Sidepanel and planetview UI

[miu]

Here's in more detail about what we need for those UI's. Post your suggestions, comments and pictures here.

Design for sidepanel:
Opens up on right side - starfield will scroll so that the selected system becomes centered.

On top, left border:
Picture (hopefully animated) of right colored and sized star of that system

On top, middle:
These things are constant, won't scroll.
<[system's name]>
-sidearrows will take to next system alphabetically.
-clicking on name field, opens a drop down list of system's where you have colonies and you can click to one you want to move to. Moving mouse away from list will close it.
-when the list is open, pressing letters on keyboard will move the list to right place.
Under this: Icons and values showing the system wide values for industry, science, production and farming. Then an Icon and number to show system wide number of defense bases and their total defensive value.

These will scroll:
Opening under, the rotating planet pictures on left border, and on right of them showing information with suitable icons (as it is presented in screenshots currently) :

population [20/50 (+1)] -current/maximum (amount of growth to next turn, colorcoded, positive green, negative red, zero= white)
industry [5] -just amount
science [5] -just amount
mining [5] -just amount
farming [5 (-1)] -amount (how much the planet is over/underproducing food,colorcoded, positive green, negative red, zero= white)

Shows the current thing the system is building, estimated time, and dropdown list to choose what to build next.

On right side, scrolling ui to view lower slots.

Design of: Planetary view:
Opens up on right side of the sidepanel when clicked on planet or it's name. Will fade away once the mouse leaves either the planet, or the planetary view.
Contains:
-Backgroundpicture for that planet type. Usually shown under the interface, will be show without interface when pressing some key (space in Moo2)
-Window to show picture and details of selected building/unit that can be buildt.
-list for all the things that can be buildt to this planet and,
-UI to select primary and secondary focus.
-Planet Name, Size, Enviroment, Enviromental Preference, Ownership
- A detailed economic breakdown = amount of industry, mining, farming and science buildt on planet

[drek]

A few questions and comments. I'm obviously a bit out of the loop, so they might be stuipid questions:

population [20/50 (+1)] -current/maximum (amount of growth to next turn, colorcoded, positive green, negative red, zero= white)

Maybe the estimated growth could be a color coded arrow pointing up or down, or absent in the event of no growth.

industry [5] -just amount
science [5] -just amount
mining [5] -just amount
farming [5 (-1)] -amount (how much the planet is over/underproducing food,colorcoded, positive green, negative red, zero= white)

I forget if this has been discussed before: are we using rows of icons (like in Civ) or numbers?

defensebases [3/56] -amount/total defensive value.

Maybe this should be a system wide value (instead of planet), since combat occurs on a system level. (at least until the combat engine particulars are decided on, and maybe even then)

military [5/45] -amount/total defensive value.
tanks [12/250] -amount/total defensive value.

You've lost me here. This is the first I've heard of "tanks". Military value again would be a system wide value based on the friendly ships in system--but a useful one to have.

Shows the current thing the system is building, estimated time, and dropdown list to choose what to build next. (later on, in 0.3, how is the building que to be taken account here?)

I'm assuming we won't have a build queue in 0.2. Should define the v.3 stuff before deciding what the UI for the queue will look like.

On right side, scrolling ui if the system has more than 5 plantes.

Every system has 9 (?) planet slots. A system might have no planets in the first eight slots for example, and a gas giant in the 9th. On that line, need a way to represent an empty planet slot. (eventually they may be used for something--building free standing space stations orbitting a star)

Opens up on right side of the sidepanel when clicked on planet or it's name. Will fade away once the mouse leaves either the planet, or the planetary view.

A rollover or a click to open the planet view? Either method has advantages.

-Adjustable bar's for assigning population to farming, industry, mining and science. Lockable.

This was a huge huge huge arguement on the old forums, probably the largest FO arguement of all time. In the end, assigning population was nixed (which is why it's not in the v.2 requirements doc).

