FreeOrion

like so, for example:



That's right of course, but then add a tiny one, please. Also, in this case the icons are framed, which suggests a button, which the player is going to click to find out that it is a drop down menu


No problem, just wanted to get some input, before wasting time.

This is how a combined tooltip window could look.



Maybe these tooltips could also be available when the user is clicking. When I'm gathering this information, I find it a bit annoying having to wait a second, before the information becomes available. I know I can set the time for the tooltips, but it might be nice to have them instantly.

You can reduce the tooltip delay to 0 in the UI options... that's pretty much instantly.

The effects accounting (list of modifications to max meters) should indicate what type each modification is, such as Special, Building or Tech... and also, when applicable, the exact source object somehow. This probably only applies to buildings (where the building, and perhaps its location would be indicated), and maybe specials (where the location would be indicated) if specials are frequently affecting more than just the object they're attched to...

Tech effect accounting might also want to show the empire whose tech is causing the effect, since one empire's techs could conceivably affect another empire's planets.

Also, the tooltips won't be looking fancy any time soon, since at present they can only be given plain text, without formatting or background subdivisions or colours. tzlaine will need to modify GG to allow the tooltip to be set to an arbitrary window / control in order for it to be possible to do anything else.

Also also, with the newly suggested coloured meter bars, how would projected changes to current meter be shown? I see only two parts, which are presumably current (bright) and max (darkened). Using coloured meter bars means you can't use red and green to show growth and loss of the current meter value as is done now.

Wow, that a lot of information to go into those tooltips and since we depend to much on them, this really should be done sometime. Beeing able to format text, and align it in a 'non text'-way really helps.
Are you going to add a feature request, or should I do this?


I was asking for suggestions about this myself... I'm going to think about it.

I think you can; you'd just have to increase brightness to make it stand out (note the red on red):



Also, instead of writing out "primary" and "secondary", we could just use numbers or icons. We may have a use for the space on the right of the focus selectors later.

You are right, with both

I'd prefer a smaller font for the 1 and 2, though and perhaps 1st and 2nd instead, not sure what a native english speaker would prefer.

This new alignment provides even enough room for a future happines meter, or anything else that might come.

Also those meters are about 200 px wide (in total), which means a change of 1 on the meter is now 2px wide.

Either "1" and "2" or "1st" and "2nd" looks awkward to me... Is there any way it could be shown graphically, perhaps with size or background shading or outlines, etc?


The red on red seems hard to see... and I'm not sure what the idea is here... do all meters get red and green growth / loss lines, regardless of their main colour?

Also, the edges of the darkened max meter values can be hard to make out... Would a brighter-shaded outline around all the meters (to their max value) be ugly?

Yes they do. just as it is now. Green is increase and red is decrease.

Having a 1px border around the decreasing bars helps further. Note that this is the smallest possible amount of change. Can be further improved by making the bars slightly higher.

To compare, this is how it looks now ingame:

Kind of hard to see, eh?

Your new mockup has a two-pixel change with a one pixel border, so it's not really a fair comparison to a one-pixel change with the current display...

[edit]ok, the current display also has a two-pixel change... so scratch that point... though it's not the "smallest possible amount of change" in either case then, is it? Though I suppose if it is, then an actual one pixel change would be even harder to see...[/edit]

The border does make it easier to see red decrease on a red meter.

There is a 1px change at research...

I don't see, why comparing mockups can be fair or unfair. We are trying to find a better way to display things. I assume, the minimum value a meter can change is 1, right? At least that's the minimum the current system can display. So, with the new system, the bars are wider, wich means 1 value on a meter is displayed by 2px. 2px are obviously better to see than 1. I don't care if this is unfair, haha.

I've played around with adding a bright border to the darkened part, but decided to go with just a 1px wide white marker at the end. Have a look:

Your responses have little to do with my comments, i get the feeling you are disagreeing without understanding. I'm not saying icons shouldn't be nice. I'm saying they have a job to do as part of a total UL, and can't be considered in isolation.
I've since debunked the idea that the icons must be around 24x24 to communicate. The fact that these icons stand for complex concepts is not important to the size.


Sure, it's better to get that out of the way of text.

Now about the recent proposed changes...
I realize that there are many aspects about the current side-panel that are ugly, and that pd and silent are honestly trying to make things better. However, after ready the recent flurry of posts carefully, i'm rather concerned that the overwhelming focus is on surface decoration, and that the meaning and function of various elements would hardly be considered if Geoff didn't bring it up.

More specific concerns.
• The proposed meter bars really hard to read. Even at my relatively low laptop resolution, it's uncomfortable on the eyes to try to comprehend so many tiny colored bars packed so tightly together. While it's beneficial to have more horizontal space for each meter, (they are ~25% longer not double as PD implies: "2px are obviously better to see than 1") that benefit is not outweighed by the additional difficulty of having to track between icons/numbers positioned away from the bars.
A subtile gradient is fine for the bars, but making each bar a different highly-saturated color really conflicts with the smaller red/green bars that show change.
The idea of outlining the mini "change" bar in black however, is good and should be kept.

