Status Bar improved GUI

[Darth Fool]

It certainly can be done. The fact that it shows up so many places is screaming to have things changed to use only one function where obviously now there are several. If some other coder wants to do this, great! Otherwise, I will get to it, maybe next week, or at least before the new year.

[Darth Fool]

Ok, I have made some changes to the hp/xp bar.

1) the movement ball is now no longer connected to the energy bar. It probably should be done using recoloring, but for now I have left it as several image files.
2) the bars have been moved 5 pixels to the left.
3) the bars have been given colors closely matching (but not quite) Eleazer's suggestions.
4) the bar color and the text color in the unit display now match explicitly. The hp_color and xp_color is a function of the unit.
5) the color for advancing towards a new unit level is different for advancing towards an AMLA effect.

enjoy.

[JW]

Ok, I have made some changes to the hp/xp bar.

1) the movement ball is now no longer connected to the energy bar. It probably should be done using recoloring, but for now I have left it as several image files.
2) the bars have been moved 5 pixels to the left.
3) the bars have been given colors closely matching (but not quite) Eleazer's suggestions.
4) the bar color and the text color in the unit display now match explicitly. The hp_color and xp_color is a function of the unit.
5) the color for advancing towards a new unit level is different for advancing towards an AMLA effect.

enjoy.

<3

[Jetrel]

Ok, I have made some changes to the hp/xp bar.

1) the movement ball is now no longer connected to the energy bar. It probably should be done using recoloring, but for now I have left it as several image files.
2) the bars have been moved 5 pixels to the left.
3) the bars have been given colors closely matching (but not quite) Eleazer's suggestions.
4) the bar color and the text color in the unit display now match explicitly. The hp_color and xp_color is a function of the unit.
5) the color for advancing towards a new unit level is different for advancing towards an AMLA effect.

enjoy.

Nice. Very, very nice.



I really would like to try having the status bars without outlines, as they were in this picture:


I think it is a lot more visible than having the outlines there, and looks better as well. On top of this, no one in this thread really complained about them. The most that was said was:

The outlines may have helped users see the color of the status bar over many different types of backgrounds.

Which is rather dubious, in my educated opinion, given the bright, neon, and _solid_ coloration that the status bars would have when compared to anything around them.

Keep in mind that if it becomes somewhat hard to see at the 60% transparency, we could always change that to 70%.


I propose that we make this change to remove the outlines, and try it out for a while, because I think it could be a major improvement.

[Darth Fool]

I agree and will probably give it a go sometime in the next month. It just didn't make it into the pre1.1 rush. It will probably be done the same time as I convert the movement ball to use recoloring.

[Jetrel]

I agree and will probably give it a go sometime in the next month. It just didn't make it into the pre1.1 rush. It will probably be done the same time as I convert the movement ball to use recoloring.

yay!

/me hugs dFool.

[JW]

I really would like to try having the status bars without outlines, as they were in this picture:


I think it is a lot more visible than having the outlines there, and looks better as well. On top of this, no one in this thread really complained about them. The most that was said was:

The outlines may have helped users see the color of the status bar over many different types of backgrounds.

Which is rather dubious, in my educated opinion, given the bright, neon, and _solid_ coloration that the status bars would have when compared to anything around them.

Keep in mind that if it becomes somewhat hard to see at the 60% transparency, we could always change that to 70%.


I propose that we make this change to remove the outlines, and try it out for a while, because I think it could be a major improvement.

Try the light green hps against grassland and the white xp bar against snow. If they look fine then no outlines would probably be better. Those are the combinations I'm concerned about not being visible.

[Jetrel]

Some quick investigation reveals:

The green is never gonna be a problem.

The white, however, will be. Fortunately this is the only color in our entire set here that will, which means that the basic process and change is good.

The possible solutions:
• Change that white color, perhaps changing that entire color sequence at the same time. After all, with white borders, it's still a problem in our current setup.

• Add some dinky drop shadow, like in the upper corner of this example.


I vote for the first option, though I'd toss it back to eleazar about precisely what color we should use.

[Eleazar]

Over Christmas break (while i was mostly without the net) i worked on some ideas.