-Dropdownlist to send colonists to other systems and interface to choose the amount.

There's no explict migration in v.2, unless something's changed. The player cannot choose to send population to other planets, at least not in v.2. To my knowledge anyway--just from reading the design doc.

-List of buildings on selected planet
-Window to show picture and details of selected building/unit that can be buildt.
-list for all the things that can be buildt to this planet and, including military units and spies. + UI to add and remove them to building que.
-Button to enter ship-designing screen
-Building que and button for auto-build option.

Again, these are all things to be decided in v.3 and beyond. There were alot of competing systems for buildings, some resembling moo2, some resembling moo3, building slots, and a few wackier ones. No point in making a UI for something that'll probably be changed in v.3.


Few more things:
* Probably should be a system-wide tally of all resources produced. This would be a good place to stick the Military and Defense Base values as well. I see it as a box at the top or bottom of the sidebar. It's "on top" of the rest of the side bar and not attached to the scollbar, so that it's always visible on screen.
* Unexplored systems--how are they handled on the Side bar?
* Need new planet graphics. Asteriod fields. Gas Giants.
* It's a bit obvious, but just to be complete: the Planet Name, Size, Enviroment, Enviromental Preference, and Ownership might all appear on the Planet View. A detailed economic breakdown might also be cool.

[noelte]

if we achieve a final v0.2 design it would be nice having a sketch.

[drek]

if we achieve a final v0.2 design it would be nice having a sketch.

I plan on posting something rough and crappy looking Monday or Tuesday.

[miu]

Edited my post accoringly. Many of the issues you posted, Drek, you're right, will not be in 0.2, but I wanted to just point them out as they will be needed later on and I thought to point out their possibility when designing the UI. (I would love to have some agreements on these as we could design quite final UI right away and just have these things locked, but well, later on then.)

I prefer clicking as people will move mouse directly to building que option and accidentally opening planet view then would be frustrating.

I assume you mean by detailed economic breakdown, the amounts of science, industry, farming and mining facilities buildt.

[pd]

I prefer clicking as people will move mouse directly to building que option and accidentally opening planet view then would be frustrating.

i aggree on this.

[drek]

I prefer clicking as people will move mouse directly to building que option and accidentally opening planet view then would be frustrating.

Cept it's no problem when you open the planet view, since it would disappear the second the mouse is no longer hovering over the planet (or the planet view).

Think of it as an exceptionally large tool-tip, or a Windows style menu.

I was thinking it would look cool to quickly roll the mouse down the planets on the sidebar and see those spiffy terraforming pictures flip by like cards. Maybe the roll over just brings up the picture, and a click brings up the rest of the planet view over the picture?

[vorenhutz]

Will the sun be at the top of the sidepanel? (e.g. Ka's suns).

[drek]

Early crappy version of a side panel incorporating some of the features described in this thread:

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/sidebar2.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/sidepanelv2b.jpg

[miu]

Looks very good. I'll rework on those icons as currently, specially the manufacturing has way too strong white outline. For showing the planetview, I think mouseover will do, but with delay (meaning it will show the picture only if the mouse has been over the planet for 0.5s) so that it wont pop up constantly because you will be visiting system view very often and you wouldnt want to see that picture every time (even though it fades quickly) when you go to change focus/building. I like how the changing of focus is handled, but it only shows primary focus, how would you apply setting secondary focus? Also the symbol could be something else than yin-yang - just matter of taste, I find this bit clishy/too religious and bit out of the style we have.

In 0.2 this doesnt matter, but we might want to apply later on a pop up warning on changing focus, with do not show again -option. This is because, by design document, some buildings can be buildt only on planet with certain focus and if focus is changed, those buildings become destroyed (I would prefer just becoming inactive).

Note for coders: Sun will scroll along the planets when scrolling up planets.

For unexplored systems, Side panel should show, big picture of the sun, empty slots and text "unexplored" on top instead of system name.

