Resource bars

[Licho]

MK, thats something no nub needs. They need to know basic stats and not this. This would just confuse them and take up 1/2 of screen. Its not interface for pros, its for nubs, thats why im considering hiding overdrive completely.

I like the idea with arrow to represent overdrive somehow.

However i dont think that classical bar with red and green portion representing gain/loss over several seconds is useful for CA.

You generally have E at 80% (auto managed by overdrive)
and M at 0% (unless you suck).

So even spread over several seconds it still shows no raise/gain mostly.

Im thinking how to integrate overdrive arrow idea with flow bars. It could be at "0" mark by default and moving it left or right would force system to start using less or more energy to ensure something is put to storage or taken from it.

[Google_Frog]

Alternate suggestion by sirmaverick

I like this suggestion but implementing it in a way that doesn't take up all the screen space could be hard.

The bar would also need good colour coding to display all this information. Metal income alone can be broken into Base Mex, Overdrive, Reclaim and live reclaim.

A third Bar could even be add for BP. It could be split into building units, building buildings, repair, reclaim, walking, idle etc...

Manual Overdrive is still needed so people can balance their stall factors.

Can you calrify what you mean?

When stalling both E and M the fastest build speed with be attained by stalling E and M in equal amounts, this usually means using a lot in overdrive. Automatic overdrive does not do this.

[Licho]

Actually when i think about it, similar arrow as on energy (for overdrive) could be placed on metal to force some resource conservation. But thats probably not useeful :)

[Google_Frog]

However i dont think that classical bar with red and green portion representing gain/loss over several seconds is useful for CA.

You generally have E at 80% (auto managed by overdrive)
and M at 0% (unless you suck).

The point is not to represent actual gain/loss. It is much more useful to display income and loss regardless of whether your storage is empty or full, with this information players can see how much they are excessing or stalling by.

[Saktoth]

Players do use storage as a buffer, income/expenditure can jump around a lot, with reclaim and different construction jobs.

However, i guess if you visualize your net gain/loss as a proportion of your total income/expenditure, and if the bar is from 0-50 or so (would start at ~12, large enough to be visible), scaling up to 0-500 if you ever breach 50, you would get a pretty good idea of how your income compares. However, it would go negative early on and at points during the game so you have to leave room for that too.

Thinking about it, I admit i dont always internalize what my + income is and this may help. So id actually like to see what this looks like.

[Licho]

You will likely breach 50 with energy pretty fast..

[Saktoth]

Either way, a good default, that doesnt keep scaling like the overdrive bar (It makes everything except the colours and the graph useless- the bar itself tells you nothing, its just a thing to drag).

[Licho]

Im implementing it yet another way..


(note: fake incorrect image)


I will show income and expenses on same line.

And below this i will show actual storage change - difference between expenses and income (in this case small red thing)

Now i need good colors and textures to represent various incomes/expenses.

[Licho]

These are the categories i want to display:

energy income:

• stable income (fusions, solars etc)
• variable income (wind)
• sharing income (including communism)

energy expenses:

• construction
• overdrive
• other (=shields, jammers, res, capture)
• sharing
• "pull" - missing energy that wasn available but was demanded

metal income:

• mexes
• overdrive
• other (reclaim)
• sharing

metal expenses:

• construction
  • high priority
  • low priority
  • normal priority
• sharing
• "pull" ("missing" metal)

These categories can be calculated without any expensive iterations through units - from already available data.

What I need now is colors for those categories and possibly icons that can be tiled over the bar.

If you want to help please post color set (r,g,b) or texture images here.

[Licho]

Its now more or less finished..
Still needs icons and colors from real artist.

[CarRepairer]

Really cool! I can almost guess what each one is. Let's see...

Gear is nanoing
The little 3D Connexion mouse is a mex
The man picking stuff up is reclaim
Fire is overdrive
Atom is stable E
Desk fan is a windmill

What's the dark red rooster (not the overdrive flames next to it)?

[Argh]

I like the basic idea of the double bar to show the relationship between pull and spending.

However, the color codes are pretty darn confusing, and while they're "complete", I think they give users too much information and would be fairly confusing to new end-users (imo).

Perhaps a better way would be a mouse-over event where the full breakdown is given, with a simpler base display?

For example, maybe like this:

[Licho]

I like that concept with numbers in middle and arrows on sides..

yes i agree that this must be confusing to the new player. At very minimimum, bars should use same (or nearly same) color for given "axis".. and use icons to provide information about sources/destinations.

And car - the red "rooster" is actually a jammer icon :) Its "other" energy use.

[JohannesH]

But how do you scale those slides for best effect? Since there is no such thing as max income or max spending...

[Licho]

Atm metal is to 50 by default and energy to 200 by default.

They are never smaller than that.

If you exceed those 50 or 200 its multiplied by 4.
If you drop below half of lower value (-> if scale is on 200 for metal and you are below 25) then it scales back to smaller size again.

[Beherith]

You could easily use the big E letter on this one to display overdrive:



The widget itself is available as resourse bar plus from springdler.

[Licho]

Well while this resource bar looks best, I wanted to use chili framework for new one.

Since we are changing all GUI elements in CA into chili for easier configuration, styling and uniform look/control elements.

(So that all gui elements use same method for moving and resizing for example).

And now its very different from standard resource bar in what it does.

[momfreeek]

I don't understand why you need more than 2 bars.. that does just seem confusing. I guess when they're moving it'd make more sense.

Anyway, here's my idea.. well a few ideas as they'd be applied to spring default resource bars

- just 2 bars. even if you don't understand the arrows and stuff at least any nub can see now much metal or energy they have.
- bars have arrow shaped ends to represent flow
- share bars as triangle markers (seems more intuitive to drag them)
- overdrive marker at top flows into the metal bar (double click to lock it then you can drag it to set manual overdrive?)

ca resbar.png (2.16 KiB) Viewed 2361 times

I'm not sure that even makes sense tho as flow and storage are all mixed in.. but maybe you can use something there.

[Licho]

New resource bar dont show current level .. its only displayed as vertical bar where "1000 E" is..
It flow diagram, it shows your income and your spending and it shows what kinds of income and spending you have.

[Pxtl]

I do agree that a income-based bar would be much more appropriate than the current amount-based bar. We need the income statement, not the balance sheet.

Hell, I want that for BA. At least CA has more predictable costs.