On more consideration, and experimentation, i think the best thing is to add a 50% trans black line around the bars. Also notice that the "empty" part of the bar is black. (maybe change to dark grey). These bars should be visible against all possible backgrounds.
Also they are 4 px to the left of the bars in the trunk, or 9 px left of BfW 1.1

The bulb/orb and crown icons have been changed to fix against the hex boundry and hopefully to communicate more clearly. The stars are replacements for the crown and "hero" icon (used in some campaigns by Turin and Scott).
The yellow star means, "Can recruit"
The smaller blue star means "major character: if he dies you loose" This should be applied automatically

A unit neither ally nor eney wouldn't have an icon on top of the bar. If there are no "neutral" units, then drop the "enemy" icon. I don't like it anyway.

If possible i'd like the bars to go partially transparent (as in trunk) when the mouse isn't over them, but the "move" icon to always stay fully opaque.

Also i've played with the new HP colors in the trunk. I like the use of the yellowish-green for not-quite-full health, but i'm not sure adding the orange was a good idea. comments?

[JW]

Thanks Jetryl for checking that out.

To Eleazar: the placement of those stars is rather odd....to the left and in the center of the hp/xp bar? Doesn't make much sense to me - although I guess they'd only be used in campaigns, right? It's probably not a big deal. I don't really like the "X" to represent enemy units, but if it needs to exist to seperate neutral from enemy units....

(When are there neutral units?)

The bulb/orb and crown icons have been changed to fix against the hex boundry and hopefully to communicate more clearly. The stars are replacements for the crown and "hero" icon (used in some campaigns by Turin and Scott).
The yellow star means, "Can recruit"
The smaller blue star means "major character: if he dies you loose" This should be applied automatically

A unit neither ally nor eney wouldn't have an icon on top of the bar. If there are no "neutral" units, then drop the "enemy" icon. I don't like it anyway.

[Eleazar]

To Eleazar: the placement of those stars is rather odd....to the left and in the center of the hp/xp bar? Doesn't make much sense to me - although I guess they'd only be used in campaigns, right? It's probably not a big deal.

The blue star is a campaign only thing.
The big yellow star is intended as a replacement for the crown. It is not an ideal placement, but it's currenlty the best compromise between legibility and getting bars off of the unit. (remember all this stuff has to stay within the hex)

I don't really like the "X" to represent enemy units, but if it needs to exist to seperate neutral from enemy units....

(When are there neutral units?)

I don't especially like the "X" either. I'm open to suggestions for either an enemy or neutral icon. (both aren't needed)
My main point there is that there should be a difference between enemy and neutral units. Neutrals are rare (at least they are hard to observe since they look just like enemys )
I think the Trolls and Dwarves in UtBS were neutral until you joined one side.

[JW]

I don't especially like the "X" either. I'm open to suggestions for either an enemy or neutral icon. (both aren't needed)
My main point there is that there should be a difference between enemy and neutral units.

Maybe since neutral units are rare you could make an image to show that instead. Maybe a simple "N" (instead of "X") or maybe an "O" (a bulb with a hole in the middle is what I thought of first to show that they are similar to your units in that they won't attack you but different enough to tell the difference).

Maybe you could even have the word "neutral" in capital letters going down the right side of the unit. This would be pretty blatant, but it would definitely make it's point. I think that you could probably make it look nice too.

Let me know what you think.

[Artis]

On more consideration, and experimentation, i think the best thing is to add a 50% trans black line around the bars. Also notice that the "empty" part of the bar is black. (maybe change to dark grey). These bars should be visible against all possible backgrounds.
Also they are 4 px to the left of the bars in the trunk, or 9 px left of BfW 1.1

Except for dark backgrounds... What about having the ouline in the same color as the bar, but darkened and the unfilled part black with 30% or 40% trans?

[scott]

There's no such thing as a neutral unit. Either you can attack it or you can't.

Creating the illusion of neutrality is a clever campaign writer trick. Even if the unit won't attack you, if you can attack it, it's an enemy. Else it's just a prop.

That is, unless something is changing that I'm not aware of.

I'm not sure what to suggest here, so I'll just let you guys handle it.

[Eleazar]

Except for dark backgrounds... What about having the ouline in the same color as the bar, but darkened and the unfilled part black with 30% or 40% trans?

I don't see how making the inside semi-transparent would help against dark backgrounds. Besides, 30% black over random background could be hard to distinguish from the bars color.
Rather, the unfilled part should be a dark grey, instead of black.

Scott,
i don't think the player cares if neutrality takes clever coding or not. He just needs to know if that unit is going to try to kill him or not.

JW,
lets not forget Wesnoth is multi-lingual. "N" wouldn't connect to neutral in most languages, and i don't doubt it would be too long a word in others. Suggestions made of pixels probably work best here.