0.3 Technology screen and Tech Graphics

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
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Geoff the Medio
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#31 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Mystiqq wrote:Made a "small test" to see if i could improve the current techscreen. This is still incomplete.

Image size is 140KB (1024x768)
techscreen test
BreadMan's mockup originally had tabs, but tzlaine's implementation doesn't... I'm not sure why, but I suspect that GG (tzlaine's graphics library) didn't have things set up to do so easily. I emailed him to ask if he could do tabs, but he didn't reply (which doesn't mean much, as I sent him a load of emails and he often only replies after fixing the bug or to discuss a specific detail...). I think I also suggested highlighting the category selection button of the currently displayed tree... and making the buttons toggles for adding / removing their category from the view, rather than buttons to pick which category to diplay to the exclusion of others.
Im not sure if the tech category icons would be better for the "buttons", but personally the text seems to do the job.
You need to think ahead... as Tyreth said, there's going to be more than the 5 categories we have now. A while ago I made this test image by adding a few extra categories to the techs.xml file:
Image
And that's only 9 categories, plus the "All" button... If we have more, it'll get even worse. In response, tzlaine said that the solution would probably be icons (though we'll worry about it when the time comes). So... that's why we'll probly need icons for the categories for this purpose.
Something about the things on the screen:

The bottom or horizontal scrollbar here is in the "mouse over" state and the vertical scrollbar is "inactive".
I think people can tell when they've put the mouse over a scrollbar without it highlighting... And really, you don't use the scrollbars much in practice. You can just click and drag the tree view itself.
Mystiqq wrote:Also perhaps color "coding" the techs in the tree itself as well.
Already suggested on sourceforge. Good to have a mockup though.
Tyreth wrote:Bear in mind that there will likely be 10 categories by 1.0, perhaps even more, which may make a colour scheme per category difficult, if those colours are to be very distinguishing.

Edit: Perhaps a very small rendering of each icon to place on each tech item, which has it's own category.
I don't think ~10 distinct colours is really a problem... unless you're colourblind to some degree, in which case you're no worse off than we are now.

I'm reluctant to put the category icon on the tech boxes though... They're already rather bigger than they should be (see my suggestion to shrink them for the production screen... which should also apply to the research screen).

Ideally I'd also like to have individual icons for each tech, sized to fit in their boxes, as well as the larger colourful rendered view as in Mystiqq's mockup on the tech info box at the top of the screen... and adding category icons as well would be quite a lot... though I think just the colouration would be sufficient in mosts cases, such as telling what you've got mostly on the queue. I do think the individual icons for each tech are important though... partly to make them identifiable as with SMAC techs and build projects, and to keep things symmetric with buildings, for which icons are rather important in my mockups in order to pick out what you want form the build palette, and to identify what you've got on planets in the buildings window...

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#32 Post by Mystiqq »

You need to think ahead... as Tyreth said, there's going to be more than the 5 categories we have now.
He said that after i posted, so i didnt know.
If we have more, it'll get even worse. In response, tzlaine said that the solution would probably be icons (though we'll worry about it when the time comes). So... that's why we'll probly need icons for the categories for this purpose.
Im not that sure that the icons are the answer, yes they do conserve space but they add whole new "problem", mess of icons.
I think people can tell when they've put the mouse over a scrollbar without it highlighting... And really, you don't use the scrollbars much in practice. You can just click and drag the tree view itself.
I said to clarify why they are different color/look.
Im aware of the "panning" feature, if thats even a word... damn my english sucks. :)
And that's only 9 categories, plus the "All" button... If we have more, it'll get even worse. In response, tzlaine said that the solution would probably be icons (though we'll worry about it when the time comes). So... that's why we'll probly need icons for the categories for this purpose.
I might have an idea how to fix this issue. Also made some minor tweaks already... Ill post them later.
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Mystiqq
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#33 Post by Mystiqq »

Heres what i had in mind...

