FreeOrion

Don't get too discouraged... Just because I dislike the function of your design doesn't mean 800 other people wouldn't love it... And even if your overall scheme doesn't work, there could be new ideas from your efforts that improve the final result. And, the more you try and the more I comment, the more useful (IMO) your efforts will be. You shouldn't give up because your first couple of tries had some problems..

And even if we use the basic layout I made, we need an art-capable person to make it look pretty... The buildings palette I proposed needs tweaking, as we discussed.

And perhaps some UI for on the map to show which system is currently selected or shown in the sidepanel (lack of this is a major problem now... IMO) And the sidepanel still needs a functional design... You had some decent looking mockups a while ago... could you post them? Or perhaps take a stab at visualizing the sidepanel with a basic info line, and then options to show buildings, production, political stuff, etc. as I described? Miu's sidepanel mockup here is decent looking, but not very useful funtionally. We need some way to show valid build locations on the map or sidepanel... perhaps with highlighting of system icons or planet ... boxes (or whatever they end up being)... And a place / way to put icons for specials?

You may come up with ideas that I or others think are bad, but it's hard to tell what will or won't work without seeing it, at least for minor layout details of where to show lots of info and put interface widgets and such...

Edit: Oh, one thing that I suspect will be controversial, but IMO is best: We don't really need a separate window for individual planets, at least for UI purposes (showing pretty environment renders is fine). All the interaction with planets probably can and should be done from the sidepanel or production screen, or possibly future screens tailored to other game subsystems. Given the simplified options for infrastructure (just focus) and the separate production queue, I suspect everything can fit on the sidepanel... at least with some parts optionally toggled on / off as described above.

Correct.

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Ok, so I still like the hex idea. What about something like this? Takes up just as much space as the current production controls...

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Donno what to say, you certainly dont need "art-capable".

Ive not yet understood why no one else sees problems with stuffing all kinds of things to the sidebar, i mean even the mockup by Miu pretty much tells the whole story.



I think ive posted images of most of the ideas ive come up with...

Its really like making theme (skin) for windows, the functionality is already there. I rather concentrate on the artistic part than the game design.



Ive been trying to understand the logic behind the "What to build, where to build it" thing. Can someone explain me why its this way? I mean from the players perspective, why would you first choose what to build and then where to build it (and not vise versa)?

I assume there has been discussions about this, but i cant locate them.

Also it would be good to link any relevant past topics about the production UI etc. Might help anyone "outsider" to get some picture about the whole thing.

Brainstorming Building, tech, specials
production and research UI screen

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I think we could use such window to show everything in detail about the planet, we cannot put everything little thing into the sidebar about the planet.

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I think the stuff within the red frame are not needed. Since you can just use the stuff in the green frame to do the same thing(?)

Looks cool though...

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The issue I'm addressing is the dislike with right-click left-click to set primary and secondary focus in the current version.

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Compare your nice rounded edges and shading to this, my attempts at a sidepanel mockup:



... can you see the need for art-capable people yet? This isn't meant to be a final appearance... but is just an attempt at figuring out where to put stuff and roughly how big things should be, etc. It desparately needs to be made over to look nice.

Functionally, the "Buildings" and "Political" buttons up top toggle whether buildings are shown below their planets, and whether political stuff is shown on each planet panel. Currently no political stuff is designed... so we probly won't have this subsection of the planet panels for v0.3. When politics and such is in, then the panel can be designed and implemented. There might be another panel necessary as well, for something else, which can be easily added... maybe specials or resources, or espionage if not part of culture/politics for sidepanel purposes.


After some thought, I'm retracting my previous statement; it's impractical to put EVERYTHING on the sidepanel. For instance, the sidepanel will probably show resource production, but we can put resource production and meter values on the planet screen. Any sort of factional or political interface will have to go on the planet screen, though summary of sorts can go on the sidepanel, analagous to just the summary info for production/focus.

We'll also need to have some icons or somesuch to indicate specials attached to planets, or the system itself. These could be icons next to the planet images... or perhaps another box on the planet panels at the bottom...

And depending how migration is done, we might need some UI or icons to indicate whether the planet is set to encourage / force emigration, immigration, or neither.


If you want a building that has effects that don't depend on its location you might pick the building first. Or, if the building has restrictions on where it can be placed, if you pick the building first, we can filter the bad or indicate the good build locations, simplifying picking a place to build for the player. It also might not be a matter of "choosing" as in deciding, so much as just the order the player feels like indicating the things in the UI.

In fact, i dont.



I still dont like the idea of putting the in development projects per planet into the sidebar. We already have a "global queue" and if you want to see exactly what projects are in development in specific planet, wouldnt you just push the production button and see the queue (only) with highlighted projects that are currently located in the selected planet?

Of course somekind of indicator how many projects etc. are going on in a planet and such is needed...

Same goes for the completed buildings, i cannot believe that the best way is to just dump these into the sidebar.