[noelte]

Thought's about sidepanel sketch.

- are the upper icons represention the empire production at this system?
- the focus wheel display the current production, the selection is the current focus? What if we get more foci, eg. entertainment?
- that's about there empty Space slots, do we want them?
- For every planet the owner empire name should be displayed (color isn't enough).
- should the sidepanel be transparent?
- should we be able to select a planet slot? Planet View wouldn't be controled by mouse position.

Ronald.

PS: I like the design so far.

[drek]

I like how the changing of focus is handled, but it only shows primary focus, how would you apply setting secondary focus?

-and-

the focus wheel display the current production, the selection is the current focus? What if we get more foci, eg. entertainment?

Excellent questions. I anticipated sticking the secondary focus into the planet view. Except in early game, 90% of the time it's advantageous just to leave the secondary focus on the default "Farming". At least it works out that way on my old spreadsheets.

If more foci is added, we can either restrict new foci to secondary (where there is more screen real estate) or if the number of new foci is limited, include more buttons on focus wheel.

In 0.2 this doesnt matter, but we might want to apply later on a pop up warning on changing focus, with do not show again -option. This is because, by design document, some buildings can be buildt only on planet with certain focus and if focus is changed, those buildings become destroyed (I would prefer just becoming inactive).

Yeppers. Not only that, but there was discussion that changing primary focus should cost money/minerals/whatever.

are the upper icons represention the empire production at this system?

Yes. A label to that effect might be nice.

that's about there empty Space slots, do we want them?

I don't know, just going by the design document. The empty spaces denote distance between worlds...which isn't at all useful in v.2. Might be useful eventually if either:

a: tactical combat occurs on a system wide scale
b: you can build crap in empty space. My orginal thought when writing that part of the document was that players would be able to be mining bases in asteriod fields, gas gaint taps on the jovian worlds, and giantic space stations (or maybe even artificial worlds) in empty space.

- For every planet the owner empire name should be displayed (color isn't enough).

Yeah. I'm thinking a flag would be cool on the side bar, and the empire's full name on the planet view.

- should the sidepanel be transparent?

It is transparent. But just like in the real game, it's hard to see the background stars underneath unless you look real close. There might or might not be readability issues if the transparency is reduced futher...something to experiment with.

EDIT: Laugh. Just looked at the pshop file. I didn't put background stars behind the sidebar.

should we be able to select a planet slot? Planet View wouldn't be controled by mouse position.

My notion was that the picture alone would quickly pop up when you roll over, to be layered with the planet view UI controls if the player selects the planet slot.

But there are lots of different ways for it to work...just that I'd like to see a scheme that showcases those badass terraforming pictures.

[Marijn]

As far a building things in empty space goes - a system would (realistically speaking) have room for an almost infinite number of extra structures, so I do not think the 'slots' approach is very useful. I would also hate having to scroll becaus of all the 'empty space' showing up on my screen. Since the scale of the planet positions is not going to make any sense anyway (or you'd have sub-pixel sized planets), just putting the planets that exist in a system right below each other might be the most user-friendly thing to do. As in

* Sun
o Planet one
O Planet two
o Planet three
. Asteroid belt
[end of planet bar, no matter how far the planets are away from each other]

That way you'd only have to scroll for big systems (as in many planets).

[drek]

- a system would (realistically speaking) have room for an almost infinite number of extra structures

It's a game. We can't allow infinite structures.

The "building crap in empty space" idea is to give players something to do with systems that have few or no planets. Like buildings a research station near a black hole, or a defense base at a starlane choke point.

I would also hate having to scroll becaus of all the 'empty space' showing up on my screen.

A valid critism.

a: we can make the empty space slots very thin on the UI
or
b: we can do away with them altogether

[pd]

drek: as mentioned in my 'planets v0.2' thread, could you maybe try out to move the star to the top right corner? the problem is, that the planet rotation will look very strange if the planets are illuminated from directly above.