FreeOrion

The Tech screen works pretty well as-is, and so I want to wait until we've gotten the SidePanel and Production UI in place before revisiting the Tech UI. Besides, that will give this discussion more time, if it is needed.

tzlaine, if you're working on the underlying mechanics of the research / production UI, is it possible to allow dragging of techs off of the tree onto the queue, and thus enqueuing them to a specific location therein? noelte said the drag-dropping would require GG modifications, so wasn't keen on doing it himself... It would be rather better than the current method though, in which you can only enqueue to the bottom of the queue.

noelte/tzlaine, unless pd is forthcoming with the list of stuff to colour independently, it'd be safe / good to just make just about everything independently colourable on the research screen (and elsewhere in the UI actually...) from XML files that can be easily edited w/o recompilation. This is sort of a graphics thing, but does require some non-graphics underlying code modifications as well.

A quick list: primary and secondary text colours for each tech status (researched, researching, available, unavailable), border and background colours for each tech status, general background colour, fully funded colour (green on pd's mockup), partly funded colour (yellow on mockup), unfunded colour (red), general bright ("Robotic Production", "RESEARCH")and dim (description text at top centre) text colours, general medium background colour (behind research totals summary at top left).

If you're working on the backend stuff, I figure it might be convenient to do some of that now... but if not, then nevermind.

And while you're doing that, starting to add support for skinning the UI would be handy... pd was keen on that.

Also also, making a list view of techs, rather than tree view, sortable alphabetically would be handy. This is quite a bit more than minor graphical alterations to what's already there, so is mentioned...

Queue sorting also requires some nongraphical additions... see my posts explaining this earlier in the thread.

And in the event someone does start the general graphical tweaks to make things look like the mockup, I re-suggest my comments since the last mockup.

I'd like to point out that as we have a formal policy of never reopening discussion once a design decision has been made, I have an informal policy that states that I will not rewrite something that has already been written, unless what is written is an utter failure. An example of this is the first fleet UI, for those of you who remember it.

There was a pretty long period of discussion on the Tech UI before and even during the time I wrote it. It is going to remain pretty much as it is, since rewriting something every time someone doesn't like it will run this project into the ground.

Having said that, I am happy to add things to the code that will enhance it, but I am extremely reluctant to change decisions that have already been made.

In terms of the Tech UI, that means adding:

- a tech-list view
- drag-drop support (long-term, probably not v0.3)
- color customization support
- tree-view zoom levels (again, long-term)
- an all / available & complete / available only filter
- tech color coding
- category icons
- tech images

but not:

- changing the way the individual tech panels look (except by adding category icons or changing colors)
- decreasing the tech panel width (they barely hold some of the names as it is)

So, for those of you who are interested, now is the time to come up with designs for the new v0.3 sidepanel and the data bar at the top of the screen, plus the Production UI. Just as December was the time for major Tech UI design, now is the time for major design of these items.

Hmm, i don't see it as rewriting ... but i won't interfere. Have to find something else ....

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The rewrite would be changing all the code that displays the individual tech panels; that's all I meant.

I doubt you'll agree, but I'd view changes of this sort as a refinement, rather than a complete rewrite... and the original implementation you did as a first draft, which upon inspection, does need some tweaking and refinement.

The changes proposed aren't complete reworkings of the mechanics and functional design of the UI... but are "just" additions and changes to displayed info and style.

I can see how having a hard rule about this can be important / essential, at least for the lead / primary coder... Though if someone else is volunteering to make the code changes, and the art lead(s) agree, I must question whether the rule needs to be imposed on them.

Then again, if there are other things that need doing, and they would be delayed to make revisions, the other things should probably take priority.

just a fast test how to make (perhaps) the queue item progress meter little bit better...(?)

http://img208.echo.cx/img208/3992/fopro ... emo9vw.png

This was based on the stuff i did on the production ui. I think we can easily reach turns going even over 50 turns this way.

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Just reading up on this thread, how does the tech ui look like exactly?

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Looks decent. If we're sticking icons on there, they may as well be for the tech itself, rather than its category, though I'm not sure the larger ~128x128 icons made so far will really work scaled down to the size you suggest.

How would you divide up prime numbered turns? That is, numbers you can't factor nicely to made a n by m grid of squares? 20 turns or 30 turns or 45 turns split nicely into 2x10, 3x10 and 3x15, but 41 or 53 turns don't, and we should probably make it possible for any artbitrary integer build time to work. It's probly just a matter of greying out or not outlining some squares...

Edit: the tech screen: http://freeorion.sourceforge.net/techscreen.png

Yes, its an obvious issue but i think we could just remove and "excess" blocks or use only non-problematic numbers.



Little dissappointing. Did pd work for nothing then?

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We can use what he's done as a basis for further work, such as the production screen and sidepanel designs. And eventually a revamp of the existing interface will probably happen, even if it doesn't happen right now.

What we really need is a skin for FreeOrion that we stick to. Enhancements can and will be made to the tech screen UI, but not just yet. There's a lot of things in pd's mockup that are very beneficial. At the moment we're prioritising towards those things that need doing in order to get 0.3 out the door.

For sure. The whole reason the current tech screen is blue is because I was basing the mockup off of something miu had done earlier:



I somewhere got the impression that that was the color scheme we were going with, then everybody liked my mockup and zach put the colors in when he coded it. pd's latest fits much better with the existing ui theme of v 0.2

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Zach's made changes to the techscreen to include some of pd's design. More is slated to be implemented after 0.3. Check out the screenshot here:
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Screenshots

An up-to-date screenshot of the research screen was requested. Here it is.

Note that the panels on the tree are reeeealy close together in this screenshot because I adjusted a setting in the options to make it that way. They are further apart by default.

There are several different shadings of panels on the tree. Architectural Psychology is a tech that's available to be researched and which has been clicked on by the player to select it. It's drawn lighter than, for example, Externality Integration, which is available but not selected. Metroplex Infrastrcture is neither available nor selected, and is darker. If Met. Infra. was selected, it would be rendered about the same way that Extra. Int. is (not-selected available).

Panels on the queue at the left are darker if not getting any PP this turn (due to insufficient PP or missing prerequisites) and lighter if getting PP this turn.

In the display controls, white border with black fill means a button is turned off, and colour or gray fill means the button is turned on.