Techscreen test 2 (1024x768, 140KB)
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#34 Post by pd »

here is a new mockup of the research screen.
Image
basicly there are many small steps done - mainly adjustments in positions and alignments.
i can provide pixel values to the programmers, if needed.

then i've removed all transparency to the starmap. there was simply no reason for it(because we can is no reason :)

furthermore i've decided for a plain gray for know on the basic ui elements. i couldn't leave it in this cyan or whatever this color is called.

skinned ui ellements will come in later and overlay those ui elements.

the category-filter buttons are now aligned in 2 rows - a common way for aligning tabs.

i've also added an 'effect' button to change the description text into a list of effects the selected techs has. those are also shown on finished tech items in the tech view, since the RP/Turn stuff is no longer interesting. finished tech items also don't require this second box anymore. the text inside this boxes(on unifished techs) can change from 'Queued' to 'Researching' or nothing.

i've added a pattern to the background of the tech view. not quite sure about the current one though. i've tried a grid, but i liked the pattern more.

you can pan and zoom in the tech view as on the starmap. shown is the maximum zoom in. at the bottom is an additional button to zoom(besided beeing able to scroll with the mouseweel).

the uncollapse button will change into a collapse button once clicked(btw the effects buttons will change, too - obviously into a description button).

i've also changed the Theorie/Application/Refinement radio buttons at the bottom. they should allow multiple selections.

i haven't worked on the queue yet. but i will change the status thing, it's a really bad solution as it is now.
geoff, i could need a guideline here. is the value for turns left limited to a certain point? so that only the RPs further rise?

okay, whatelse... well i've shown how drag and drop could work - you click and hold an item from the queue, and depending on the position of the mouse arrow, the arrow gets an addition - REMOVE or INSERT.
the dragged items receive 80% opacity (20% transparency).
when inserting into another position on the queue, there appears a seperator. depending on the mouse arrow's vertical position it jumps up or down.

that's it i think.
as said, the queue is going to change, as well as the ui elements.

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#35 Post by Geoff the Medio »

A few comments...

What about colour-coding the techs by their category (Learning, Growth, etc...)? IMO that would be better than the tiny icons as seen now, which kind of look out of place at the bottom left... (top left might be ok... or twice as tall / twice as wide at the left side...)

The category buttons should be similarly coloured...

And the techs on the queue and on the tree seem to have lost their colour-coding for status... ie. being researched, not being researched but available, unavailable, etc. These were rather good, IMO... were they removed for a reason?

These should probably be just done with brightness, so that the colour coding by category can work... The category toggle buttons at the top should also be colour coded by category, and just show acitvation by brightness as well.

Why are the Theory / Applications / Refinements radio buttons, and not on-off toggle buttons like the category buttons are supposed to be?

Perhaps we should change the button "Uncollapse All" to "Expand All"...? It's a bit clearer... (It can say "Collapse All" in the alternate state...)

Re: Turns / RP cost for techs... there's no hard limit in the code. I've generally kept things to at most 1000 RP / turn and I think 50 turns or something, but there's no reason a mod or future tech we haven't added yet couldn't go higher... and we have to balance things, so perhaps many techs will go higher on either number...

For the "Effects" button, tzlaine a while a go had some automatically generated text based on the effects XML that IMO was horrible, but it looks like he's removed it at my request (yay). For the future, we'll need an additional tag in the tech description, <Effects-Text> or somesuch, in which the effects of the tech can be described in very short summary.

I'm not sure that a typical tech's effects could be always summarized in two lines and ~4 words / line... but it might work.

When clicked, the "Effects" button should toggle persistantly... so that if I click it to show effects, it should stay clicked if I then click to look at another tech. The button should probably also change to "Description" after being clicked, so you can switch back and forth.

Also, we can probably get rid of the "Add to Queue" button as Mystiqq has suggested repeatedly.

When drag-dropping a tech onto the queue, its turns to complete number should update while you're dragging it, based on the number it would have if you dropped it at that moment. The other techs in the queue should also update to show what their numbers would be if you dropped the tech you're dragging where you're holding it at that time.

Edit: Also, how about reducing the size of the tech boxes on the queue / tree? They're rather big now... I tried out some smaller ones on the production screen mockup here:

http://209.197.90.23/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18526#18526

I needed to save some space for the galaxy map view in the middle... but it might be nice to keep the two queues mostly identical between the two screens, for programming time savings, as well as UI consistency. /Edit

Maybe if a tech's already on the queue, the action-text could say "Move" rather than "Insert", with "Insert" only being for adding techs to the queue from the tree view?

