construction/order interface idea

I think that game interface of TA/Supcom was good somehow. But it was really annoying me that I could not use hotkeys to construct building and units like Starcraft.
It seems to be quite difficult to assign hotkeys in for each buildings and units due to massive type of units, so I suggest a different approach to user interface for unit construction.

My proposition is to assign a fixed key to a space for icon which connected to keyboard key. It is hard to explain because my English is not fluent enough, but I believe that you will understand when you see this picture.


Quality is not matter here, so do not bother me. :roll:

In this picture, each space (of nine or whatever) is for a unit and a order. Each key is assigned to a key has a similar location on keyboard.
Red arrow is a icon to move another cells for extra contruction and order choice (I think that it is much better to show new 9 cells than just moving up and down. Probably need two hotkey to move easily).

Blue circle is a toggle icon to change between construction and order menu, It will need a hotkey too (personally tab key sounds sweet to me).

The advantage of this interface are you can build order something with the left hand and you do not need to memorize more hotkeys once you get familiar (once you know which icon is certain function or building/unit, you can just use a key that connected to that cell based on the location. Probably we need to think about other than qerty too.).

I drew a vertical interface for convenience but it can be applied to horizontal interface too and personally I prefer vertical interface.

Any idea brothers?

I think this has been mentioned before, but it's still a good idea and I hope the devs will introduce the option.

I did not know that it has already mentioned... what discussions has been made? would you show me a link for me?

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42162&p=635448

This is the main one I think.

Yes, this interface is what I was thinking and I am glad to know that it have discussed already.
Thank you for letting me know about it.

I like this a lot, although I'm biased because this is how I play StarCraft II, i.e. in "grid" hotkey layout. Same principle basically.

I'd also really like to be able to drag-n-drop build queue items, e.g. if my queue contains:
* 2 x kbots
* 3 x tanks
* 5 x kbots
* 1 x minelayer

Then I can drag the tank order up above the kbot one without having to delete then re-queue an item or items. The order auto-merges items to:
* 3 x tanks
* 7 x kbots
* 1 x minelayer

Or whatever.

Do these game really play fast enough fo this to be a worry?

Even the faster SupCom2 doesn't really need this, not that it's a bad idea tho.

No, I just want this game be much easier than its predecessors.
Of course it needs to be much faster if they consider e-sports, I think...
(Lots of Korean gamer called SupCom as "실시간 점략 시뮬레이션" which means "Real Time Dotrategy Simulation" -because you just see dots in most of game play-, SupCom also considered as the RTS with an impregnable learning curve and the dramatically high system requirement. I have the Collector's Edition - I did beta too- and I could find one of them in store even few months after I got it. So the FA was not officially released in Korea, I had to get one from Amazon.)
But it helps even in slow game. In this interface,
you can simply build 100 units by just using crtl+shift+one of these keys (if the Uber use the mass construction system from TA).

I actually really like the original TA mapping system. qwerfv were used to select the items to build from the open page, and the number keys were used to open different build pages. Once you understood it, it was very fast, and accommodated a very large number of available units and buildings to choose from. (It also didn't steal the asd keys from their own assigned functions.) It's actually similar to the method suggested by the OP, but I feel it works better, since it requires no mouse interaction.

Zero K does something similar, though it uses letters instead of numbers to select different pages. I don't like this system as much, because I'm not used to it, but it still works out very well.

The Supcom system is to use the "build mode" method of hotkeys. It's an interesting attempt at eliminating the need for pages, and it works quite well, but I think the system can be improved. (I'm not sure I'm convinced that a modal system is best, but since I'm a Vim user, I would be eager to see a good solution. )

The Starcraft system works for Starcraft, I guess, but I feel there are better solutions to be had, especially for a game like PA.

The only downside about the Zero K system is that it doesn't have a "back" button. If you accidentally open the wrong page, you can't go back to another page, because now the page-selectors are all buildings as well. Beyond that, it works pretty well.

I also dig their radial control (and the concept of radial controls in general) although it seems to be fairly poorly worked out. And takes a lot of getting used to.

Supcom had a fairly nice radial control UI mod available, but after using it for a bit, I decided I preferred the old system.

Speaking of which, the fact that we'll be able to mod the UI means that if the available system isn't up to our expectations we can make our own. Even if it is an exact Starcraft 2 UI replica.