Vezzra wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:51 pmTwo things I guess will be absolutely necessary so players can handle the massive tech trees: you have to be able to hide/display entire trunks in the UI (the same way you can now hide/display the categories), so you can hide the themes/trunks you're not interested in. Because with either model we're going to have tons of techs which the player ususally will only be interested in a small subset of.
Different players have different needs or preferences. We must try and get a GUI versatile enough to please everyone. I think it's doable.Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 23, 2019 12:02 amOf course in principle there is reason to display all themes on a single screen - an overview of what tech exists and what is already researched and available and in process. I think that is KISS UI and beautiful. Only supports a small number of techs though.
I think tabs are horrible GUI. You wrote you prefer 8 to 10 themes. Having to go through 10 tabs to find that information sounds pretty bad.
The GUI should be able to show all techs at once (for overview), a subset of themes, a subset of techs related to a given function regardless of the theme (say armours), and a selection of techs related to a given function within a subset of themes.
Each tech could have two kind of tags (instead of category): theme (whatever they are in the end) and function (weapon, armour, stealth, production, space engineering, etc.).
The GUI could show two sets/bars of selection buttons (instead of the current one for categories): one for the themes and one for the functions. Several buttons could be selected/highlighted at once.
Whenever only one theme is selected, the view could be set automatically to a fixed zoom with no vertical scrolling, as commented some time ago. And when there are more than one themes selected, there would be vertical scrolling to see all themes, and the option to zoom in/out.
Selecting functions could just highlight the relevant techs within its themes (so that you see the whole structure of each theme with its tiers and apps, there is no space saving and you have to scroll vertically if there is more than one theme selected) or all non-selected functions could be actually hidden and only show (apart from the selected functions) the theories (so you see the theme tiers).
Additionally, if someone finds it useful (I think I don't) a different form of display that also hides theories (and so also the theme/tiered structure) and only shows the selected functions as floating, independent techs showing its relevant information (including theme, tier, function, etc. and links to visualise such themes/functions without having to select and deselect the corresponding theme and function buttons).
What do you think? Would that please everyone?