User Interface

Discussion among members of the development team.

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freim
Retired Terrain Art Director
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Post by freim »

It would be nice if the story was unfolded in the "Wesnothpedia" also. If nothing more than the intro text and the scenario's intro text. With for example links to places and historical events and the like which yawningdog suggested.

Edit: This might be one thing that would reset for each time you play the campaign, because user choice would affect how the story develop.
miyo
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Post by miyo »

I like the GIMP style UI... right click gives you menus. No mouse traveling across the screen needed to reach the menus. Everything should be available from right-click menu.

I think that for new players icons with tooltips (on bottom of screen?) could be helpful.

So let's have them both?

- Miyo
freim
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Post by freim »

miyo wrote:I like the GIMP style UI... right click gives you menus. No mouse traveling across the screen needed to reach the menus. Everything should be available from right-click menu.
- Miyo
Right click menu should be context sensitive IMO, and GIMP is not a very good example of an good UI (although it's getting better) :)
Woodwizzle
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Post by Woodwizzle »

So far I love all the Wesnothpedia ideas. I'm willing to help contribute to writing up some of the necesary files for this.

I like the idea of tootipped icons on the bottom of the screen too. (maybe with the option to autohide them). One way they could be layed out would be like a mac OsX docker. Another possible layout would be something similar to Warcraft's Icons in the bottom right of this pic Or what about a combination, like a little 3x3 square of icons that pops up on the bottom left when you need them?
zwol

Post by zwol »

In 0.5, the "do you want to save a replay?" and "do you want to save your game?" boxes had "Yes" and "No" as the choices. In 0.6 it's "OK" and "Cancel". I think this is a regression. The questions are clearly yes/no questions. Seeing "Cancel" made me wonder whether it would cancel everything - whatever that meant.
Dave
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Post by Dave »

zwol wrote:In 0.5, the "do you want to save a replay?" and "do you want to save your game?" boxes had "Yes" and "No" as the choices. In 0.6 it's "OK" and "Cancel". I think this is a regression. The questions are clearly yes/no questions. Seeing "Cancel" made me wonder whether it would cancel everything - whatever that meant.
This is because somewhere along the way, a unified function was created for save replay/game after a scenario, and saving the game through the right-click menu during a scenario. Since the dialog mid-scenario clearly should be ok-cancel, that's what the function uses.

However I have fixed this by making the function take the ok-cancel vs yes-no as a parameter. Thanks for the report! I also get irritated when applications have unclear ok-cancel vs yes-no wording.

David
freim
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Post by freim »

I made a quick concept GUI to show some ideas:

Image

(it's quite big, around 480Kb)

It's not very consistent since I tried to show some different things in the same picture.What do you think?

frame
Dave
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Post by Dave »

frame wrote:I made a quick concept GUI to show some ideas:

Image

(it's quite big, around 480Kb)

It's not very consistent since I tried to show some different things in the same picture.What do you think?
Interesting ideas! :)

I like some of the concepts alot. A bar across the top could be a good way to show more information, and get more room for unit status on the right.

The menu re-organization is also nice.

What do others think?

David
fmunoz
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Post by fmunoz »

I like it :-)
methinks
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Post by methinks »

Actually I was thinking about horizontal mini bar showing such thingies as gold. Congrats you have organised it smartly. I think all this hsould be treated morelike like a sketch it needs some work and playtesting but main idea and concept is great. Wow would make gameplay easier. I wouldl add some colors to text as ettin proposed. And someone else too :)
Woodwizzle
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Post by Woodwizzle »

Oooh, I like it too! I think some icons instead of words for Gold, Villages, Units, Upkkep, Income and Castle in the top bar would look pretty slick too.
Dave
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Post by Dave »

methinks wrote:Actually I was thinking about horizontal mini bar showing such thingies as gold. Congrats you have organised it smartly. I think all this hsould be treated morelike like a sketch it needs some work and playtesting but main idea and concept is great. Wow would make gameplay easier. I wouldl add some colors to text as ettin proposed. And someone else too :)
Okay so it needs some re-organization...so could we work out the re-organization, and then I'll code it? It's going to be substantial effort to code it, so I don't want to code it and then re-organize...

David
ettin
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Post by ettin »

I made a quick concept GUI to show some ideas
In the rightside menu, the unit name should be larger.
And, if we have Gold, Villages... at the top, I prefer Turn at the top too, or near the "End Turn" button.

Good job ;)
yawningdog
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Post by yawningdog »

Looks nice.

I agree, some small icons next to the text for gold, villages, income... would be the icing on the cake. :)

The unit stats are much clearer now. Perhaps you could add "None" or a '-' character to the Traits section. Also, the Skills section is missing.

What I'm not that happy with is the split between the Options menu and the context menu. Some entries (describe unit, recall...) are clearly contextual; others (unit list, end turn...) don't belong so evidently to the context menu.

But anyway, great work!
freim
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Post by freim »

yawningdog wrote:Looks nice.

I agree, some small icons next to the text for gold, villages, income... would be the icing on the cake. :)

The unit stats are much clearer now. Perhaps you could add "None" or a '-' character to the Traits section. Also, the Skills section is missing.

What I'm not that happy with is the split between the Options menu and the context menu. Some entries (describe unit, recall...) are clearly contextual; others (unit list, end turn...) don't belong so evidently to the context menu.

But anyway, great work!
Yeah, some icons here and there would be good. It was getting late, and I was getting tired :)

I agree about the context menu, but I didn't want to change it to much. Just enough so you all get the idea. From a strict UI point of view some of the items there don't belong.
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