Some suggestions on UI

[ikn0wFiRE]

So well been playing abit and i must say little bits about UI are making me frustrated

1. having units selected and then left clicking for standard move or attack orders, but accidentaly drag click and it deselects everything.

Highly annoying and feels like your not in control and happens when u spam click move orders. Other rts games have basicly that you can drag click anywhere anytime or spam mov eorders and it wont deselect selected units ever. In other games, you right click to deselect units, which ties into the second problem. So i propose for deselect to be right click, which it already is, but not dragging the mouse with left click or spamming move.

2. when deselecting units with right click, i almoast always change the camera angle.

it is similar problem to the first and it happens basicly when u spam right click and ofcurse you accidentaly move the mouse when u do that and bam, camera in the floor. I propose that camera rotate is only doable by holding a key on the keyboard and then rotating the mouse

3. Highly hard time building buildings, especialy defences.

Inclusion of build queue in patch 2.3.1 was really great and made things way easyer, but this annoyance is still there. you quickly want ot build a line of bunkers, but your other units comes driving by and it messes up everything. or trucks themselves do that. it pretty selfexplanatory why its annoying

4. lots of clicking when buiding, researching or manufacturing, which is slow and impractical

it would be great if there would be 10 keys for each box that pops up in the corner. how cna i explain this, for instance, clicking on research facility opens available researches. they are listed on the left, like the following: 10 of researches and then tabs above to open up more pages of available research. to make this easy, basicly just assign hotkeys to those coresponding boxes. there are 10 so 10 hotkeys would be needed. there are like 10 tabs also, so another 10 hotkeys. probably best o make it on a grid on something, say Q W E R T, A S D F G for boxes and Z X C V B for upper tabs. if needed, i can provide pictures to explain

alright here: (its doesnt necesary need to be the letters i used, i just wanned to show the boxes that should have been hotkeyable)
http://imagebin.org/101972

(and what is that UI and why we haz none!)

5. a hold ground for units.

ive had numerous times units going into range of defences, even if they were set to max range and die. this is ofcourse tied to pretty bad pathfinding in the game, but well, it coudl surely be significantly improved

6. chat in the multiplayer lobby

i see 2 ways to do this. one would be simply copying the chat from the game lobby to multiplayer lobby and making it joinable by everyone automaticaly when they join multiplyer lobby. or a possibly better solution but harder to implement, basicly integrating irc client into the multipalyer lobby. this would have the benefit of people in the game and out of the game being able to chat. in case you think im crazy ( ) this was done in unreal tournament 2004. yes it had a standard fps server game list, with irc client integrated for chat

7. could you please remove that typing minor annoyance, when in the game or in the game lobby, you type something and press enter, and then want to type more, you actualy have to press enter again. or somehting, im not really sure, all i know is that whenever i type its so cubersome to do and not fluid at all. not unlike any game or chat client, when u just type and press enter. hope u know what i mean

all for now, ill think more of them i can promise, but these are what id really like to see fixed or implemented, especialy the first 3 are annoying me to no end

[Zarel]

So well been playing abit and i must say little bits about UI are making me frustrated

1. having units selected and then left clicking for standard move or attack orders, but accidentaly drag click and it deselects everything.

Highly annoying and feels like your not in control and happens when u spam click move orders. Other rts games have basicly that you can drag click anywhere anytime or spam mov eorders and it wont deselect selected units ever. In other games, you right click to deselect units, which ties into the second problem. So i propose for deselect to be right click, which it already is, but not dragging the mouse with left click or spamming move.

Options -> Mouse Options -> Switch Mouse Buttons

2. when deselecting units with right click, i almoast always change the camera angle.

it is similar problem to the first and it happens basicly when u spam right click and ofcurse you accidentaly move the mouse when u do that and bam, camera in the floor. I propose that camera rotate is only doable by holding a key on the keyboard and then rotating the mouse

Options -> Mouse Options -> Switch Mouse Buttons

3. Highly hard time building buildings, especialy defences.

Inclusion of build queue in patch 2.3.1 was really great and made things way easyer, but this annoyance is still there. you quickly want ot build a line of bunkers, but your other units comes driving by and it messes up everything. or trucks themselves do that. it pretty selfexplanatory why its annoying

We're working on fixing that.

