[patch] Graphical Combat Summary

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#16 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:...the width for surviving ships/units is proportional to their current health...
Then what does the height of the green part of the bar indicate?
...the width for dead ships is proportional to their max health...
Then what does the height of the dead ship bars indicate? The widths and heights don't appear to be proportional... Or maybe I'm confused by the separate green and red parts?
It seems to me that these are nuanced, noncritical, helpful indicators and better than just having each bar be the same fixed width...
If the bars are the same width, and height indicates current / total structure of each ship, then the area of the bar is proportional to the structure / max structure and this is unambiguous. If current or max structure are proportional to the height and width of bars, then the area isn't proportional to either, which is misleading.

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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#17 Post by Mitten.O »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Then what does the height of the green part of the bar indicate?
That is also the health of the ship, with the red part being damage, as one would expect. The axis labels state the fact that y is unit health. The x axis is fleet health, which is a sum of the unit healths and therefore the unit healths appear there also. There is redundancy here, but it is there for a reason. They y axis answers the question: "How healthy is this ship?", whereas the x axis answers the question: "how big a part of my fleet's remaining health comes from this ship?"
...the width for dead ships is proportional to their max health...
Then what does the height of the dead ship bars indicate? The widths and heights don't appear to be proportional... Or maybe I'm confused by the separate green and red parts?
The total height of a bars is always proportional to a ships max health, scaled so that the largest ship of the fleet fits into the height of the fleet's vertical space, which is equal for all empires.
It seems to me that these are nuanced, noncritical, helpful indicators and better than just having each bar be the same fixed width...
If the bars are the same width, and height indicates current / total structure of each ship, then the area of the bar is proportional to the structure / max structure and this is unambiguous. If current or max structure are proportional to the height and width of bars, then the area isn't proportional to either, which is misleading.
This is a fair point. I remember considering a scheme where the area had significance. But in the end I couldn't figure out a way to show information on both the fleet and the ships in a single picture that way. Besides, the area is now proportional to the health squared, which isn't that bad. Doing it this way makes everything very consisent when reading the picture on a per axis basis, which the arrows are meant to encourage.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#18 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I think it would be clearer and neater with equal width bars. "Total fleet health" can be gauged from the area of the green colour. The variable bar widths just look random / messy to me, and knowing that it's related to ship current structure doesn't change that. That width apparently changes meaning to be related to total structure for destroyed ship doesn't help with that.

I'm also concerned that if there was a large range of current ship structures, some of the bars would be very narrow and difficult to read.

A screenshot of equal-width bars might be useful if opinions of others strongly prefers the variable-widths.

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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#19 Post by Dilvish »

