Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in PA

I am really passionate about UI/UX, and thats precisely what I work with everyday. I wanted to provide some feedback on how I would suggest managing the navigation of planets, and jumping around to other battlefields easily.

I've started a thread because I am unfamiliar with the usual discussions that go on here, and moreso because I was hoping to get more attention by sticking only to the subject of approaching the UX from a different (but familiar) way.

So it's been suggested that navigating around the planet will be a lot like google earth with a more restricted axis. The way you would "grab" and push the planet around instead would be the middle mouse button. There are several reasons why I believe that this wouldn't minify effort and maximize results: All of the navigation is pushed to the already-heavily tasked mouse hand. You have to hold a button down, in addition to actually moving the mouse in the appropriate direction JUST to see around the planet. Then you will have your actual unit selecting/giving orders (which should be the main function of the mouse, seeing how it is the most precise tool you have). I think that this would force your users to relearn how they've learned to use the mouse for years.

I am going to provide you with the practical use case of how tasking this could get:
1. I want to task units on the other side of my planet. I hold middle mouse button down with my index finger, then i push my hand around until i get to the other side.
2. Now I want to drag a box around my units to select multiples: I move my index finger back to left click on mouse, hold it down, then push my hand around again to select the group (and release when done.)
3. I want to task them to move to the other side of the planet. So as I have them selected, I move my finger back to click and hold the middle mouse button. Then I wave my hand around for a third time to to go the other side of the planet. I can then, finally accomplish my task.

Now that was just one in-game action. How many actions do your typical RTS players accomplish per minute? A lot.

I've mentioned how I would prefer to navigate around planets on these forums before. But I want to give you a practical example. First off: how are your hands positioned naturally when you use a computer (whether it be typing/web, playing games, or anything that uses a combination of actions)? In my case, my left hand is always on the left side of my keyboard because it is the natural place for it (think about how you type in general). Now imagine if you instead had to put the bulk of your left hand actions onto your mouse hand. Use an on-screen keyboard to type and move and click around all you want, in addition to navigating your desktop. This is how I would imagine the current idea for PA to struggle.

Now going back to my original post months ago and using examples from there. I use inkscape every day for prototyping / mockups and design in general of everything. In it, I have 3 dimensions to navigate around in order to accomplish tasks. I scroll the mouse wheel to pane vertically, and hold shift+ scroll mousewheel to pane horizontally. Ctrl+mousewheel zooms in to cursor area (like strategic zoom). But the 60-80% of the navigation effort goes to my other hand, and using it in combination with my right hand frees up a lot of the task it would have had to accomplish on it's own. With my mouse hand, I do precise clicking/actions such as drawing curves, selecting shapes, etc.

You may or may not have already known, too, that these navigation (panning/zooming actions) are already built into a lot of the desktop applications you use every day. Open up Chrome and shrink the window down to something that will give you horizontal/vertical scrollbars. Hold shift and use scroll, then ctrl and use scroll (in addition to normal vertical scroll). In spreadsheet programs and many other applications the same keyboard lefthand+righthand navigation can be found.

I'd propose Planetary annihilation to keep the strategic zoom with the normal scroll (just because there shouldnt be as much vertical scrolling as horizontal/zooming), and instead move the vertial to ctrl+scroll as you have the least amount of dexterity in your small finger. These actions combined with limiting the axis somewhat, as previously stated, should make it a pretty good experience.

From planet to planet, and for a good interface in general, I would recommend looking at Gnome3 if you don't already know it. For inspirations, I am referring to the multi-desktop handling (think multi planet handling) and the overlay in general. Check out a video of it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSGfS6K7pI0. At 0:30 or so, you'll see the desktop overviews slide in from the right side. Now think of this as quickly jumping to other planets that you have settled on. I just wanted to put Gnome3 out there as one of the most amazing experiences I've used in a desktop environment. And yes, I think a lot of logic can be applied from a desktop experience to Planetary Annihilation. PA is getting to be that kind of scale, in terms of a strategy game, after all.

In the next few months I want to spend some time to draft up drawings of an interface that I would implement in PA. You will see that I approach the minimalistic philosophy of design. If the webkit idea is going to be done, I might actually be able to implement it as one of the earlier mods!

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

All I want is the game to be playable without obnoxious range rings and lifebars blocking my view.

That means that healthbar/energy/progress info should be easily viewable in mouseover info and that range rings should be easily togglable for when you need the exactness.

These were both huge problems for me in the so-called FA "improvement" that only lead me to struggle ever more with the UI.

I'd like a vertical mode TA style, with the command bar at the bottom and a usable(!) build/selection menu on the top. And one resource in each top corner.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

I really dont see the connection between yours and velerios post

@velerio great post. One of the best so far on this PA-forum.
I like your starting point, and also the idea of getting a compatipility between the physical limitations of the player and the requirements of the game mechanics and complexity.

One point you make is the position of the hands, i will increase this to keybindings which are horrible in Supreme commander, also the Interface has a lag here, as for me who has played Starcraft alot (friends dont like FAF that much), i really dislike the buildmenu shortcut and its steadyness.

Also left-hander shouldnt be left alone. (ohh the pun)

Designing the games interface and even the possibilitys the game offers in actions the player can do, starting by the (AVERAGE) playerside is very important to the success of the game.

This may even result in altering automation or Unit AI.