4. lots of clicking when buiding, researching or manufacturing, which is slow and impractical

it would be great if there would be 10 keys for each box that pops up in the corner. how cna i explain this, for instance, clicking on research facility opens available researches. they are listed on the left, like the following: 10 of researches and then tabs above to open up more pages of available research. to make this easy, basicly just assign hotkeys to those coresponding boxes. there are 10 so 10 hotkeys would be needed. there are like 10 tabs also, so another 10 hotkeys. probably best o make it on a grid on something, say Q W E R T, A S D F G for boxes and Z X C V B for upper tabs. if needed, i can provide pictures to explain

Those buttons already do something. We don't have very much keyboard room for stuff like that, but we are looking to overhaul this area of the interface.

5. a hold ground for units.

ive had numerous times units going into range of defences, even if they were set to max range and die. this is ofcourse tied to pretty bad pathfinding in the game, but well, it coudl surely be significantly improved

Right-click on unit -> Hold Position.

Or just press S for a temporary hold.

6. chat in the multiplayer lobby

i see 2 ways to do this. one would be simply copying the chat from the game lobby to multiplayer lobby and making it joinable by everyone automaticaly when they join multiplyer lobby. or a possibly better solution but harder to implement, basicly integrating irc client into the multipalyer lobby. this would have the benefit of people in the game and out of the game being able to chat. in case you think im crazy ( ) this was done in unreal tournament 2004. yes it had a standard fps server game list, with irc client integrated for chat

We're looking into it for the long-term, but for the short term the multiplayer lobby is difficult to maintain and fix.

We recommend simply using #warzone2100-games (linked to from the home page of wz2100.net).

7. could you please remove that typing minor annoyance, when in the game or in the game lobby, you type something and press enter, and then want to type more, you actualy have to press enter again. or somehting, im not really sure, all i know is that whenever i type its so cubersome to do and not fluid at all. not unlike any game or chat client, when u just type and press enter. hope u know what i mean

No, because we have keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Enter switches between keyboard shortcuts and actually typing messages.

[ikn0wFiRE]

Alright tnx for reply, but think you didnt understand exactly what i meant, or i didnt explain good enough.

what i mean under point 1 and 2 isnt fixed by switching mouse buttons. how can i explain, have you never had this? switching mouse buttons only switches mouse buttons, while problems stay the same, except reverted.

problem is basicly with dragging and inevitable drag that you will make, when u click fast. assuming on normal mouse buttons (not switched) you give order with left mouse. now if u have units selected, and then left mous eclick somewhere, but do it fast say 10 times, which is common to do, i bet everyone does that, chances are high that you will deselect your units because u will drag the mouse abit, making a drag box and that deselect everything. only right click should deselect

at the same time, theres right click. i use it to deselect units. but same here, if you happen to drag when you in the middle on right clicking, you will rotate camera.

now switch buttons does solve half of the problem. because deselect is now on left and drag select is still on left mouse, this removes the problem of dragging and deselecting. so left mouse if fine, as long as you can actualy like the fact that left mouse deselect and not the right, well i dont but coudl get used to that

but then you have right click to issue move orders. which is fine, but again fast clicking right click will then inevitably still make you rotate camera. and since move orders are more prevalent then deselect orders, we are back to the same rate of annoyance

if u have normal mouse buttons, when left clicking, you deselect units with drag box half the time (me) and when using right click to deselect, you rotate camera half the time (at least me), or using switch mouse buttons, left clicking is always fine, but right clicking rotates camera 3/4 of the time. so honestly both setups suck

i mean i hope you can see what im trying to say here. otherwise i guess ill make a video about it, i think its highly important, when you lose control over units like that or rotate camera unwillingly, its like not wearing a belt when walking down the street, your pants will fall down, no matter what, but not the first couple steps.