Hmm, I got a phone call while finishing this, and then you both posted. It seems to me though that that the fixed-width-or-not discussion so far overlooks the significance of empire vs empire comparisons (which seem to me pretty much destroyed by fixed-width bars), so I'll go ahead and post. Mitten apparently acquiesced to the area concern as "a fair point", but it looks to me like there isn't much assessment of value gained versus lost.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Dilvish wrote:...the width for surviving ships/units is proportional to their current health...
Then what does the height of the green part of the bar indicate?
exactly the same quantity, but the vertical axis highlights the relationship to the unit's own max health, whereas the horizontal axis highlights the relationship to the overall fleet health and also to other empire's fleets. If there physical scale were identical for horizontal and vertical then the green portions would always be square. The reasons for Mitten's choice otherwise, include to my understanding (i) having fixed widths & heights for the graphs for simplicity and instead choosing reasonable scales for width and height so as to convey the desired information, (ii) so that the horizontal scale can be shared across all empires so as to better indicate empire vs empire surviving fleet comparisons, and (iii) so that the vertical axis is can be scaled to the maximum max-health of the units for the respective empire; if both axes were scaled according to the max across all empires then the ships of an overpowered fleet might be represented by indistinct mere dots, whereas this way they will all be represented at least as vertical lines (unless perhaps there were an extremely large number of ships involved, and then I'm unsure what the current handling would be and probably a special handling would be required for that no matter what).
...the width for dead ships is proportional to their max health...
Then what does the height of the dead ship bars indicate? The widths and heights don't appear to be proportional... Or maybe I'm confused by the separate green and red parts?
The width:height proportion for red bars to my understanding should be (and to my observation does appear to be) consistent within each empire's chart, though not necessarily an identical ratio from one empire to the next due to the scaling considerations I mention above.
It seems to me that these are nuanced, noncritical, helpful indicators and better than just having each bar be the same fixed width...
If the bars are the same width, and height indicates current / total structure of each ship, then the area of the bar is proportional to the structure / max structure and this is unambiguous. If current or max structure are proportional to the height and width of bars, then the area isn't proportional to either, which is misleading.
Hmm? I don't see anything misleading about having a distinct significance to both width and height. It seems impossible to me for the area of a bar to be-proportional-to/have-the-same-significance-as one of its dimensions (such as height) unless the set of bars all have a single fixed size for their other dimension (width). The current representation with green portion height/width representing the same thing but in different contexts (scaled relative to different things) allow them to present a notably different significance to that information. Requiring bar height & area to be purely redundant presentations of the same information would certainly emphasize that information (which is admittedly important), but I don't really see the value of that emphasis being comparable to the value of the comparison that would be sacrificed.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#20 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:...I don't really see the value of that emphasis being comparable to the value of the comparison that would be sacrificed.
Mainly clarity and neatness. The width-of-bars in a bar graph indicating the same thing as (part of) the height of the bar is not, in my experience, a standard way to display information, because it is generally redundant. I didn't understand it without having to read an explanation, which suggests that it's not a very good / intuitive mechanism to display the info for people like me. It also just looks weird to me to have the bars be a wide variety of different widths.

Also see above re: seemingly inconsistent criteria for the with for destroyed vs. still functional ships.

Also see above re: concerns about cases of many ships or wide variation in ship structure making some bars very thin.

If showing the relative total structures of the two fleets is important, separate bars can show just that. Showing the relative contribution of each ship to the fleet's total structure would be done adequately with just vertical height indicating the structure of each ship, I think.
Dilvish wrote:I don't see anything misleading about having a distinct significance to both width and height.
The problem is sort of that the significance isn't distinct enough... They're both indicating / proportional to ship structure. As a result, the area of the bars is sort of dependent on the square of the structure, but oddly scaled somehow due to it being relative to different things on each axis...

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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#21 Post by Mitten.O »

One compromise I can think of is giving every unit in a fleet the same width, but making that width be such that the total width is the health of the fleet. I find this confusing, though. Attached a same battle in both ways.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#22 Post by em3 »

I was initially opposed to the varying width, but having understood it for what it is I can't imagine reading those charts without it.

One of the main advantages to me is that it gives the opportunity to compare all ships current health in the same scale, whereas vertical axes have per-fleet scales.

On the other hand, perhaps this is trying to fit two charts into single space...

Is it at all possible to have two modes of this charts? One "Basic" with fixed width and one "Advanced" with proportional width? I know it is more code to support, but the proportional graph seems to be really useful once you get used to it.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#23 Post by Bigjoe5 »

I haven't tried this in-game, but when I first looked at the graph, I expected the width of each bar to represent the max structure of the ship, and the green part of the vertical axis to represent the remaining proportion of that ship's structure. That way, the green area is representative of the remaining structure.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#24 Post by Mitten.O »

An interesting approach, but that way, the health of the fleet is shown by nothing.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#25 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Mitten.O wrote:An interesting approach, but that way, the health of the fleet is shown by nothing.
The health of the fleet would be shown by the total green area (which is practically the whole motivation for this suggestion). What shows the health of the whole fleet now?
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#26 Post by Mitten.O »

