FreeOrion

Which icons?


When does a red or green bar ever cross between dark max meter and lighter current meter though? The growth or loss is always relative to the current value, so it never crosses over the edge of the current bar. The current bar also covers the max bar, and the growth never goes higher than the max meter value... so I'm not sure how a situation could arise in which your plan is relevant...

The information for colonizable planets should be kept to a minimum so that it doesn't overload the sidepanel. Max pop and two icons of the most prominent resources of the planet with numbers on mouse-over would IMHO suffice; in a single box.

I agree with Eleazer that all info of uncolonized planets should be toned down, either by reduction of opacity or by desaturation.

BTW, good work Geoff! (Although, that special position...and no background boxes... *mutter* )

Oh, here's an icon from obiwan which we could use for construction:


It's also a lucky coincidence that it's colorless, as that distinguishes it from the resource icons.

heh, i think you're right.

Could we resume discussion about the system resource (and other info?) summary?

Some previous discussion:

Do we even need any info in summary about a system?

Most production and resources stuff is based around the planet, not the system. Perhaps blockading preventing inter-system sharing of resources might make it interesting, but is that enough to warrant the screen space? The empire summaries are available, which are more relevant to the player in general.

Are there other reasons to have a system summary?

I'm gone over the weekend and will take part in the discussion on returning.

• Systems definitely need to display information on resident ships.

• While i agree that it's more important to get population/resource info about planets or your entire empire, system summaries seem valuable too. After all your fleets defend systems as a whole. The player shouldn't have to add stats up to see which system produces the most of a needed resource. And blockades happen system-wide, that needs to be indicated somewhere.

• I'm coming to prefer this sun position. (Only i think the stars should generally be larger) It's more aesthetically pleasing to line up the planets and sun with each other, and it opens up some space for system summary info.
The light direction thing doesn't bother me. Anyone should know that the planets do not actually have that relative position to each other.

When discussing the sidepanel, and the top section in particular, we should keep in mind that the sidepanel has to fit nicely with the rest of the production screen, not just on its own over the map.

This might be relevant for the star position. I'm strongly inclined to free up some space at the top of the production screen to widen the description of the production item, so it's not so bunched up on small resolutions. This would mean using the space to the left of the top bit of the sidepanel... Compare these, top = now, bottom = future?



If the star was over the planets though, it might get in the way of doing this, or might need to be covered up partly...


This I don't really understand. Why is this necessary when there are ship icons on the map, and a fleets window? I could see utility for a "open fleets window" button, that opens the fleets window to show fleets at that system, though even that's redundant with the icons on the map. There's no way we can put as much info on the sidepanel about ships as would be on the fleets window. Though perhaps there's specific fleets- or ships-related info that could be put there usefully and more prominently than in the fleets window...? What might this be?

Expanding the width of both the information and build list boxes is a good idea. As Geoff stated, this would overlay the star and also some planet graphics, but as they don't show crucial information, that's no particular problem. Please take a look:



As for system information, I believe a resource summary is useful to have as a means to judge the systems value. Also, while mouse-over on planet resources could show local effects on resource output, mouse-over on the system resources could reveal system-wide effects, e.g. of buildings, random events, blockade etc..

While I don't see the need for specific information about military forces, it may be useful to show if there are other forces than your own at the system, and if there are, your race's relationship with them (like friendly, neutral, hostile). As the space on the sidepanel is rather limited, we'd better leave out redundant information.

The planet pics likely are crucial information (size, environment, specials), and are necessary to be clickable in order to pick where to produce something.

The star isn't important, as far as I know so far, though moving it to the right a bit would remove the issue of it being covered up.

Also, the expanding of the build details (at top) panel is more important than the expanding the buildable items panels (at bottom). The details has nearly unreadable smushed up text now. I was thinking of expanding this panel, and moving the planet panels down a bit so that the scrollable bit of the sidepanel is below the height of the detail panel, so covering up planets at the top isn't an issue.