I'm not so keen on the checkerboard background... the see-through background seemed fine to me... I realize "because we can" isn't a reason to have it... but I don't really see any reason to not have it either... it is kind of neat looking... and not really ugly, IMO.

The tech view zoom is rather important, though I think a slider would be more appropriate than a +/- clicker for this... it'd be much easier to set it quickly to the desired zoom. I'd also stick it over the tech view, at the bottom right corner, rather than just outside, to be clear what is being controlled by the widget.

Actually making the zooming work good might be a problem, however... the layout of the tech boxes isn't condusive to zooming smoothly, what with the small point size text and such... we may have to just have an "in" zoom, as we see now, and an "out" zoom level, for which we design a different layout for the tech boxes so that they can be much smaller... perhaps w/o effects on the tree view, progress queue, much smaller font for their name...

We could also move the techs on the zoomed in view a bit closer together. This can be done without recompiling even... there's a setting in config.xml. It looks a bit better with them a bit closer, IMO.

I've put up a feature request for a tech list view as well... this would organize the techs alphabetically, by category, by cost, or by various other criteria, and show them in a big long list, rather than in the tree configuration. This is rather important, as occasionally it's hard to find a particular tech on the tree view as it is now, if you don't remember its category. We'd need a button to switch views between tree and list. The rest of the UI would function the same... The list could also have some other details, like progress, cost, effects in columns... like the details view of a directory window or somesuch. Like such a view, clicking the column labels would sort up or down alphabetically or numerically the shown techs... (which would be controlled by the category and theory/app/refinement buttons as on the tree).

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#36 Post by pd »

Geoff the Medio wrote:What about colour-coding the techs by their category (Learning, Growth, etc...)? IMO that would be better than the tiny icons as seen now, which kind of look out of place at the bottom left... (top left might be ok... or twice as tall / twice as wide at the left side...)

The category buttons should be similarly coloured...
i've proposed this by myself, not so long ago, and it also was part of a prior mockup(not publicied). it came out to look too colorful. also while it could work with 5 categories, it won't work with more(like 10 or so), because the color spectrum simply is limited and it will be problematic to differ between the hue value.

i've then simply used the category icons and found it looks nice and clean.
they don't look out of place to me. you need to think of the tech items as a two-row container. top row for the name, second row for additional info. i'll make this more clear in the next mockup.
And the techs on the queue and on the tree seem to have lost their colour-coding for status... ie. being researched, not being researched but available, unavailable, etc. These were rather good, IMO... were they removed for a reason?
as said, the queue is going to change. i plan to indicate this in another way.
The category toggle buttons at the top should also be colour coded by category, and just show acitvation by brightness as well.
no for the same reason as above.
Why are the Theory / Applications / Refinements radio buttons, and not on-off toggle buttons like the category buttons are supposed to be?
because zach made them as radio buttons. i thought about changing them to checkboxes, since radio buttons usuall don't allow multiple selections. i wan't to avoid using buttons again, because i want to indicate that we are filtering in a different way here. also we have so many of the other buttons already, i think a change in look is a good choice here.
Perhaps we should change the button "Uncollapse All" to "Expand All"...? It's a bit clearer... (It can say "Collapse All" in the alternate state...)
agreed.
Re: Turns / RP cost for techs... there's no hard limit in the code. I've generally kept things to at most 1000 RP / turn and I think 50 turns or something, but there's no reason a mod or future tech we haven't added yet couldn't go higher... and we have to balance things, so perhaps many techs will go higher on either number...
ok, this gives me an idea, thanks.
For the future, we'll need an additional tag in the tech description, <Effects-Text> or somesuch, in which the effects of the tech can be described in very short summary.
agreed again.
I'm not sure that a typical tech's effects could be always summarized in two lines and ~4 words / line... but it might work.
there is still space left on the right. i think we could get in 4 short entrys. if this is still not enough space, there is no reason we couldn't simply change the height of a box to fit the list of effects.
When clicked, the "Effects" button should toggle persistantly... so that if I click it to show effects, it should stay clicked if I then click to look at another tech.
good idea.
The button should probably also change to "Description" after being clicked, so you can switch back and forth.
pd wrote:btw the effects buttons will change, too - obviously into a description button
Also, we can probably get rid of the "Add to Queue" button as Mystiqq has suggested repeatedly.
ok, but we need to change the 'childbox' on tech items into an 'add to queue' button then.
When drag-dropping a tech onto the queue, its turns to complete number should update while you're dragging it, based on the number it would have if you dropped it at that moment. The other techs in the queue should also update to show what their numbers would be if you dropped the tech you're dragging where you're holding it at that time.
sounds good.
Edit: Also, how about reducing the size of the tech boxes on the queue / tree? They're rather big now... I tried out some smaller ones on the production screen mockup here:
i'm going to do this.
Maybe if a tech's already on the queue, the action-text could say "Move" rather than "Insert", with "Insert" only being for adding techs to the queue from the tree view?
why not.
I'm not so keen on the checkerboard background... the see-through background seemed fine to me... I realize "because we can" isn't a reason to have it... but I don't really see any reason to not have it either... it is kind of neat looking... and not really ugly, IMO.
i want the tech view to feel like a seperate workspace and don't like the star map shining through for this reason.
The tech view zoom is rather important, though I think a slider would be more appropriate than a +/- clicker for this... it'd be much easier to set it quickly to the desired zoom. I'd also stick it over the tech view, at the bottom right corner, rather than just outside, to be clear what is being controlled by the widget.