i gues i am making big deal of deal, but i dont know how to explain. i may make a video of various rts games doing this and how it actualy doesnt deselect or rotate camera, because mouse buttons dont have multiple functions, not unless you press additional buttons on keyboard

as for #4, i was merely thinking of those boxes to have assigned keys to them, because it basicly creates a shortcut system, again present in other rts games. for instance, now you have build hotkey default F3, you can press that, then you have to mouse click factory and place it down. with boxes having hotkeys, you could F3 and say press E and mouse click to place. result is not having to move mouse at all, which speeds up everything. i know argument may be its not really needed, but honestly the idea of mouse is more or less to make as little as movement as possible. you use mouse with right hand and keyboard with left. ideally, for perfect speed, when you point a mouse at soemthing, you already have a button with left hand ready, so you just issue an order. so if you have to always go to left sides and shuffle through tabs to actualy research or construct something, takes away time from what you could do with a mouse, that is selecting units in battle and microing them.....

for the hold ground, i probably didnt explain good, i know theres button. i more meant something like say u have a weapon against structures and you can outrange a defence, but only on max range and even that barely. what happens is you set units on max range and click a defence and units start to clump up and drivign around resulting in half of them being hit. then u press hold gorund and they do. and then you move those units who got in range of defences (half of them) and move them behind and as they move through they mess up those holding and you basicly have done nothing. additionally, when you press hold ground, some units wont immediatly do so, they will space out first. so i was more thinking of a true hold ground, as in dont move no matter what, even if that means not letting other units pass through. but ah see ive writed so much, while its basicly just pathfinding thats the root of the problem.....

for the enter thing, i cant explain, its just so weird. in game lobby, you type something and then you have to click with mouse so you can type again, which is so slow and ingame, while it is standard, press enter, type, press enter again, it somehow messes up, i know i always do soemthing so half of words aint typed. i dont knwo how to explain, again its unlike any other game multipalyer chat, confusing really

just to say, i am writing all this because its kinda standard in other rts games, especialy those mouse things and while i realise warzone is not other games and has always been this way, its just highly annoying. perhaps players here are so used to it, they dont even feel the need for change. but in the light of changes, such as building queues, adding alt key shortcuts to units and so on, i find mouse buttons most important to anything else, and would be really nice to fix them or at least add a option to customise it. ah ill really do a vid of it, because its more easy to explain. also i am merely suggesting it anyways, but for sure, the mouse buttons is the first thing id ever fix in warzone before anyhtign else. if you cant even play comfortably, its pretty useless. maybe ill try to present fix myself, but i really know nothing about how to code, so might take years

[Dylan Hsu]

Alright tnx for reply, but think you didnt understand exactly what i meant, or i didnt explain good enough.

what i mean under point 1 and 2 isnt fixed by switching mouse buttons. how can i explain, have you never had this? switching mouse buttons only switches mouse buttons, while problems stay the same, except reverted.

problem is basicly with dragging and inevitable drag that you will make, when u click fast. assuming on normal mouse buttons (not switched) you give order with left mouse. now if u have units selected, and then left mous eclick somewhere, but do it fast say 10 times, which is common to do, i bet everyone does that, chances are high that you will deselect your units because u will drag the mouse abit, making a drag box and that deselect everything. only right click should deselect

at the same time, theres right click. i use it to deselect units. but same here, if you happen to drag when you in the middle on right clicking, you will rotate camera.

now switch buttons does solve half of the problem. because deselect is now on left and drag select is still on left mouse, this removes the problem of dragging and deselecting. so left mouse if fine, as long as you can actualy like the fact that left mouse deselect and not the right, well i dont but coudl get used to that

but then you have right click to issue move orders. which is fine, but again fast clicking right click will then inevitably still make you rotate camera. and since move orders are more prevalent then deselect orders, we are back to the same rate of annoyance

if u have normal mouse buttons, when left clicking, you deselect units with drag box half the time (me) and when using right click to deselect, you rotate camera half the time (at least me), or using switch mouse buttons, left clicking is always fine, but right clicking rotates camera 3/4 of the time. so honestly both setups suck

i mean i hope you can see what im trying to say here. otherwise i guess ill make a video about it, i think its highly important, when you lose control over units like that or rotate camera unwillingly, its like not wearing a belt when walking down the street, your pants will fall down, no matter what, but not the first couple steps.