Edit: i made 2 polls to get a overview about community habitat:
keyboard and mouse distribution and keybindings
number of mouse buttons used

Edit2: One idea i just had: to decrease the number of keybinds needed for one unit (mainly builders) increase the number of building units and distribute the actions between them:
Having one engineer for economy: mex, pgen, pstore, mstore (4 keys)
Another one for tl1 facilitys: land, kbot, air, naval (4keys)
Another one for tl2 facilitys: land, kbot, air, naval (4keys)
Another one for support: repair, reclaim, support, capture (4keys)
Maybe you see the direction this is going.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

I like your initial thoughts but I don't like where you when with it. Placing horizontal and vertical movement on separate controls makes your scenario even worse.

I think that the devs should use a turntable style rotation as is used in many 3D programs such as 3dsMax and Blender. The main problem with rotating in these programs is the focus of rotation and that is easily solved by focusing on the planet. If you want an example of this kind of rotation Blender is free to download. Middle mouse and drag in the 3D view port.

As for the scenario you presented, I think that it would be nice to have a quick way to give orders on the other side of a planet. The way I think this could be solved is a hotkey that would spin the camera 180 degrees. So giving orders on the other side of a planet would look like:
click-and-drag-->key-->click

Great topic. There are a lot of UI issues to be solved here.

Tyler Seacrest

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

However, the mouse is no longer being pushed around for navigation. That eliminates A WHOLE LOT of effort. I didn't mention that it would take 2-3 (or even more, depending on planet size) pushes back and forth with the mouse in order move around the planet. Remember, we're still talking about accomplishing a single task. Holding a single hotkey and using the scroll, you eliminate 90-95% of the mouse movement. What's left is the strategic zoom centered on cursor, which is very familiar.

Thanks for the polls. The second one is good, because it will show how much a middle mouse click is used (I believe the answer to be very little). So it is unfamiliar territory.

As with the hand positioning, again, there as been no other RTS on this scale. So the tasks for nagivating around the system will be a lot heavier than in any other RTS. This is why I believe some of these tasks need to be distributed to the other free hand in a coherent, familiar way.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

This makes a lot of sense as keeping the mouse cursor well inside the active view is very helpful. However, I also find this much less intuitive than a click and drag. In my experiences with 3D programs having selection and navigation both based on mouse movement is not a problem.

It also occurs to me that these navigation methods are not mutually exclusive. As the keys do not conflict including both would not be a problem.

Tyler Seacrest

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

you could toggle all that in FA

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

The difference is that in 3d programs you aren't also selecting and tasking a lot of pieces (units) around the object. That is also the entire focus of the mouse in RTS games.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

This is pretty much how the standard camera on the Spring engine works with games like Zero-K, Balanced Annihilation, NOTA, XTA. You hold middle mouse button and moves the mouse in the direction you want to go. The further to you move the mouse, the faster the camera moves across the map and when you release the middlemouse button, the camera stops moving.
I prefer to use the Rotatable overhead camera where I hold middle mouse button to change the camera angle with the mouse and move the camera around with WASD on my keyboard.
You seem not to have taken changing the camera angle into account. I think changing the camera angle will be very important in PA.
Of course you could be able to change the camera angle with the mouse by holding down a keyboard button much like you do with middle mouse.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

I am taking it into account. The controls would be exactly like middle mouse clicking and rotating the planet around, except mapped out to utilizing common keys instead. The camera angle, I think, will have some automation to it either way.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

not easily, which is functionally the same as not being able to

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

Explain that automation then. Lets say you are on the equator with the camera pointing directly at the center of the planet where east is right, west is left, north is up and south is down. You now move to the right/east to go to the other side of the planet. From this point you go back to the original position by going up. You traverse the northpole and keep going to your original position. Now south is up, north is down, west is right and east is left. In order to restore the camera to like it were before you would have to rotate the camera.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

Auto rotation coriolis effect?
Better: like compass north ever up

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

I think it might be annoying when you try to go over the Northpole. Personally I prefer to rotate the camera a lot.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

how could it be easier?


i do use UI mods but I'm pretty sure those overlays are native to the game

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

Yes because using a dropdown full of checkboxes that animates slowly is what I want to do when I quickly want to check my ranges.

It's useless in real situations.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

I just have it set to selection and build preview, with only having Intel based rings on at all times, it's not the kind of thing you need to mess with constantly.

Mike

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

Anyone here tested my mini PA? Not sure after reading this.

I used mid button to rotate/pan camera to left right up and down. You can rotate to left and right to see what is on other site of planet, but you cant do this by moving up and down. Camera will stop over north and south pole to avoid orientation problems.

You can zoom in and out. Doing that camera should rotate, to simulate moving to that direction. Problem is that this is hard to calculate (for me), becouse when mose is over something this cant move on screen. Its simple on flat map, with everything quite flat on it. with sphere you need more math. This is rly important to feel good.

In mini PA you can see concept of units strat icons and additional buttons in 3D next to planet. You can use that buttons to navigate, change units display settings for that map, atack ranges and many other things.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

It is if you don't like staring at rings all the time. Vanilla had a simple toggle, one for weapons and one for intel. That was much better.

Re: Giving advice on how I would manage the navigation/UI in

... u can toggle intel or attacks with 2 mouse clicks

i just don't know how the toggle system could be better maybe you could show a mockup of what you'd like because i liked how it was