Actually making the zooming work good might be a problem, however... the layout of the tech boxes isn't condusive to zooming smoothly, what with the small point size text and such... we may have to just have an "in" zoom, as we see now, and an "out" zoom level, for which we design a different layout for the tech boxes sothat they can be much smaller... perhaps w/o effects on the tree view, progress queue, much smaller font for their name...
yep, i've thought about 3 zoom steps or 4 at max. and i agree there there will be problems with readability, which requires different layouts for the items. we could also work with tooltips here. basicly it isn't that important being able to read the techs name on max zoom out. i imagine to just zoom out to get an overview what's going on and than zoom in again.
but these are things we need to get coded first and then decide.
We could also move the techs on the zoomed in view a bit closer together. This can be done without recompiling even... there's a setting in config.xml. It looks a bit better with them a bit closer, IMO.
sure, why not.
I've put up a feature request for a tech list view as well... this would organize the techs alphabetically, by category, by cost, or by various other criteria, and show them in a big long list, rather than in the tree configuration. This is rather important, as occasionally it's hard to find a particular tech on the tree view as it is now, if you don't remember its category. We'd need a button to switch views between tree and list. The rest of the UI would function the same... The list could also have some other details, like progress, cost, effects in columns... like the details view of a directory window or somesuch. Like such a view, clicking the column labels would sort up or down alphabetically or numerically the shown techs... (which would be controlled by the category and theory/app/refinement buttons as on the tree).
really nice. i'll include this in my next mockups.

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#37 Post by noelte »

About that Collapse All Btn. Maybe it would be better having two btns, one Expand All and Collapse All. Imagine you are in state Expand All and you already expand a bunch of techs which you now want to collapse. You would have to press the btn twice. In many situations it's much better to have two btn rather than having one which alternates it's meaning.


BTW. WHERE ARE MY BUTTONS? ;-) (add + remove). That drag&drop you suggested is really nice, but quit hard to do (at least for me). IMO, it's likely that GG must be altered to achive it and i have no right to do so. But maybe zach show up again.
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#38 Post by pd »

bout that Collapse All Btn. Maybe it would be better having two btns, one Expand All and Collapse All. Imagine you are in state Expand All and you already expand a bunch of techs which you now want to collapse. You would have to press the btn twice. In many situations it's much better to have two btn rather than having one which alternates it's meaning.
true.
BTW. WHERE ARE MY BUTTONS? Wink (add + remove).
as said, i haven't worked on the queue yet.
That drag&drop you suggested is really nice, but quit hard to do (at least for me). IMO, it's likely that GG must be altered to achive it and i have no right to do so. But maybe zach show up again.
hard to do? i thought it was already in to a certain point? we really have a comunication problem here.