The total width of the living ships.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#27 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Mitten.O wrote:The total width of the living ships.
That's a bit less intuitive, since a fleet with a lot of living ships, but a lot of damage on all of them will have a very small green area, making it seem like a fleet with a single, fully healthy ship represented by a single, full bar will has the same amount of health remaining, when in reality, it's a lot less. For example, I would interpret the following graph as the upper empire having several heavily damaged ships, and the lower empire as having a couple of lightly damaged ships, with the overall fleet strength being in favour of the lower empire.
graphical_summary_revised.png
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I wouldn't intuitively read that the upper empire's ships were actually originally far, far stronger than the lower empire's ships, and even in their current state they could kick the tar out of the lower empire's two ships. But according to your representation, that's actually what would be the case.

edit: Of course, the varying total heights of the bars aren't a thing in my representation, so it would actually look something like this:
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#28 Post by Dilvish »

Bigjoe5 wrote:That's a bit less intuitive, ... For example, I would interpret the following graph
I don't recognize either of those graphs as being constructed according to any of the patterns proposed by Mitten (or anyone really) thus far, so it's not clear to me how confusion resulting from them might be a critique/weakness of those previous approaches. Could you clarify the significance of the various dimensions in your graphs?

**edit: looking more closely, it looks like there's really no way that the graphs could correspond to the numbers below them since the Delimination fleets are shown with nonzero current health. I'm also not understanding how the graphical relations could be consistent, particularly between bars 1 and 5 in the top row.

Regardless of those details, since you appear to be responding to Mittens reference to using total horizontal extent to indicate the total remaining fleet health, if the graphs had been accurately prepared on that basis then it would seem fairly obvious that the upper fleet has something like twice or thrice the remaining health of the lower fleet-- how could that be confusing?
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#29 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Dilvish wrote:I don't recognize either of those graphs as being constructed according to any of the patterns proposed by Mitten (or anyone really) thus far, so it's not clear to me how confusion resulting from them might be a critique/weakness of those previous approaches. Could you clarify the significance of the various dimensions in your graphs?

**edit: looking more closely, it looks like there's really no way that the graphs could correspond to the numbers below them since the Delimination fleets are shown with nonzero current health. I'm also not understanding how the graphical relations could be consistent, particularly between bars 1 and 5 in the top row.

Regardless of those details, since you appear to be responding to Mittens reference to using total horizontal extent to indicate the total remaining fleet health, if the graphs had been accurately prepared on that basis then it would seem fairly obvious that the upper fleet has something like twice or thrice the remaining health of the lower fleet-- how could that be confusing?
Ignore the numbers in those graphs. I made the mockup from something he posted, only to illustrate the graphical aspect.

I've edited that post to remove the numbers. My point, in case it's still not clear, is that interpreting the total green area as the total remaining health is vastly more intuitive than interpreting the total width of the bars as the total remaining health.

I will grant that I didn't take the effort to make the width = remaining health representation consistent. I can do so if you think it will help the discussion. But I'd like to ask you this:

Suppose you haven't been given any explanation about what this graph is supposed to represent, except that it's some sort of representation of fleet strength. Now compare the strengths of the two empires as indicated by the graphs. Which do you think has more total health remaining?

The fact that I even need to worry about making the graphical relations consistent is a sign of redundancy.

Edit:

Here is a similar graph, represented essentially the same way as Mitten's might in-game.
graphical_summary_revised_3.png
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Without any explanation, what does a new player see? My best guess would be that width and height together somehow indicate the total max structure of a particular fleet. There's no obvious indication that the height of a particular bar represents a ship's max structure, and the width its current structure. The y-axis label helps with this, but the way information is spread out redundantly across axes makes the graph significantly harder to interpret. Regardless of anything else, my initial instinct, simply based on the green area, is that the lower empire is significantly better off than the upper empire, which is completely false.

