request&ideas: UI redesign and assigning AI logic.

[Cheery]

First I must say, GREAT JOB! With that lobby system, it improved more than I could've thought during the year I were away.

To aid you further, I could tell you my own experience (what I've collected during crawling through internet) about good graphical user interface and easy programming.

The issues in current UI design:
* Too much choices stuffed on the left bar, everything else is mildly ignored.
* Low amount of information on screen.
* Lack of advanced and intelligent control from units and groups. (hey! they are robots. c'mon they should contain very advanced logical unit.)
* Something unobvious in camera control.
* Forced icon -construction menu design.

I think the current UI design works anyway, but employing the following techniques could improve it.

Currently you confirm special action with left button and move with right. While you use middle button to change camera view. It works well, but I could think of one way more consistent and simpler for user.

- I propose employing left button completely for cancelling operations and selecting users, middle button for camera and right button for actions. With some notable exceptions.

For camera, It is rare you move camera and give instructions exactly same time. I propose that chordings could be done always including the middle mouse button.

I except user has at least three button mouse. when lacking middle button, one could have tab or other button from keyboard as alias for middle button in mouse.

Simply, pressing the middle button down, the mouse would lock to one point, still keeping it's place thought, and moving the mouse would result as screen moving to direction user pressed.

Pressing the middle button and right button down, would result as turning and zooming to the point mouse is pointing. Pressing middle button and left button down, would result as tilting and adjusting the viewing angle. For people having a wheel mouse, one could adjust the viewing angle with it. And again, pressing wheel down and rolling it, zooming the view.

Pressing the right button once, one could assign the unit do the default action it is assigned to trough roles or other unit type/group specific information, for example: turrets and launchers would attack by default, buldings would set up unit initial orders to do the default action there, aircrafts would fly there, ground units would move there, etc.

Pressing the right button down for while, then release, one could do the action which was last done (independently from unit type or group, the last action would be stored in UI information), pressing the right button and keep it there, one could choose from list a action to do, then release and employ the action.

By default, keeping the right button down and moving it, would result as creation of circular area. Keeping the right button down, then pushing middle mouse button down, would allow you to make a square area.

Pressing right button, then left button, would result as units in selection reset completely and halt everything they were doing.

Pressing the left button down, one could cancel actions requiring sequence of multiple mouse parameters or if no sequence selected, allow user make a selection from bots, again, by default it would make a circular selection in moving, by pressing middle button, it'd make square selection.

Yet, go and download plan9 image for qemu if you didn't catched what good is in this mouse chording scheme. You can trust me, it is brilliant! Especially the menu.


- One should remove the left bar with it's inferior icons completely. In correct mouse chording scheme, one wouldn't need it at all. Most actions could be found in straight under the right button! Filtered so that for example, production buildings wouldn't have attack menu choice (unless they are armed production buildings with 6 Megawatz plasma pulsers). That way you'd have only few choices under the action menu, so selecting one from there would be straightforfard and simple.

- I noticed that current icons tells much less than the descriptions in them, we should replace the building menu with those descriptions and forget icons. Player knows what which building looks like anyway. :) Given the good short description, like: "dreadnaught super battlecraft." gives more information than picture from some big ship. Possibly before name you could have small icons&symbols&numbers which tells what kind of weapons the machine has, how fast it is, etc. Final example: "(icon invade pods) (icon plasma weapon) 120Kmph 20t 5000x1000x300m dreadnaught battlecraft" Some information could be hidden if not fitting on the screen, but you get the idea.

- Giving enough information from world and system is important for user and efficient gameplay. Because there wouldn't be any stuff for giving orders embedded into screen, you could actually do this.

This includes stuff like providing enough space for many choices. For example, when you are building stuff, you can choose many kind of buildings. When building menu item is selected, one should get all data from buildable items on the screen, whole screen full, you don't have time to watch the screen anyway when you are choosing the building, and anyway, if you have all stuff visible at once, you find what you want easily with much hints UI can provide (see two sections up).

- The game world is crowded with robots which are size of office buildings, I wonder why such expensive and big units doesn't have any advanced logic system embedded into them.

We should have one screen for programming AI for machine groups while playing the game. For normal user, the programming could be done easy by employing scheme virtual machine and graphical box representation from program logic. Therefore users could assign groups/units do things and interact by many ways together. For example you could assign smaller units to retreat if the biggest unit is lost, or specific units retreat from group for support factory system for repairs when there's 30% energy left. Scheme reader could be assigned to gather information for action to see which kind of units can use the programming routine user made, etc.

Editor could be done completely from UI bits descbrided here. Writing notepad inside program would be tremendous fuckup of my proposal (which you'll end up doing if you employ some other language than scheme for writing AI logic).

The new AI actions would be appear in the mouse menu.

Also some default actions, which could be represented with this scheme, could be programmed into menu by using this very same system.


I wish you appreciate my efforts to dig these things up from my mind, it was time taking effort to write this everything and specially trying to write even bits from the idea, clearly.

[Aun]

Ah, long post. >_<

I'll try to respond...

Pressing the middle button and right button down, would result as turning and zooming to the point mouse is pointing. Pressing middle button and left button down, would result as tilting and adjusting the viewing angle. For people having a wheel mouse, one could adjust the viewing angle with it. And again, pressing wheel down and rolling it, zooming the view.

You can tilt the angle of the camera by holding down control and using the scrool wheel.
Backspace and J do the same thing as pressing the middle mouse button.
Pressing down the middle mouse button and scrolling is pretty annoying as you tend to have to hold the mittle of the scroll wheel down.

Ctrl + middle mouse button/J/backspace changes camera modes.

By default, keeping the right button down and moving it, would result as creation of circular area. Keeping the right button down, then pushing middle mouse button down, would allow you to make a square area.

You do create circles by clicking and dragging with some commands, such as reclaim. You can line up units by right clicking and dragging. Make a line/sqaure/outline of buildings by holding shift/shift+alt/shift+ctrl.

Pressing right button, then left button, would result as units in selection reset completely and halt everything they were doing.

Pressing S (stop) already does this.

Possibly before name you could have small icons&symbols&numbers which tells what kind of weapons the machine has, how fast it is, etc. Final example: "(icon invade pods) (icon plasma weapon) 120Kmph 20t 5000x1000x300m dreadnaught battlecraft" Some information could be hidden if not fitting on the screen, but you get the idea.

Some units have 16 weapons...


This is all GUI related stuff. Several attempts have been made to redesign the GUI, with many community members disapearing while working on it...

There are quite a few threads around the forums related to them. There's a thread in the Development section about a design for a new design that is active.