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#39 Post by Geoff the Medio »

pd wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:What about colour-coding the techs by their category
it came out to look too colorful.
Did you try darker / less pure colours? Slightly greyed / muddied, rather than bright rainbowish ones? Something like these would be sufficiently sombre and moody, I'd think:
Image

And those are fairly distinct, IMO... and can be tweaked for that purpose, which I didn't bother to do.
i've then simply used the category icons and found it looks nice and clean.
they don't look out of place to me. you need to think of the tech items as a two-row container. top row for the name, second row for additional info. i'll make this more clear in the next mockup.
I do think of it as two rows... but think the icon should be at the top left corner on the top row. Perhaps this is becauase UI windows always have their icons at the top left, so I'm used to it. Is there a reason the icon's on the second line, and not at the top left corner next to the name...?
Why are the Theory / Applications / Refinements radio buttons, and not on-off toggle buttons like the category buttons are supposed to be?
i wan't to avoid using buttons again, because i want to indicate that we are filtering in a different way here. also we have so many of the other buttons already, i think a change in look is a good choice here.
... that doesn't make much sense to me. You want to use a different widget to do functionally the same thing (filtering the shown techs)? Could be termed inconsistent, as well... Isn't the text and different location on the screen sufficient indication?
I'm not sure that a typical tech's effects could be always summarized in two lines and ~4 words / line... but it might work.
there is still space left on the right. i think we could get in 4 short entrys. if this is still not enough space, there is no reason we couldn't simply change the height of a box to fit the list of effects.
Those entries have just two words in them... in practice I suspect we'll need more, as a typical effect will have what it does, and where/how it does it that should be indicated... Extending the box down to fit more in seems reasonable, though.
i want the tech view to feel like a seperate workspace
Why? It's part of the same game... Don't we want the whole thing to be integrated and contextually relevant to other parts? And there conceivably might be a case where you'd base a research decision on info you can see through the transparent tree view...
basicly it isn't that important being able to read the techs name on max zoom out.
Strongly disagree. The name of the tech is the most important thing to show... and probably would be the only thing we'd show, other than some brightness / colour coding for researched / not / available. What's the use of a big complicated mess of boxes and lines connecting them if you can't tell what tech each box represents?
pd wrote:
That drag&drop you suggested is really nice, but quit hard to do (at least for me). IMO, it's likely that GG must be altered to achive it and i have no right to do so. But maybe zach show up again.
hard to do? i thought it was already in to a certain point? we really have a comunication problem here.
I'm a bit confused by this too, noelte. We already have drag-drop from the queue to itself, and can drag-drop between the fleets window and individual fleet windows... What's the difficulty exactly?

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#40 Post by pd »

Did you try darker / less pure colours? Slightly greyed / muddied, rather than bright rainbowish ones? Something like these would be sufficiently sombre and moody, I'd think:
Image
sure, i did. don't forget that we would need at least 2 shades per color per category to indicate techs available to research and not available.
and still everything is too colorfull, even with muddied colors.
Is there a reason the icon's on the second line, and not at the top left corner next to the name...?
there is, the top row should be reserved for the name exclusivly, since it can become pretty long. also the category icon is only additional info, which goes to the second row.
... that doesn't make much sense to me. You want to use a different widget to do functionally the same thing (filtering the shown techs)? Could be termed inconsistent, as well... Isn't the text and different location on the screen sufficient indication?
don't take it personal, but i don't care :)
i'll change them to checkboxes, end.
i want the tech view to feel like a seperate workspace
Why? It's part of the same game... Don't we want the whole thing to be integrated and contextually relevant to other parts?
with 'tech view' i meant the area were the tree is shown, not the entire research screen.
And there conceivably might be a case where you'd base a research decision on info you can see through the transparent tree view...
tell me please. btw, the transparency as it is now doesn't allow seeing any usable information. everything just very slightly shows through.