Contrast this with the second mockup I posted - the bars are all the same height, so it's obvious that the width of a bar represents the max structure of a ship. The ship's remaining health is then represented by the green segment.

It took a few iterations of explanations and not knowing what was going on before you guys (and I as well) were able to understand Mitten's representation. That in and of itself is an indication that we can improve on the design.

I expect that large differences in ship structure (as in the case of monsters) might mean that some fleets will be represented by just a few very thin bars, but that is the case regardless of which representation is used.
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Re: [patch] Graphical Combat Summary

#30 Post by Dilvish »

Bigjoe5 wrote:I've edited that post to remove the numbers. My point, in case it's still not clear, is that interpreting the total green area as the total remaining health is vastly more intuitive than interpreting the total width of the bars as the total remaining health.
I could not disagree with you more. I would disagree with you even if "intuitive" were the key concern here (which I don't think it is, since all but the most common types of graphs need various labels to be made sense of). I strongly assert that people are generally not at all used to assessing bar graphs in terms of sums of area of the different bars, and for most people that possibility wouldn't cross their mind at all. The total linear width in a bar chart is normally not as important as in Mitten's proposal, but it very often does have some type of significance, and assigning this additional significance is not counter-intuitive in my opinion.

Even after you've instructed them on the significance, they'll have a tremendously harder time assessing the sum of areas instead of a simple linear extent. My quick search couldn't find a relevant article but I really don't think that humans are nearly so good at adding up areas of differently dimensioned rectangles as they are at assessing a simple linear extent. If I had to guess, I'd say that the total green area of the top row (in your latest chart) is perhaps around 2/3 of the total green area of the lower one; I'm very uncertain of that guess and I had to look very hard at the chart and imagine stacking things up (to essentially convert area to a linear extent) in order to make the estimate at all. Anyone else care to make a guess before BigJoe informs us of the actual ratio?
Without any explanation, what does a new player see? My best guess would be that width and height together somehow indicate the total max structure of a particular fleet....Regardless of anything else, my initial instinct, simply based on the green area, is that the lower empire is significantly better off than the upper empire, which is completely false.
So, assume that the total area is what matters, and then you tell me that the assumption gives poor results. Of course, for ANY chart, if you remove the explanatory labels and then assume it means something different than it does, it's fairly likely to give bad results. The assumption seems like a poor assumption to me, truly, and you haven't even given me any information in these posts with which to assess even how good or bad the results of that assumption would actually be. You just tell me that it gives very poor results and somehow assert that to be an indictment of the intentionally maimed graph rather than of the assumption or the maiming.
Contrast this with the second mockup I posted - the bars are all the same height, so it's obvious that the width of a bar represents the max structure of a ship. The ship's remaining health is then represented by the green segment.
That's not at all obvious-- without any labels or explanation it could be possible that the width represents total attack or something. The idea that the chart is supposed to be readily understandable without any labels or explanation does not make any sense to me and I do not at all think it is possible. I'll have to blame Mitten, though, for starting off with initial instruction "It is intended to make sense, so please take a look at the screenshots in this post before reading the more detailed explanation in the next one to get a feel of how much you feel you can get out of the summary without explanation." It looks to me like that introduction very strongly influenced Geoff's responses.
It took a few iterations of explanations and not knowing what was going on before you guys (and I as well) were able to understand Mitten's representation. That in and of itself is an indication that we can improve on the design.
I don't see where you get this interpretation of the thread, and I certainly disagree regarding myself. By far most of the representation was readily understandable with the first explanation. It looks to me like everyone who's actually tried the graphs likes them. Also, in an attempt to satisfy Geoff's concerns Mitten has proposed some changes which you don't appear to acknowledge or address at all.

Mitten's code is fairly easy to modify. I suggest that anyone wanting to propose some different significance to the graph dimensions actually try the thing both ways in gameplay, and take any graphs for discussion from actual screenshots so that you can be sure they are internally consistent or else they make a rather poor focal point for discussion.
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