0.3 Technology screen and Tech Graphics

[Underling]

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...)

They're not always the same. Look at Planetary Geology on the left - 10 turn & 22 turn. It seems that the purpose of the differing numbers would represent the time necassary to complete the research (on the left) and the actual time in the que (on the right).

I could be wrong, however. We'll just have to wait for pd to recover

[pd]

you are right underling :)

the left number is the minimal time to complete, while the right number is the exact time, the tech needs to be completed, based on it's position in the queue. both are of course equal for techs, already researching.

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...

that's why i've also colored the progress bars :) i'll see if i can make the change in brightness more clear.

tyreth told me, it might be a problem to add those tiny drop shadows... here is how it could be made though(imo): simply write the text 2 two times. first in black(moved 1px to the right and 1px down) and then in white or grey(or whatever color) and layer it on top of the black text.

[noelte]

Nice work, pd. Those tech-tree items look pretty nice. (and even the icons are at the right place;-)) You give it much thoughts!

What's about an option to pause a tech rather than moving that tech to the end of queue? I see i can use a button to remove an tech from the queue, can i add on the same way?

BTW: Industrie should be Industry ;-P

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?

Hmm, I hope not. But even if it would be a problem right now, we had to do something about it. The ListCrtl (Queue) is a different story(?), here i guess we need to (should) stick with equal highs.

[pd]

Those tech-tree items look pretty nice. [...] You give it much thoughts!

basicly it's the result of the collaboration between geoff and me. so i can't take credit for this alone :)

What's about an option to pause a tech rather than moving that tech to the end of queue? I see i can use a button to remove an tech from the queue, can i add on the same way?

i'll add a pause button.
techs can be added via the blue arrow pointing upwards.

[Geoff the Medio]

the left number is the minimal time to complete, while the right number is the exact time, the tech needs to be completed, based on it's position in the queue. both are of course equal for techs, already researching.

They wouldn't be the same for techs receiving partial funding. You might want to put "(min)" next to the minimum time or somesuch... or just remove the minimum time from the queue boxes, to avoid confusion... or maybe put "(partial funding)" next to the time if not fully funded, so it's clear the time could be reduced if the tech was higher priority... or perhaps say "underfunded turns left: ##" as opposed to "turns left: ##" as appropriate.

Also, do you like the current system of giving an estimate for techs that haven't started researching yet, based on how much progress there's been in the techs ahead of it and the current total RPs available? For example, if there's five techs enqueued all with time to complete of 5 turns at full funding, and the top tech on the queue has already had 3 turns research in to, so will be done in 2 turns, and the 2nd and 3rd techs have no progress, and the top 3 techs are fully funded and the 4th and 5th techs are unfunded, then the 4th tech would say 7 turns to finish (2 turns to finish the top tech before the 4th gets funded, and 5 turns after the 4th gets funding), and the 5th would say 10 turns, which is 5 turns to finish the 2nd and 3rd techs, and then 5 more turns to finish the 5th tech itself. I hope that was understandable.

What's about an option to pause a tech rather than moving that tech to the end of queue? I see i can use a button to remove an tech from the queue, can i add on the same way?

i'll add a pause button.
techs can be added via the blue arrow pointing upwards.

I'm not too keen on a pause button... it goes against the basic idea of having a research queue and makes controlling the queue somewhat complicated. If you want to pause a tech, then what you probably really want is to get another tech that's lower on the queue done faster, so why not just move that other tech higher in the queue? It's not a list of techs that can be researched... it's a prioritized queue. Also, what's the difference between pausing and just removing the tech from the queue? It seems redundant to have two buttons for essentially the same thing...

[noelte]

Also, do you like the current system of giving an estimate for techs that haven't started researching yet, based on how much progress there's been in the techs ahead of it and the current total RPs available? For example, if there's five techs enqueued all with time to complete of 5 turns at full funding, and the top tech on the queue has already had 3 turns research in to, so will be done in 2 turns, and the 2nd and 3rd techs have no progress, and the top 3 techs are fully funded and the 4th and 5th techs are unfunded, then the 4th tech would say 7 turns to finish (2 turns to finish the top tech before the 4th gets funded, and 5 turns after the 4th gets funding), and the 5th would say 10 turns, which is 5 turns to finish the 2nd and 3rd techs, and then 5 more turns to finish the 5th tech itself. I hope that was understandable.

Without drawing a sketch myself it isn't understandable!!!

But i like to have an idea when a tech will be completed even if it wasn't started yet. And it's also only a long short because your rp income will have changed.

[noelte]

@geoff,pd:
What's the state of your latest mockup: design study, alpha, beta, release candidate? Are you still working on it or can i expect it to be final?

Hmm, i saw zach last friday, but if he doesn't show up i would go for the tech wnd as planed.

[pd]

What's the state of your latest mockup: design study, alpha, beta, release candidate? Are you still working on it or can i expect it to be final?

i would call it 'beta'.
i'll provide a pretty much finished version(release canditate?) on friday afternoon(CET :)

[Geoff the Medio]

Something else to consider: We should probly let the player enqueue techs they don't have the prerequisites for yet. This way you can set a goal for some far off tech, and the game can enqueue all the prereqs up to it for you and you don't have to go back to the tech screen each time you finish something to enqueue the next ones that it just unlocked. Alternatively, you can enqueue a whole slew of unrelated techs, save that queue to disk, start a new game, and load the queue exactly as it was, saving time and effort each game.

So, we'd need some way to indicate a tech on the queue can't be researched yet, perhaps indicating "missing prerequisites" or somesuch, and an appropriate icon.

We'd also need some load / save queue buttons near the queue.

Also, some sorting buttons might be good... ie. a combo / drop down list box / start menu-like thing that has options to sort the techs on the queue by time to finish or total cost, cost remaining, total research time, or to reorder the queue to prioritize a particular tech (ala the above setting a far-off goal).

Oh, and the list of techs view idea... would be nice to have that.

All this can probly wait until after v0.3 though.

[pd]

i've introduced a similar idea myself, back when i made my initial mockups. glad, you think it's usefull too. i'll see if i can add some 'queue management' buttons in the friday update. on top of the queue where the summary(or whatever) is displayed, is still enough room.

[noelte]

i'll provide a pretty much finished version(release canditate?) on friday afternoon(CET

PLZ, post all your new icons along. EDIT: BTW, i also need the color values (RGB).
My last Internet access until Monday: Friday about 1700 (CET as well ).

And your coloring of finished techs is out of the question!

[Geoff the Medio]

And your coloring of finished techs is out of the question!

Could you rephrase that / be more specific? I have no idea what you're talking about... And what is the problem with whatever it is, exactly?

[noelte]

And your coloring of finished techs is out of the question!

Could you rephrase that / be more specific? I have no idea what you're talking about... And what is the problem with whatever it is, exactly?

????

Did you have a look on the mockup? "Finished Tech" is colored white at the top and goes to blue at the bottom!

EDIT: BTW, i also need the color values (RGB).

[Tyreth]

Noelte, if you use a program like the gimp, you can use the colour picker tool in it to get the RGB values. That might be easier for you:
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

[Geoff the Medio]

Or just guess and put all the values in a config file so they can be easily changed later...