At the bottom, the buildable items list is still usable if slightly less wide than the panel at the top. The only difference is probably how much mini-description can fit into the panel without a horizontal scrollbar.


I'm not saying it isn't useful, I'm questioning whether it's useful enough to warrant using up the screen space it takes. The basic info is available elsewhere, and you said it yourself later:

...

Showing system-wide effects (which encompasses all of buildings, specials, events, techs) might make sense, but there aren't really any system-wide effects directly relevant to resources. Resources are produced on planets, not systems, so effects relevant to resources don't apply to systems.

That's not a reason to remove all system information though, and I'm not suggesting that. I would expect some non-resource info we can't yet predict to be necessary to be shown. I've not seen a good justification for ships or other military info though... eleazar's thoughts on this would be appreciated, as he seems particularly keen on having it.

As for resources specifically, blockades are the best reason I've seen so far to show system resource summaries... and if blockades are implemented in a relevant way, it seems like enough reason.


The military forces at a system are already shown by the fleet icons on the map, and the info in the fleet windows that those icons bring up. If there were ground troops, they'd be per-planet, and total system numbers wouldn't likely be relevant. Is there system-specific information about military forces that is better put on the sidepanel than the fleets window?

It's true that the planets have some information value, but there would still be ample free space for them in between the box at the top and the bottom. However, I agree that the expansion of the bottom box isn't crucial, only a large top box and a small bottom box might look akward.


It's merely an aesthetic wish of mine to line up the star with the planets. I can see no difference gameplay-wise with the star in either position; maybe after we have decided on the system information and box expansion, we can take a look at two actual in-game screenshots with both positions?


I second this, but the planet panel shouldn't be moved to much. Maybe there could be a seperator line - I find it a little weird that the planets are cut in half without any border. On the other hand, the separator would have to break the sidepanel and that's not desirable.


I believe this isn't a general rule? - One could easily imagine events that affect the star system as a whole, for instance a pirates special that reduces trade in the whole system. So if system-wide effects are possible, that would be a good reason to show system information.


That's right, but the galaxy map doesn't show the shipowners attitude towards the player. But actually it's more or less a blockade icon that I'm talking about, since there is nothing exciting about friendly or neutral ships in your system.

The problem is that your mockup seems to have the buildable items list covering up the planets at the bottom of the visible part of the sidepanel. This might be a problem if those planets can't easily be scrolled high enough to get into view, which is possible since you can't scroll farther down that just far enough to get the full info of the last panel into view.


I don't follow what you mean...


Systems do not generate resources; planets do. To alter resource production, an effect would have to act individually on all the planets in the system.

An effect that acts on a system itself isn't the same as an effect that acts on the planets (or other objects) in the system. In either case, the source of the effect could be a special attached to the system, or something else (eg. a tech).

If it was a special attached to the system, then displaying the special as attached to the system would make sense.


The appearance of the fleet icons would, if the player know which other empires are enemies and which are allies... Also, the fleet window could show this info more explicitly, if necessary.

A blockade indicator remains reasonable, though.

True. A round-about would be to make the planet name clickable; but that might be unintuitive, apart from the problem that the bottom planets will be partly obstructed from sight. So, no width-increase for the bottom box.


I'll provide a screenshot if necessary, but what I mean is that scrolling down the sidepanel, the topmost planets are cut off below the system information. A smooth transition would be nice, but I wouldn't know how to accomplish that.

Perhaps by having the top of the scrollable part of the sidepanel where the planet images can be seen meet the bottom of the system info part of the panel, in a line that's at the same height as the bottom of the build detail panel in the top-middle, as in my previous mockup.

That'll work if the production window is open, but otherwise the planets will be cut in mid-air again. I'd love something like this:


(dirty quick hack, but you get the meaning)

re: this mock-up
I see no reason to cover up any part of the sidebar with parts of the production window. The sidebar is actually used as part of the production interface. Why hide a planets easiest identifier: it's graphic?

If we later discover there's not enough room in the production screen, then perhaps it should be considered, but not before.

re: silent's previous post.
Yes, that's a good idea.