Ideas from Zero-K

cool stuff

This is how I imagined area commands:

First select the type of area command you want to do, build extractors, attack, patrole, repair, reclaim.
PicNr1 Press area command botton and left click.
PicNr2 Press area command botton, left click and scroll.
PicNr3 Press area command botton, left click and drag.
PicNr4 Press area command botton, left click, scroll and drag

(Behold my mighty paint skillz.)
Red dot = place where you left click
Red line = Where you clicked and draged.
Blue circle = Range
Blue striped circle = Range before scrolling.

The "Ctrl" key would be a good key to change the normal commands on the keyboard to Area commands. Close to Shift, WASD, A=Attack, S=Stop, R=Repair, E=Reclaim, F=Idle Fabber. Currently the "Ctrl" key displays weapon ranges add in area command to it should not hinder the current function.

Example to reclaim an area:
Hold Ctrl (Area command),Press E (Reclaim),(you can let go now), Left click (optional, scroll or drag)
Hold Ctrl, Press E, Left click
Or
Click Area Command button (in UI), Left click (optional, scroll or drag)

I know it isn't that diffrent but I just wanted to say it. I hope I explained it well enough.

ghost1107 I don't think that idea would work.

• People need to be able to zoom while giving an area command.
• Scrolling gives very poor control over the specification of radius. Dragging to a location is a very natural way to specify a radius.
  
• Both scrolling and dragging is too complicated to include in a single piece of the UI.
• Situations 3 and 4 are very rare. If you want to cover a non-circular area just shift queue a few commands. The simple click+drag area command can be given quite rapidly.

You don't need to use any key to change between an area or non-area command. If you want to give a point reclaim command simply click on the thing you want to reclaim. If you want to give an area command just click and drag. No scroll wheel of keyboard modifiers are required.

It is very easy to make a bad UI. All you have to do is make the function slightly too complicated to use and it becomes useless or frustrating. The minor details are important for this type of UI.

GoogleFrog is absolutely right. Even a minor additional unnecessary keypress can make a keypress-based UI vastly more complicated, to the point of being frustrating to use. Area commands are given for certain types of commands just by clicking and dragging, with the area increasing in size by the distance dragged.

A single keypress for a simple order, such as "e" for reclaim, and then use the mouse to specify a target point or region, is vastly better than using modifier keys like "ctrl" to specify the use of an area command.

I am also hoping that PA implements a detailed keypress-based build UI, similar to Zero-K's keyboard system for building structures. The Zero-K gesture build menu is a fantastic idea, but it works much better with mouse gestures turned off, and using a series of keys instead. Such as b-a-a for cloaky bot factory, or b-w-d for fusion plant.

I also very much appreciate that it is available by default, so I do not need to manually add a very exhaustive set of custom keys for every structure/unit, like I used to do, such as having repeated keypresses of "q" mapped to different economic structures.

This thread is now diamonds.. seriously, a lot of very good and useful suggestions here.

Sounds like Zero-K has a very advanced UI.
I wish I played it.

Do you guys used Zulan's Hotbuild for Forged Alliance?
I find the building cycle fairly useful.
A t3 engineer will build a t3 power with a single keypress of "F".
Press "F" twice, and you move down to T2 power.

I find it incredibly powerful, lots to learn, but it playing SupCom with it, I can never go back.

Granted!
(I'm not sure what to make of this sentence, you could do this at any time.)

I have used something similar. The hotkeys in this thread use the same idea: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14526&

One large difference is that I used them with increasing cost order instead of decreasing. One press would give the cheapest powerplant, two would give the second cheapest etc... This is because there was much less of an idea of tiers in energy generation and in general. So it makes sense to have the cheap things easier to select because you are likely to make more of them.

I have stopped using the cycle hotkeys. Cycling through many options was a bit of a pain and there is no tiers of constructors for which the cycle hotkeys would be useful. instead I the hotkeys which come with ZK. They are effectively Grid Hotkeys similar to SCII but with tabs 'Factories', 'Economy', 'Defense' and 'Special' instead of the 'Basic' and 'Advance' tabs from SCII.

Anyway I'd definitely want the UI to be able to do this. In Spring you can make these sorts of hotkeys simply by entering them in a txt file, it's very easy. But for PA it would be good enough to have UI mods able to implement this. From looking at the mods forum I think this sort of UI scripting is already possible.

Used them and loved them so much that I build it for PA: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-hotbuild-55493.50260/



I can see why a tabbed system like in SC2 or ZK might make sense as well. I guess it depends on how many units will be commonly used in PA in the future. Currently it's only land units + buildings, which is not much...

then don't :

don't forget to use with : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-preview-building-to-be-build-54357.50966/

I was about to post a new thread about this video but found it through searching. These line commands are amazing. You can perform complex micro like spreading all fighters out across the map in a patrol route very easily.

I consider them as important, if not more so, as area commands. The amount of control it gives you over your blobs of troops in combat replaces so much tedium. The easiest way to get troops to form a line at this point in the game is to form a patrol route that travels around your target, then when the line is sufficiently long, have them all charge inward. When assaulting artillery with swarms, being able to spread bots out thin quickly would be the difference between victory and defeat.

oh nice game never heard of it

gonna try it out downloading right now.