icons.

That sounds reasonable.


Agreed.

Since you (eleazar) haven't objected to the new flag position, I take it you are satisfied with it? Does anyone have further suggestions/objections? If not, we could say that the design is fixed - or do we need a confirmation from Aq? - and turn to the system output.

Why do we need to show resource production amount changes next to the current production numbers, when we have the graphical bars that provide this information? It's a lot of wasted space to the right of the production number, which could be used to expand the bar, or better yet, shrink the whole sidepanel horiztontally. (I'm serious about the need to keep it as thin as possible.) It's will be particularly odd looking if there are almost no changing resources on a give turn, as that whole vertical bar of space will be empty.

If we do need to show the numbers, why do we not also need to show the max production at the current focus setting, which is also somewhat important? Again, there could be an alternate view in which the bars are replaced by all numbers, indicating current and max production of each resource, and changes in these values.

Meter changes, if we need to show them at all, should be in brackets to be consistent with the rest of the UI, and so it's clear what's going on with values shown with current/max (+change). Right now it says "100/120 +1", and it's not clear what the +1 is referring to. By bracketing the +1, it's clear it's related to the preceeding value in some way, and that it's not related to the immediately preceeding "120", but instead the whole "100/120", and thus the 100.

Specials should be located below the planet picture as I suggested earlier.
* There's a lot of wasted space below the planet picture.
* The planet name bar is not a good place for specials, as:
** Practically, there's no room for more than one or two, as it may begin to conflict with long planet names.
** Conceptually, they are a property of the planet, like the size and environment type, which are displayed by the image of the planet.

Also, if the specials are there, then there's always enough vertical space to just leave the buildings uncollapsed to the right. Buildings are supposed to be fairly important. Collapsing a list of them would be almost like collapsing the list of planets

I'd add a bit more contrast to building production progress bars... they seem faded along with the icon.

Construction looks quite out of place on its own line at the bottom. What was wrong with having it at the top right? Especially if it doesn't get a bar?


In all such situations, if the max meter falls below the current meter, the current meter is reduced to equal the max meter. This gives a cost to discourage frequent focus changes, and makes construction important, as it increases the speed of current meter growth up towards the max meter value.


Industry points represent potential to produce something, not the results of the production. If you have industry points you don't use, it means you've got factories sitting idle, not factories producing volatile nothing-widgetes.


Note that tzlaine said industry and minerals are combined at the empire level. There is no way to say, for a particular planet, which of its industry or minerals are or aren't being used. They are all sent to the empire pools, and from there dolled out to projects on the queue. Arguably, there is no meaning for PPs other than on the production screen. They don't exist for planets on the sidepanel.


Shipyards are probably just a building. A particularly notable building... but a building.

I don't think defense satellites are so important as to warrant their own icon of that prominence. A "defense" tab, which shows ground troop levels, planet shielding, ground installations, and satellites could encapsulate all such information fairly neatly.


As long as I've been around, UI design has been done by consensus. Aq likely isn't interested.