i gues i am making big deal of deal, but i dont know how to explain. i may make a video of various rts games doing this and how it actualy doesnt deselect or rotate camera, because mouse buttons dont have multiple functions, not unless you press additional buttons on keyboard

as for #4, i was merely thinking of those boxes to have assigned keys to them, because it basicly creates a shortcut system, again present in other rts games. for instance, now you have build hotkey default F3, you can press that, then you have to mouse click factory and place it down. with boxes having hotkeys, you could F3 and say press E and mouse click to place. result is not having to move mouse at all, which speeds up everything. i know argument may be its not really needed, but honestly the idea of mouse is more or less to make as little as movement as possible. you use mouse with right hand and keyboard with left. ideally, for perfect speed, when you point a mouse at soemthing, you already have a button with left hand ready, so you just issue an order. so if you have to always go to left sides and shuffle through tabs to actualy research or construct something, takes away time from what you could do with a mouse, that is selecting units in battle and microing them.....

for the hold ground, i probably didnt explain good, i know theres button. i more meant something like say u have a weapon against structures and you can outrange a defence, but only on max range and even that barely. what happens is you set units on max range and click a defence and units start to clump up and drivign around resulting in half of them being hit. then u press hold gorund and they do. and then you move those units who got in range of defences (half of them) and move them behind and as they move through they mess up those holding and you basicly have done nothing. additionally, when you press hold ground, some units wont immediatly do so, they will space out first. so i was more thinking of a true hold ground, as in dont move no matter what, even if that means not letting other units pass through. but ah see ive writed so much, while its basicly just pathfinding thats the root of the problem.....

for the enter thing, i cant explain, its just so weird. in game lobby, you type something and then you have to click with mouse so you can type again, which is so slow and ingame, while it is standard, press enter, type, press enter again, it somehow messes up, i know i always do soemthing so half of words aint typed. i dont knwo how to explain, again its unlike any other game multipalyer chat, confusing really

just to say, i am writing all this because its kinda standard in other rts games, especialy those mouse things and while i realise warzone is not other games and has always been this way, its just highly annoying. perhaps players here are so used to it, they dont even feel the need for change. but in the light of changes, such as building queues, adding alt key shortcuts to units and so on, i find mouse buttons most important to anything else, and would be really nice to fix them or at least add a option to customise it. ah ill really do a vid of it, because its more easy to explain. also i am merely suggesting it anyways, but for sure, the mouse buttons is the first thing id ever fix in warzone before anyhtign else. if you cant even play comfortably, its pretty useless. maybe ill try to present fix myself, but i really know nothing about how to code, so might take years

agreed on all points

[milo christiansen]

This is standard behavior for an RTS, although the sensitivity is a little high for drag select and both mouse buttons would be a little better for camera rotate.

[iwz]

(Edit 2010-07-06: The option in Options -> Mouse Options -> Switch Mouse Buttons enables most of the behavior I describe below; it does not simply swap all of the functions of the left mouse button for the right mouse button and vice-versa.)

I think that StarCraft (or whichever implemented it first) overcomes the finickiness of assigning the same button to both selecting units and giving them orders by splitting them up.

Notwithstanding coding difficulties, what would be the effect of changing what the mouse buttons do? Consider the following:

Key:

• Lmb: left mouse button (i.e., left-click)
• Rmb: right mouse button (i.e., right-click)
• Mod: modifier key (i.e., "ctrl" or "shift")
• Dragbox: drag a selection box

Selecting Units

Select unit(s): Lmb on unit; Lmb Dragbox around units.

Add to selection: Mod+Lmb on additional units; Mod+Lmb Dragbox around additional units, will not affect already selected units. Either of these on empty space will have no effect on selection! (Edit 2010-07-06: The Switch Mouse Buttons option still allows the selection to be cleared when Mod+Lmb is used on an empty space, although Mod+Lmb Dragbox around an empty space correctly has no effect.)

Remove from selection: Mod+Lmb on selected unit. (It pains me to suggest that Mod+Lmb Dragbox on selected units should have no effect, but it would interfere with adding to selection per above.)

Clear selection: Lmb on empty space.

Ordering Units

Attack, move here: Rmb on enemy or location.

Queue attack or move: Mod+Rmb on successive enemy or location.