• There's no reason to make the production icons so huge. Please don't argue that "food" is a concept too hard to communicate with 16x16 or less. Naturally in pd's side-by side the larger icons look much better because they aren't on a blue background, but more importantly, they have been resized from the much larger original by Photoshop (or Gimp) rather than FO (which as we've all noticed doesn't resize things nicely). The bars are what the player will be spending his time looking at, not the production icons. If we have pixels to spend it should be on making the bars easy to read, not enlarging the icons.

• I'm not fond of the focus dropdowns, but however they are done, the whole thing (label, icon, arrow- if any) should function and be enclosed as a button. There's no reason to make the target small here.

• The dark grey "header" bar is a fine idea, but only if it can be used consistently with all the collapsable headers. It doesn't seem to have a place in the social meter box.

• It doesn't make sense to use a one kind of "collapsing" icon next to the planet name and the double-arrow ones with the other boxes. I think a simple, single right-pointing triangle displayed when closed, and a down-pointing triangle when open would more clearly communicate the idea in all contexts.

There are probably other good/bad things i could mention, but that's enough for one post.

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There are several issues I don't agree with:


On one hand, you reason that icons should be made smaller, but on the other hand, the meter bars should increase in size... but if tiny bars are hard on the eye, why aren't icons? I'm strongly in favour for larger icons, and if the bars are too small, we may easily increase their height.


I don't see why. And if, there are other options to show increase/decrease... e.g. we could use white/black for instance with outlines of the opposite colours.

That's exactly the point; if we were to use 24x24 as a fixed size for sidepanel icons, we could scale them manually and have icons that don't look pixellated. Icons of 24x24 will look reasonably well on larger displays, and the way they're aligned now allows the the UI to be scaled without changing the size of the icons.


I disagree. What truly matters is the output, i.e. the numbers below the icons. The bars are only important if the focus is being changed or if the planet is growing. Also, I believe you presume that all bars will be large/wide in game... but imagine a world with focus farming/farming or farming/mining... you'd only have one or two large bars that you can easily distinguish from the rest!


Second.


The main purpose of the header bar is to outline the planet name. We may simply dismiss the header bar on the focus panel.


It does, since the collapsing button and the double-arrow button serve different purposes: while the double-arrow buttons minimize the info panel they're on, the collapse button is supposed to hide all infopanels except the planet name panel.

I appreciate your constructive criticism, but I believe you're being a little to harsh on these changes. Do compare before/after again and judge again if it isn't easier to read.

That's simply not true.

I never said, my icons should be considered isolated. And as I have debunked, my icons actually do a better job. They are more distinct.


Again, that's simply not true. Scaling icons, so that they are actually readable and not the size of a letter/character, which is one of the most simple forms of communication, is not surface decoration.


That's odd, because I'm running 1600x1200 and have no problems comprehend those bars. But if this is a problem to you, we can as mentioned make them somewhat higher.


I didn't think I have to explain this, but here I go: If you have a bar 140px wide(less than 200), how do you display a change of 1 in value? The answer is 1,4px.
How do you display 1,4px? You can't, you'll have to go with 1px, and make a 2px jump some times to reach 140. I never stated, that the new bars are double in length.


That's no difficulty, because the colors relate to the icons. Also the order top to bottom is the same as left to right. Even a kid can track this.


Here is a direct comparison:

There is a 1 value change(increase and descrease) on both systems. Now, are you telling me, that it's harder to see this on the left? Because, if not, than the new system IS an improvement. This mockup features icons not scaled by code btw, and they don't look much better, even on black bg.
Yes, I am aware, that the mineral decrease doesn't make sense, if the max is at the right. It's just to show the worst case, red on red

Also, there is a very good reason to make the production icons big.They provide a nice big area for the tooltips. I'm all for putting the production and meter information in one tooltip. At first I didn't even realize, that there are 2 different tooltips.


I'm more interested in the production numbers, but maybe that's just me. If I want to change those, then I'll look at the bars

What I find a bit unfair in this discussion is, that silent and me are doing mockup after mockup, spending hour afer hour, trying to improve things. And you are just comming in saying, this is bad and this is hard to read, without proving anything. Even if things are already better reading than what's in the game currently. All you are doing is bashing our ideas, without trying to think about how it could be improved even more. This is a community project, we should work together, not against.

By the way, this entire thing still takes less space than the current system. Even though it has larger icons.

Some more work on this:

Adding a background, which allows for further seperation.
Adding markers at 25, 50 and 75


Using the background bars to further indicate what is increasing and what is decreasing.


Same as above, just inverted increase and decrease.

Note, the forum is a bit unsuitable, because it has a pretty light background, which contrasts with the dark images, which in return makes it a bit hard to see the differences in value and color. On a dark background, like in the game, this is much easier to see:

Update! Turns out that more fancy tooltips are possible already, so it won't be too difficult to add nicer custom formatting of them.

Re: pd's latest: I don't really like the whitish lines at the ends of the max meter values... they seem out of place. A black line instead would adequately mark the end, without looking odd, I'd think...

I also don't like the shaded increasing / decreasing background, but the dark grey background seems good.