Community Requested UI Features 0.1

has the list been sent to the davs?

No, I have not sent this to the devs.

I was hoping for a bit of community unity here first.
Seems a bit pretentious if it's just coming from myself.

edit the op and add a binary response poll for if we should send the list in or not.

You're the boss. You have to lead your subordinates.

In other words: This list is too f****ing long. I think you have to break it up into tiles, if you would like responses to that.

I am really appreciating your work, keep it up!
But I have to agree with rorschachphoenix (phew... I made it). That list is waaay tooo long, you should take them one by one (well maybe three or four a time) and present them through a thread, only like this the community is going to read and comment them, keep up the good work


Edit: I just noticed I wrote two times to keep the work up, what an awful thing

didnt read the list, its way too long.
I'm no big friend of minimaps, but for this game it could make sense.
I'd find it cool if you wouldnt have a "generic" 2D minimap but instead would be able to "screencapture" a certain area which you want to have under secondary view (commander, you base, enemy base,...) and have THAT as minimap.
example: while rushing the enemy base you could still have an eye on yours, see if all build orders are going through, or if you are attacked instead.
you could also screenshot an area on another planet, to keep an eye on that...?
maybe link this "ability to minimap" with a building? i dunno. just thinking. nevermind if anything similar came up in the list...

Has anyone here played Plague Inc?

You start off as a disease infecting patient zero. You have to develop the disease so that infects and kills all 6 billion inhabitants of the planet, before the nations of the world develop a cure.

I bring it up because it has a 2d representation of a sphere. The dotted paths depicting ships and planes aren't confusing at all, even when they go off the map and reemerge somewhere else.

I strongly advocate for a 2d minimap using the standard 2d globe representation.


Has anyone played Earth 2150? While that has a minimap, it also gives the opportunity to split the main window into three windows on the same screen.

Each separate panel is a gameplay screen of itself. You can issue orders to the units in that panel. You can set it up so that the camera tracks a unit, or focuses on a unit. You can also quickly and easily swap two panels by clicking an "equilibrium symbol", which switches the positions of the two panels seemlessly.



I think that the game should make it really obvious where your units are being attacked, where you are losing units, etc.

Like so obvious that if you decide to travel abroad while playing, so you're in a completely different country on the other side of the world (like Spain), you were participating in the running of the bulls, the bulls gored you, you died, ended up in purgatory, it was decreed that for the rest of eternity you would be unable to notice the notification, you only missed the notification because you weren't paying enough attention

I like how you have the UI listed as a good table of contents but all I see when I look at the document is just bullet points with no material to convey why any of it should be in the game. (no offense)

do you want us the community to help you flesh out the individual bullet points you have listed? I could PM you some bullet points I would like emphasized.

yes any and all help is appreciated. I imagine it was alot of work to get done in the first place

I have skimmed the thread and list but can't see a feature that would be very handy in team games.

Markers: to be used for rally points, pointing out weak spots in enemy defences or particular buildings that need to be destroyed quickly. Just a simple hot key and click would do fine to drop a tall flag on the spot selected.

Now I think about it I would even use it in 1v1 so I could locate things I've scouted faster

I have them listed here:

4.7 Communication Panel - Visual

1. 1. Persistence: Permanent
      
   2. Map marker (temporary). Move, Guard, Attack (Similar to F5-57 keys in SupCom)
      
   3. Map marker ~ (Persistent with text message). (Similar to F8 key in SupCom)
      
   4. Drawing on the map.

I have not played either of those games.
Do you own them?
Any chance you can youtube a vid or take some screen shots?

hmmmm
Yeah, I agree with you guys, the list is way too long.
Give me 2 days, and I will try to tie it into a mock-up.
Hopefully, it will be easier to to take in all the info.

Yeas... I'm currently in full exam mode, so I shouldn't really install E2150.

Here is a video from Viddler. http://www.viddler.com/v/42b51a82

I have no idea how to do timestamped links. But if you watch it from 17 minutes to the end, it not only covers the separate cameras, but it also covers platoons, unit formations and a little about terrain.

He's right. It is cumbersome on a small monitor. I'm not sure what his monitor resolution is, but you basically need a widescreen monitor for it to be truly effective. (I believe Earth 2150 is one of the first 3d RTS games, along with Total Annihilation)

Platoons/formations are similar to my battlegroups and subgroups suggestion, which also takes inspiration from Rise of Nations and Sins of a Solar Empire - how would you like me to include that in this thread?

I was wrong about Plague Inc. There are no transport routes east of New Zealand to the USA. I was thinking of posters at travel centers which display the routes.

here'splague inc at least :

Awesome thank you. As you see, I was wrong in that there are no transport routes east of NZ. Not really an effective illustration.

Very good effort, especially for searching the forums for a topic as amorphous as UI.

However, how did you miss every thread about abstract orders, orders as first-class entities, force organization, low-level automation, abstract groups, smart groups, automatic formations, and so on? That is one of the topics that has been brought up the most frequently on this forum, after airplanes and the galactic war system. And the endless "space bears!" requests for gimmicks because 'awesome.'

Abstraction, automation, and high-level control instead of giving order primitives needs to be on this list in a huge way.

NO! No Spacebears! Not when people are already comparing this game to Stardrive.

"Space bears" threads is a pejorative I cooked up to describe the endless parade of threads asking for 'black hole destroys entire solar system' or 'gorilla robots with hammers' or other requests for silly gimmicks with no substance behind the request. Things like the Cybranosaurus Rex in SupCom 2- bald-faced gimmicks with no substance.

A term I coined in reference to Stardrive because the space bears in Stardrive are referenced like they are a feature. But it's a completely vacuous "feature" that is a pure and utter gimmick, as it only affects the image displayed on the diplomacy screen. At least actual space bears cost nothing to implement, and have no detrimental effect. Many requests for space bears on this forum would have disastrous effects, and possibly wildly exorbitant development costs.

I'm a little lost, can you elaborate?