Building: because building shows a preview of where the structure is to be placed, use the Lmb for interaction.

Build: with build preview visible, Lmb on build location.

Queue build: with build preview visible, Mod+Lmb on successive build locations.

Miscellaneous

(I am not so familiar with the intricacies of the Unit Orders Menu for groups, but propose the following.)

Unit Orders Menu: Rmb on a unit or factory, whether selected or not; this will bring up the Unit Orders Menu for the unit you clicked on without affecting your selection, or to the entire group if you clicked on a selected unit.

This leaves us with camera rotation, which bothered ikn0wFiRE. It bothers me, too, because currently it's quite easy to do accidentally when one forgets to stop moving the mouse while deselecting. But in the case of these suggestions, it becomes easy to do when giving orders! The only solution I can come up with is to use a modifier key that hasn't been used yet: Alt. Unfortunately, this interferes with many Linux windows managers that have assign Alt to moving the window. I have mine set to use the Windows (Meta) key, but we obviously can't rely on everyone doing that.

Rotate camera: Alt+Rmb drag to rotate. (Edit 2010-07-06: The Switch Mouse Buttons option has no effect on the camera rotation function, so one still rotates the camera simply with Rmb+dragging as before. I can find no way to disable camera rotation via the mouse.)

Old Habits

Furthermore, changing the behavior of these buttons will require experienced players to relearn this part of the interface. Some might welcome the change, but I realize that there might be those who would protest.

[Zarel]

I think that StarCraft (or whichever implemented it first) overcomes the finickiness of assigning the same button to both selecting units and giving them orders by splitting them up.

Options -> Mouse Options -> Switch Mouse Buttons

does exactly what you describe (aside from rotation, which still needs work).

Really, wtf should I call that option? I'm considering calling it "StarCraft-style mouse buttons" to make it clearer, but that's not going to fit, and not everyone has played StarCraft, and it has a trademark in it, which is bad form.

[iwz]

I can empathize with the frustration of not having your point taken. Setting aside my prejudices, I went and actually toggled the setting on to try it out. It does mostly do what I outlined.

A simple description, however, gives a simple impression. When I first read "Switch Mouse Buttons", I understood it to mean pretty much the same as "Reverse Joystick Axis": i.e., simply swapping all the functions of the left button to the right one and vice-versa. At the time, I wondered why anyone would need that when the OS could do it, and there was no tooltip nor other reference that I could find to further explain the option.

Since I was discussing separating the Order Giving functions from the Selection functions, what if the option were called something along the lines of Give Orders With Right (or Secondary) Mouse Button? If nothing else, something that does not imply wholesale swapping of the left and right buttons with each other.

By the way: besides being unable to disable the Rmb from rotating the camera, as you mentioned, Mod+Lmb on an empty space also removes the entire selection. This is troublesome because missing when trying to add a fast-moving unit to the selection will accidentally clear the entire selection, forcing the user to either start over or take more time in his selection. As I have read WZ2100 being described as "fast paced", both of these seem potentially dangerous. I propose that Mod+Lmb on an empty space (while the game is set to give orders with the Rmb) should have no effect whatsoever.

[Powzone]

Really, wtf should I call that option?

"Alternative mouse buttons" or "Alternative mouse control" or "Modern RTS Mouse"!?
Well, it gets more and more abstract reading from left to right...

[Verin]

The first one, and the one regarding trucks getting tangled in themselves and their creations, are the most annoying to me.

[Zarel]

Since I was discussing separating the Order Giving functions from the Selection functions, what if the option were called something along the lines of Give Orders With Right (or Secondary) Mouse Button? If nothing else, something that does not imply wholesale swapping of the left and right buttons with each other.

Actually, that's similar to what it was originally called: "Right-Click Orders".

Of course, people were still like "I want StarCraft-style mouse buttons" and when I told them to use "Right-Click Orders", they were all like "How was I supposed to know what that means?"

I think I'll just change it to "Optimize for:" "One Mouse Button" "Two Mouse Buttons".

By the way: besides being unable to disable the Rmb from rotating the camera, as you mentioned, Mod+Lmb on an empty space also removes the entire selection.

Oh, that's easy to fix.