colony ui suggestion

from GalCiv3 Forums

so i just watched the friday dev stream and brad made mention of having a production info in with all the other little infos on the screen and that bugged me.

ive wanted the production info on the screen for a while and have been thinking about some changes to the screen 

so heres my attempt at some changes that i would like to see.

i apologize for my horrible horrible paint skills (or lack thereof)

 

 

ok so lets talk about what ive done here and why

 

1) i made the actual map slightly smaller and moved it up and left (this gives us some room to play around with

2) ive pulled the population, food and approval numbers together, they are all directly related and should have their own info box

  • the reason approval has 2 values is so that i can at a glance see my current approval and see how much i can increase my population without having to mouse over the approval info-panel   if my approval is 100% is that because i have 10.1 bonus or because i have 45 bonus?)
  • i put it in that location because it that info is the main driver for production which is the main driver for manufacturing/research/wealth

3) ive added a production info box  (i took the icon from the economy wheel) and made up some numbers to go with it

the numbers here are first the current production then a statement (if you increase your population by 2/4/6 then you will have this much production) then the modified production if you increase your population

4) ive added more information to the manufacturing window (i was to lazy to repeat it for research and wealth) so it would simply show you the total of all your bonus's and negatives, and mousing over them would show you the popup with all the individual bonus's etch

5) since i pulled food, pop and approval out of that box next to wealth ive moved planetary defense and resistance over to the left box (this is now a list of basics for the planet this info will be on every planet whereas the box on the right will now be a list of conditional modifiers to the planet)

6) added an info tooltip for colonization event color coded by ideology choice (i think a little circle with an I inside suffices but some artsy people might want more)
other info that should go in this area would include any galactic event that affects this planet or anything else of that nature

7) ive added overflow information.  right now the overflow info only shows up when you mousover empty space on the manufacturing queue the problem is when you put 3-4 buildings in the queue there is no empty space so you can no longer see overflow information

8) so this was one last plan i wanted but couldent get it to work with my lack of paint skills was to move the manufacturing queue out from underneath the build list and have it next to the build list half overlapping so you can click on one to bring it to the front 

 

 

so what do you think are these ideas good, bad, ugly? why

11,499 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Bippity boppity bump

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I support any quixotic quest to improve the planet screen UI. It's just not going to happen. Tooltips are the new hotness. Everyone knows that if you bury something it becomes more valuable, just ask a pirate. :ninja:

I honestly think that the designers looked at the screen and decided that there were too many numbers and it was too confusing. "But we need to know all this information" people who actually play the game said. So the designers said "Rather than clutter up my beautiful design, how about we compromise and put it in a tooltip."

Which doesn't bode well for your (or my) suggestions on improvement.

1) I don't see a real need to shrink the map to free up room. There's plenty of dead space on the screen. For example, you can free up a lot of space if you get rid of the useless icons underneath Manu, Research and Wealth.

2) I like the impulse, but I don't think the placement is good. I think this should all go in the column where you've put the colony event.

3) This could easily be a... duh duh duh... tooltip!

4) I think this could be broken down as a single line (any +Manu modifiers + %Bonus)

5) fine!

6) the colony event and capital are important modifiers, but I think they should be "branding" the colony screen. I have a post somewhere here where I put up a mockup. Basically I pull it out of the planet detail interface and place it in a themed box with some flavor text and imagery overlayed above the planet animation. You could do the same thing with the "Capital" planet. Just something to spice up the planet screen to make it distinct.

7) My preferred mechanism for displaying "overflow" would be to have the element show up in the queue with the overflow portion displayed as completed. If you cancel or sort the queue then the overflow would be applied.

8) sounds complicated. The queue is too small right now, but really all we need are 4 little arrow buttons (move up, move down, move to top, move to bottom) and then we'd be fine.

 

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