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#41 Post by noelte »

I'm a bit confused by this too, noelte. We already have drag-drop from the queue to itself, and can drag-drop between the fleets window and individual fleet windows... What's the difficulty exactly?
You know, i haven't time to look into the code right now, but the main difference between drag&drop used in FleetWnd and d&d in tech-wnd is, in fleetwnd you have two list-ctrl which implements a drag&drop support. In tech wnd you have one listctrl and some other wnd. (I'm not sure, but we don't have d&d from the tech-tree to the queue, have we? I guess if it was that easy, zach would have done it right away.)
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#42 Post by Geoff the Medio »

pd wrote:don't forget that we would need at least 2 shades per color per category to indicate techs available to research and not available.
That could be done with the border highlighting / darkening / etc.
and still everything is too colorfull, even with muddied colors.
So you just want the whole screen solid grey then? (other than the icons...) What's so bad about a little colour? Especially functional colour...?

What about just the borders of the tech boxes being coloured then, with the main bulk of them grey? It's much easier to quickly see a whole box, or its outline, as a particular colour than it is to pick out a particular small icon.

Also, here's a galciv2 shot with a bunch of colours on the minimap that don't, IMO, look too atrocious:

http://www.joeuser.com/sdfiles/mormegil/GC2/final.jpg

and here's a bit of their research screen, with colours for categories (the best I could find... others shots showed the whole thing but seem to be missing / gone from the developer journals...):

http://www.joeuser.com/joe/Daily021805/s4.jpg

... I really don't understand your objection...
Is there a reason the icon's on the second line, and not at the top left corner next to the name...?
there is, the top row should be reserved for the name exclusivly, since it can become pretty long. also the category icon is only additional info, which goes to the second row.
Why does the name need the whole top row? The font size could be slightly reduced, or the length of the boxes increased slightly. And there's plenty of other info (eg. effects) to fit in the lower rows too... I suppose I can see not wanting to do that if you can avoid it, but IMO it's worth a try.

Oh, also: it would probably be useful to put the effects summary on the unresearched techs as well... unless you had a reason to omit it?
Why? It's part of the same game... Don't we want the whole thing to be integrated and contextually relevant to other parts?
with 'tech view' i meant the area were the tree is shown, not the entire research screen.
Right... and the tree view is the part with the most open space through which to see, generally (if the queue's not empty) making it the most useful to be able to see through... But that doesn't address my question...
And there conceivably might be a case where you'd base a research decision on info you can see through the transparent tree view...
tell me please. btw, the transparency as it is now doesn't allow seeing any usable information. everything just very slightly shows through.
It's difficult to say now, without any useful techs yet to reserach... but you could judge how far a ship is from a destination, and compare that to an estimated research time... or perhaps you'd see an enemy fleet info window and there's some useful information on there based on which you can pick a particular type of ship part to research... or maybe there's a system with a special with a corresponding icon shown on the map next to the system, which we also put on a tech in the tree view in the effects summary for a tech that allows you to use that particular special in some way...

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#43 Post by noelte »

BTW: As geoff i would also place the category icon at the first row rather than the second. But if you insist, we should at least start the first line tech name at the same position as the second line icon is right now. It looks a little bit odd right now.
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#44 Post by pd »

update!
Image

this took me some time and i'm too lazy to comment right now, need a break. but i think most stuff explains itself.

i've greyed out the not updated parts.

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#45 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Looks pretty good in general.

Why is the turns left shown twice on every tech...? (They're always the same number in the mockup, though you might have intended them to be minimum time and expected time and just not wasted time worrying about making the numbers different on the mockup...)

I'm still skeptical about the coloured outlines of the progress bar... Doesn't hurt to have it though (other than the solid colour kinda detracting from the metallic theme I think you're going for, IMO, but if you're ok with it then nevermind)

IMO the active / inactive techs on the queue aren't different / distinct enough in brightness... If I didn't already know that the active ones were lighter, I'd probly might miss it...

Edit:
For the tree view, there should probly be distinct colouration/brightness levels for unavailable / available / being researched / already researched. Might also want to put "COMPLETE" in the duration / cost line for finished techs rather than removing the line.
/Edit

noelte, is it a problem to have the boxes on the tree view expand or shrink in size vertically to accomdate variable numbers of effects and buildings / parts or missing duration / cost info?

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