FreeOrion

As far as I know, no.

tzlaine can verify this when he's back, presumably next week.

edit: a balanced focus icon of some sort would be helpful as well...

No, I I hadn't planned on adding it.

I guess i was remembering this.
I'm not sure what gave me the idea SVG-support was currently under development.

I don't think it's dreadfully important to have, it's just one of those things that i'd use it it existed.

Hey all! I'm back from holiday. Happy new year to you all!
And now, back to business:



- width reduction: un/collapse buttons overlay content; sidepanel size reduced to 4 buildings size
- decreased focus selectors size (less height)
- suggestion for an alternative sun position
- sidepanel border / sun-planet axis

- what to do about the system information and its position?

Here's the heart icon I did (.png):


I ripped the construction icon from some tech image, I believe it was orbital construction; pd or Obiwan might have the original file.

So, what do you think about this sidepanel layout?

This doesn't really work with the angled planet shadows. With it centred over the sidepanel, pd felt it worked better...

Also, here's my progress with implementation. I'm having some trouble with the droplists, obviously. Everything is (or should be?) resizable with the general UI font size.

(Note that the old focus selector is still there behind the new stuff.)

Despite the unrealistic angle of the shadow, placing the sun and the planets on a line looks more stylish to me. But I'll provide some screenshots with centered suns for comparison soon. - I saw the other one, which looked clumsy. Of course, no offense intended.


Neat! I really hope I can convince you of my resource background boxes, which I find help to make things look organized.

Is there anything you (or anyone else) would like to see changed about how the planet information is shown? If not, I'll focus on the system information from now on.

I'm unsure how to treat planets owned by other players or uninhabited planets. It looks like you've just put "uninhabited" in text for the latter. The former could presumably have all the regular subpanels, but just have the focus-setting functionality disabled... Thoughts?

• Uninhabited planets: probably don't need to change much from what's currently in-game except for adding an account of their specials.

• Planets belonging to others: well i really haven't seen a discussion about what kind of (if any) fog-of-war we will have. Personally i'd do whatever is easiest until that aspect of the game has been hashed out, without of-course allowing the player to control other's planets.

As to the sidebar, i don't consider the flags, specials, and the expand/collapse arrows to be sufficiently refined (as per previous comments), but i welcome seeing the new information implemented, even if roughly.

I'm going on vacation until the middle of january, and might not be back here before then.
Enjoy the new year.

I agree.



Right. Until espionage is implemented the current display (only planet population is shown) is sufficient.



-flags: do you mean the position or some flags themselves?
-expand/collapse arrows: I guess those can easily be replaced at any point

Here's what the sidepanel looks like with a centered sun:



I definitely like the other one better, and I also believe that the sun and the planets need to be on an axis. Beside that, the sun as it is now is fairly space-consuming.

Eleazar, enjoy your holiday!

Perhaps this might motivate someone to make me a generic building icon?

Here you go. It sure is ugly and I could do better, but until end of february I won't have time to contribute. But then I'll have another go.

...
Added specials icons.

Buildings are separated, to look closer to mockup.

Buildings also update correctly when working on the production screen... Enqueue a building, and it appears. Remove it, and it disappears.

There's also a row of mini building icons when the buildings panel is collapsed.

Need some help from tzlaine to get the droplists looking correct.

Not sure about how to display resources when the Resources Panel is collapsed. Not all resource icons will fit... So could remove the icons and just show the numbers. Or could just show some of the icons... but which? Could vary with focus, but given that there could be balanced focus or repeated primary and secondary focus, and room for three (more than two) resources in all cases, how should which resources to show be determined?

Also, I put the colonize button at the top right, so it doesn't interfere with anything else. Is there a better place?

I suppose you could show the 2 (or 3) highest yielding resources.
Or the two highest and the construction meter. — this should correspond most of the time to the primary and secondary foci, anyway, right?


Most of the "anything else" is meaningless on an un-colonized planet. The current (v.3.4) display for un-colonized planets works for what we have now.


Here are the colors and transparencies i used on the bars:

Lightest grey bar: A6A6A6 100%
Red bar: 902615 100%
Maximum limit grey bar: 5A5A5A 60%

Green change-next turn: A4F454 60%
Red change-next turn: CF4329 60%

Line that marks "20" on the meter: 939392 45%
Box around individual bars: 787878 100%

Good idea about the highest yields. I don't see a need to show construction when collapsed though... it's secondary information and much less useful than actual production amounts.


There's use to having the resources and population panels visible all the time. That way you can see visually (and numerically with rollover) what the max population would be, and what the various resource max meter values would be if you colonized.

The buildings panel could be hidden when the planet is unpopulated, though it'd make more sense to just hide it if there are no buildings, regardless of whether the planet is colonized. There could then be visible buildings on unpopulated planets.

Edit2: Upon some reflection, it does seem that the planetpanels are too similar looking for populated and unpopulated planets... there's no obvious visual differentiation, as the differences are either subtle and number (0.00 population vs. something nonzero, and colour of planet name). Granted, there needs to be an empire flag added, but something more distinctive to distinguish occupied and unoccupied planets would help, while still providing all the useful information of the panels...

Any suggestions? Some outlines or shadings, perhaps?

Edit: For the colours, why do you specify a transparency? This just results in the colours blurring together when overlaid...
vs
I've just left them at full 255 opacity in the code...

Also, are the slightly less saturated colours you've suggested really better? I'll defer to your or other artists' judgement, but I find the vivid green and red easier to see and read in the earlier screenshots than the slightly washed out green and red over grey in the shots in this post...

Max population is pretty important when colonizing, part of the reason i'd like to see a different display on uncolonized planets. But i suppose it would be good to be able to examine the other max values.

The infra-structure meter seems pretty important to me, after all it (and population) have a huge impact on how much a planet can produce. But i haven't really played the game yet. The third item can be switched to infrastructure later if neccesary.

Agreed. simply hide it when it's empty.


I think if the text was changed to a 50% grey, (except the colonize button) it would nicely distinguish the empty planets. The empty star names in the galaxy map should be the same grey. You could lessen the icon opacity to about 60% to enhance the effect. The same treatment would probably be appropriate for inhabited planets you don't own, at least until fog-o-war and espionage is worked out.


The lesser saturation (for red/green mini-bars) isn't very important, but the transparency is— or at least what the transparency accomplishes. I want the mini-bars to reflect the color of what's underneath, rather than totally obscure it. A red mini-bar that crosses the dark region of the bar and part of the light region should be lighter while over the light-grey part. It makes it easier to read. Hopefully i've made myself clear. These kinds of things are clumsy to put into words.

Transparency seemed the simplest way to do that, though i could define the colors separately.


I may not have much time for this for a while. I'll try to at least be around enough to keep the work other people are doing from being stalled by the lack of artistic feedback.