Interface suggestion

[kelmvor]

I havn't been playing for very long, but I would like to suggest an improvement regarding the user interface.

Simplify the building selection screen. Currently the selection is rather large at some points (skirmish vs. AI I am currently playing has 7 pages worth of buildings), and combined with the rather small icons it makes it rather easy to select the wrong building.
Suggestiongs:
1) Run the building selection menu horizontally across the bottom of the screen and increase icon size (probably 2x the current size).
2) Have more buildings that remove older buildings from the menu, either by user selection or automatically. Given what I have read in the forums and the comments in the guide, I would imagine user selectable removal would be best.
3) Building groupings within the list. The current layout seems to do this already, but listing them under a specific category would go a long way to reducing clutter without having to resize icons or remove building options.

[lav_coyote25]

give us a visual... nothing fancy... just what you invision.

[Verin]

have it run along the power bar.

[Saberuneko]

I only like idea #3.

#1 would be weird, because there are trucks listed there already.
#2 isn't much good, because cheap buildings might be needed in some cases, if you remove them, you won't have the opportunity of using cheap stuff again. (happened something similar with weaponry, and now, NO weapons dissappear from list.)

[kelmvor]

give us a visual... nothing fancy... just what you invision.

Ok, the images suck and I can't be bothered to tweak them any further. I think you get the idea, though


Well, let me see what I can come up with.

NOTE: Not to scale (obviously)

Code: Select all

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                                                                         |
|                                    Building List                                            |
|                                            |                                                    |
|                                            \/                                                   |
|+-------+              +----------------------------+                    +------+  |
||         |               +----------------------------+                    |       |   |
|+-------+              =============                    +------+  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

That is idea #1. #2 doesn't really need visuals.

Number 3 (cut to the bottom left corner to save typing)

|\ == cursor

Code: Select all

|
|
|    +------------------------------------+
|    |                                      |
|    |       Artillery                   |
|    |       Hard Points            |
|    |       Bunkers                 |
|    |       Anti-Aircraft            |---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|    |       Towers                    | +-------+ +--------+ +---------+ +-------+                       |
|    |       Sensors             |\   | |    &   | |   &    | |   &      | |    &   |                         |
|    |       Fortress                  | +-------+ +--------+ +---------+ +-------+                       |
|    |       Factories                |----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|    |       Misc                        |
|     +-----------------------------------+
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     |                                     |
|     +-----------------------------------+
|
`---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mouse over the entry and the listing of buildings would appear next to it.

#1 would be weird, because there are trucks listed there already.

Where are the trucks listed? Are you refering to the Factory list centered over the energy bar? If so, I was talking about running it above that.

[Saberuneko]

There is a factory, research facility, and truck list depending of what menu you open.
Running another menu over those, would make it cover more space on small screens (I wouldn't have any problem, since I have a giant monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, but people with PC with 1024x768 or less would suffer... a lot.)

Really, I don't see it viable.

[kelmvor]

There is a factory, research facility, and truck list depending of what menu you open.
Running another menu over those, would make it cover more space on small screens (I wouldn't have any problem, since I have a giant monitor with 1920x1080 resolution, but people with PC with 1024x768 or less would suffer... a lot.)

Really, I don't see it viable.

Good point. The only way that could be doable would be with various icon/menu sizes geared towards smaller (or larger) resolutions. A simple resizing of the current icons would work, although it would look ugly if they were to be scaled up.

There is also the option of an overlay which would simply cover that portion of the screen, but that may get on some people's nerves.