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Seriously? Look at my resource production indicators... and the focus selection buttons... they're rather ugly. Most of the rest that looks half decent (the basic colour scheme, the planet images, the separation of subsections of panels with lines in the style used) were copied from other people's mockups... and those other people were generally art-capable...


There might be more projects on the queue that can fit on the screen easily... having to scroll would be a pain. But really the reason to put them there is because the other buildings are there, so why not? (...)


Where else would they go? If buildings have any sort of interface for the player, to activate or target them, they'll need to be easily accessible in association with a particular system... We could do a "Buildings Window", like the Fleets Window, as in an earlier mockup I made, but I didn't really like this... as it divorces buildings from the planet on which they are located too much... Especially if we want to use the sidepanel to indicate which planet to put a building on; if you put a building on a planet by clicking on the planet, it seems wise to have feedback for that action by actually showing the building where you clicked... (while building, and when done).

Edit: Another reason to put buildings on the sidepanel, especially incomplete ones, is so that other players can see them. Presumably the other players won't have access to your full production queue... but if they have a ship or spy in a system, they'd be able to see buildings, complete and in progress, on the various planets. If we consistently show buidlings on the sidepanel, we can show the other players' buildings there as well... without having to somehow show part of another player's production screen or some other complicated display mechanism...

Edit2: Buildings are also supposed to be relatively rare and important... nearly as important as planets are... so the buildings located in a system are almost (or perhaps in some cases much more) important than the details of the individual planets. Any way to display the buildings would have to be as quick and easy to access as the sidepanel... not on a separate subscreen for the planet that's accessed from the sidepanel, and also would have to be able to show all the buildings in a system at once, not requiring opening two screens and clicking repeatedly to be able to see the buildings on each planet one at a time...

Just a focus "bar" test for the sidebar.



Proper gamma required!

EDIT:
Im curious to know why there is "primary" and "secondary" focus. Could it work if we have just simple "focus" where you could just left click to choose the focuses.

Note that im not aware how the whole focus thing works (numbers), im just curious.

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And little more "complex", Breadman style.



OR

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I think there are two types of focus because just one wasn't fine enough control and wouldn't be enough variations for different bonuses from effects. I'm not really sure though... but it doesn't matter at this point, as it's not going to change; there will be both a primary and secondary focus setting. As such, we'll need a way to indicate both primary and secondary focus. This doesn't need to be separate buttons from the production indicators, but it can't be right / left clicking as it is now.

And your indicators look much nicer than mine... NOW do you see why we need art people?

Focus gives bonuses to max values of meters (not the current values). Current grows up towards max, and current is capped by max, so when switching you get a penalty while meters re-grow towards the new maxes. See: http://freeorion.org/index.php/V.3_Requ ... rce_Meters

Also, note that resource production is population * meter / 10, not just the meter directly.

It looks like your numbers are +15 for primary focus and +5 for secondary focus, but those are the max meter value changes for focus settings, while the numbers on the sidepanel should be resource production values, which are a function of the *current* meter and the population, not the max meter.

....

We might want to indicate both the current value of a planet's resource production and the expected change in that value for the next turn on the sidepanel. The expected change would be dependent on changes to focus settings, normal current meter growth, activation/deactivation of buildings (when that's possible), movement of ships that have effects on meters, any changes in effects from specials / events (when they exist). We should clearly indicate that these numbers are "change" though, so they're not misinterpreted as surplus or defecit amounts...

Also, on the individual planet screen, we'd have a list of all game objects and techs and specials that are affecting the planet's meters. This would be sortable by which meter is being affected (some buildings/techs/specials could affect more than one meter) and by how much, or by location of the buildings

Other buildings? I dont like the idea of putting anything of the sort in there.



By all means, make it like that, but my personal opinion is that its a bad idea TO put in the planetary sidebar.

Too bad theres no one commenting any of this that actually will deside in the end. Coder(s) for instance...(?)



Mainly im curious how the thing works.



Not really, no. Only difference is that it takes more time to make pretty mockup than not-so-pretty one. So it actually is an issue when trying to map out the basic functionality but i cant help myself. Thats why this really isnt for artist(s).

You could have just done simple boxes with text in it, just that people can understand how it works...



Can you give me realistical examples of the values for those?



This is why this isnt the job for artist.

deactivating/activating buildings?

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I meant the finished buildings.


Well then suggestion an alternative, that doesn't involve putting them on the production queue, and that provides a UI for finished buildings...

If nobody else comments, we will decide. tzlaine can probably code up just about anything reasonable that we come up with.


You'll have to be more specific... What thing? Works in what sense?


My point is that, after the basic functionaly is worked out, it still needs to be made pretty. The making pretty is the part for which art-capable people are needed.


Meters go from 0 to 100. Production values are probably less than 1000, though having space for 4 digits wouldn't hurt.


Presumably some buldings might have functions that you can turn on or off, rather than being always on. This hasn't been decided, but seems reasonable to plan ahead for.