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The UI and You

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The UI and You

The Road to 1.2

from JoeUser Forums
Ah, the UI of a turn based strategy game…so much info to convey, so little time to get it all 100% perfect.

As players have invested hours and hours on our little space game, they’re finding many little UI issues that hamper the gamplay experience and can quickly turn a joyful galaxy-wide extermination into a click-fest nightmare. Well…perhaps not a nightmare, but certainly not as enjoyable.

After the memory issues of 1.1 that went hand-in-hand with playing on a Gigantic galaxy, the whole team set out to play-test the hell out of that size game. Taking notes on what annoyed us, as well as using issues brought up on the forums, we came up with a list of UI tweaks that should make gameplay considerably less ‘clicky’, mostly on those large galaxies.

** Ship Details **
OK, so perhaps the screen didn’t have ALL the details a regular player would need. We’ve since added the Construct and Upgrade buttons to this screen, listed the number of Troops or Colonists on the selected vessel, and have a text field to display the vessels current destination.

** Quick Build Screen **
Just a little thing, but we’ve added a cancel button here. This way, if you click through the available ships and can’t find one you want to change production to, you can simply cancel without having to re-locate the last design you were building. Dunno if this annoyed other players, but it annoyed me.

** Auto-Focus on next availabe Ship with Moves **
OMG!
Perhaps I never payed attention…perhaps it’s worse playing on a large Galaxy…I don’t know, but I wanted to KILL auto-focus half-way through my last game. Cari’s currently turning this into an option…one that I will promptly disable. ;)

** Colony Management List **
Added shield so you know what planets are defended. Tweaked income display to now display Net Income instead of plain ol’ income…should be more useful. Also tweaked the list so it shouldn’t reset to the top when returning from the Planet Screen.

** Planet Screen **
Improvement list wont reset to top when placing improvements. Will be able to destroy an improvement even if it’s being upgrade (1.1 had LOTS of clicking here if you needed to destroy an upgrading improvement).

Lots of other little additions as well. A tool-tip that shows your empire income stats when you mouse-over your money on the main game screen. Number of troops on the Fleet Context Window. Adding of the aforementioned Upgrade and Constructor buttons to the Fleet Manager Window.

Unfortunatly, I don’t know when these improvements will make their way into your hands. Brad returns next Monday, at which time I’m sure we’ll be discussing other things, but we’ll definatly try to pin down a date for 1.2.

Along with mod support, 1.2 will be filled with these long overdue tweaks will ease everyones UI related pain...including my own. ;)
126,067 views 106 replies
Reply #101 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Improvements in the UI that I'd like to see would be:

--A way to see who has access to what trade goods, as well as who built what galactic achievements and super projects

--An option to disable the confirmation prompt for building starbase modules that have a monetary cost

--An auto-construct option that automatically sends a transport to the nearest starbase with available modules

--The option in a planet's ship construction screen to automatically set completed ships to any combination of movement automations, which would be great for things like building constructors that are already set to the previous suggestion

--A building queue for each planet's ship construction screen... Kind of a tall order, I guess, but sweet baby Jesus on a stick I'd love you guys for it. And if there already is one, and it's simply eluded me somehow, then I already love you guys for it, and I'm retarded.

--The option to remove a ship component and all of the components attached to it (with confirmation, of course) in the ship designer

--Not resetting the ship designer's component list back to the start when you remove an item. It's annoying when I decide I really didn't want all those lights afterall, and have to click my way to the end of the list ten times.

--What'd be even better than the previous suggestion would be the ability to create component "groups" in the components list. You could then "expand" or "collapse" the groups to view or hide their components from the list; this not only allows for the component list to be shrunken down to more manageable sizes, but also keeps people sane by providing an order to the madness. The groups don't even have to be persistent (so no changes in the ship files), or affect how any of the components are manipulated (though adding in that kind of functionality would be great for a later update or expansion pack).

--I'd like an option to specify one ship design as the primary upgrade of another ship. The reason for having this is so that, when I obselete the core constructor, all the planets that were currently building constructors will automatically switch production to the improved design I made, instead of simply going idle (and wasting God-knows-how-much production). It's also not much fun to have to manually assign the new design to be built in each colony, especially when you're playing a gigantic map and have over 100 planets that were building the now-obselete design.

--In the ship construction and shipyard screens, it'd be nice if you could mouse over a ship and get a tooltip with the appropriate ship's full description.

--Lastly, I'd like to be able to access a list of all the ship designs I have made obselete, and restore any of the listed ship designs; such a feature would be a godsend when you accidentally obselete the wrong ship design.

Reply #102 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The government screen still says that different governments gives a production and research bonus when they in fact don't. Should be a quick thing to fix.
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Reply #103 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
--I'd like an option to specify one ship design as the primary upgrade of another ship. The reason for having this is so that, when I obselete the core constructor, all the planets that were currently building constructors will automatically switch production to the improved design I made, instead of simply going idle (and wasting God-knows-how-much production). It's also not much fun to have to manually assign the new design to be built in each colony, especially when you're playing a gigantic map and have over 100 planets that were building the now-obselete design.



When I update a design I am currrently building on my planets , my new updated design does show up instantly in the planet screen list.

It might do this only if I keep the ship name the same, I can't remember. Or maybe you have to obsolete the pld design, I can't remember.

But I think it is whenever you hit update the design after you have a old design selected.

It does not happen when you create a new ship.

using 1.11.029
Reply #104 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A very small suggestion about land battles, could you make the laser and other sounds bit quieter? I don´t know how it is possible, but I tend to play with quite quiet sounds and the land battles are still booming loud. Weird



Amen. Land battles very loud. Please allow slider or tone down. Please. Pretty Please.....I'm begging ya......

Or just tell what the sounds are so I can find them or kill them or change them..
Reply #105 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The government screen still says that different governments gives a production and research bonus when they in fact don't. Should be a quick thing to fix.


"...that's a clear glitch in the text display. As the designer and the one who implemented the code, I can assure you that the text description should not say that. I will see that that is changed." -- Avatar Frogboy (Stardock) Monday, March 06, 2006 2:07 AM

Yes that is a small thing but misleading anyways. Could this be fixed for 1.2 pretty please
Reply #106 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So I was gaming yesterday day and thought a improvement. Why not make right click open ship information screen when clicked on ship icon. I right clicked the ship icons in main UI lower right planet screen and when selecting ships. So far right click does not do anything.

Maybe right clicking on single ship would open ship infromation screen and when right clicking stacks it would open fleet manager?