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Scorpiana
Scorpiana
Join Date 09/2003
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Some UI bugs / suggestions...

September 9, 2007 11:52:36 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
After installing the latest patch, I wanted to try a BIG game, too bad the 'Custom galaxy' option is disabled so I changed some files to make a large galaxy a bit larger. Anyway, during this game (which is hardly finished) I noticed some strange UI things which might need some changing...

- When you load a game, you can change / add opponents but these changes have no effect on the game, so why show this screen?
- If you hover above the money, crystal, ... displays, you get to see a detailed list on your income broken down by planet. But when you get enough planets, this list doesn't fit on the screen (I think the problems starts around 50 planets). And in the metal / crystal mining lists, there isn't any info for some planets (just the planet icon without a name or income...)
- On the left of the screen you have those 4 big buttons with the latest info sorted in different categories. In the planet info list, when you left / right click on the button to move through the list, the first two entries never get selected and the movement through the list is sometimes strange.
- When you have an information pact with an AI player, you can see how many planets the AI has colonized in a star system by the little dots next to the star. You don't see this info for your own stars unless you have a ship in the stars gravity well.
- When (part) of a fleet is using a phase lane, you don't see the dots for those ships next to the fleet number. Is there any reason for this? The ships are still part of the fleet, even when they might be outside normal space...
- I can't zoom in / out using my wheel mouse in the upper part of the screen, because I start scrolling through the conversations with the AI. I find this rather irritating. Wouldn't it be better to use a system like the buttons for the planet / combat / ... info? Display the conversation where it is know, but if you want to see the older stuff, you can use a button to see it?

Well, guess that's it for now...
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Scorpiana
RonLugge
Join Date 05/2004
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Reply #1 September 9, 2007 9:41:48 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

- When (part) of a fleet is using a phase lane, you don't see the dots for those ships next to the fleet number. Is there any reason for this? The ships are still part of the fleet, even when they might be outside normal space...


I believe those dots simply represent ships that can receive orders. If you hover over the number or the dots, you'll notice discrepancies depending on whether or not ships are in phase space. Why they do it that way I'm not 100% sure -- you can still "que" orders for the ships in question, you just can't cancel the current one.

- I can't zoom in / out using my wheel mouse in the upper part of the screen, because I start scrolling through the conversations with the AI. I find this rather irritating. Wouldn't it be better to use a system like the buttons for the planet / combat / ... info? Display the conversation where it is know, but if you want to see the older stuff, you can use a button to see it?


Thats been brought up, no one really came up with a satisfactory answer. Don't forget, thats also where multiplayer chat will appear.
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Scorpiana
Vandenburg
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #2 September 10, 2007 7:06:45 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Thats been brought up, no one really came up with a satisfactory answer. Don't forget, thats also where multiplayer chat will appear.


There have been satisfactory answers imho. Make the enter-key a necessity to activate the message box, like in all other rts with multiplayer. That isn't really to hard to do, is it?
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Scorpiana
RonLugge
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Reply #3 September 10, 2007 10:33:53 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
But that prevents you from scrolling easily. Which I really don't like. Especially since the enter key is on the other side of the keyboard from the hand most of us righties leave our hands on.
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Scorpiana
Vandenburg
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #4 September 10, 2007 1:20:52 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Why should this prevent you from scrolling?

When you write a message, you'll anyway have your hands in a position to press enter.

If you just want to reread something, it's quite unlikely that you'll want to do this while under heavy stress, ie. a situation when you need to scroll fast.

So imho you probably only need the message box while you have some time on your hand. Fast communication with your ally in multiplayer will anyway be done by teamspeak or something alike.

You also could remap this key to something else of course, like the q key or so.
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Scorpiana
RonLugge
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Reply #5 September 10, 2007 10:17:59 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

If you just want to reread something, it's quite unlikely that you'll want to do this while under heavy stress, ie. a situation when you need to scroll fast.


"I need reinforcements at Alba!"

"I'm sending troops to Ventris, but Corianas is on its own!"


So imho you probably only need the message box while you have some time on your hand. Fast communication with your ally in multiplayer will anyway be done by teamspeak or something alike.


I'm sure thats the theory, but with VOIP not built into the game...


You also could remap this key to something else of course, like the q key or so.


"Ok, I'm ready to..." "Ger, I can't type in..." "Gah, my cue buttons borked! ) (I know you didn't mean that q should replace enter, but its funny )

Why should this prevent you from scrolling?

When you write a message, you'll anyway have your hands in a position to press enter.


It makes it harder to scroll because you have to press the enter key before you can scroll, and that makes for a klunky (AKA bad) interface.
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Scorpiana
Vandenburg
Join Date 04/2006
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Reply #6 September 11, 2007 4:56:09 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
"Ok, I'm ready to..." "Ger, I can't type in..." "Gah, my cue buttons borked! ) (I know you didn't mean that q should replace enter, but its funny )


Ah, my clever plan to sabotage your communications was foiled!

It makes it harder to scroll because you have to press the enter key before you can scroll, and that makes for a klunky (AKA bad) interface.


Yes, it's not that fast as the current one. But the current system is even worse. It makes the whole top 1/6 of the screen useless for zooming and command giving. And imho I'll always need to be faster with giving commands then with sending messages.
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Scorpiana
RonLugge
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Reply #7 September 11, 2007 10:14:02 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Yes, it's not that fast as the current one. But the current system is even worse. It makes the whole top 1/6 of the screen useless for zooming and command giving. And imho I'll always need to be faster with giving commands then with sending messages.


Yes, but the current system not only feels natural but follows the standard UI practices -- you move your mouse over a control area and it stops doing stuff elsewhere. Thats pretty much normal, and natural, to any windows user. You want your scroll wheel to scroll any window you mouse it over, if it doesn't you're going to think its broken. Having to press an extra key to regain a small part of your UI (and I really don't think its a 6th of your control area...) just won't feel natural.

And I'm reasonably certain that only the scrolling UI is "disabled" in that area -- I'd need to experiment to check, but I think you can give move / attack / selection orders in that area. (It certainly doesn't make logical sense for the usually transparent box to intercept those commands, which it doesn't use)
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Scorpiana
Scorpiana
Join Date 09/2003
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Reply #8 September 11, 2007 12:16:30 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums
Yes, but the current system not only feels natural but follows the standard UI practices -- you move your mouse over a control area and it stops doing stuff elsewhere. Thats pretty much normal, and natural, to any windows user. You want your scroll wheel to scroll any window you mouse it over, if it doesn't you're going to think its broken. Having to press an extra key to regain a small part of your UI (and I really don't think its a 6th of your control area...) just won't feel natural.


You might be right that this is standard Windows behavior, but the problem is that you can't SEE that there is another window up there. So it looks as if you are gonna scroll in the normal view, until suddenly the past conversations with other players pop up and get in the way. Oh, and I know that there is a window, and I know I can't use that part to zoom in/out, but when I'm busy, I always forget...
Maybe this should be an option, scrolling in this area scrolls the conversations, or the main window. Or add a little something to the UI up there, you click it, and down comes the conversation window, click it again and it moves back out of sight.
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Scorpiana
RonLugge
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Reply #9 September 11, 2007 8:18:16 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Maybe this should be an option, scrolling in this area scrolls the conversations, or the main window. Or add a little something to the UI up there, you click it, and down comes the conversation window, click it again and it moves back out of sight.


Hrmmmm.... that would work, if it "unrolled" automatically whenever a message is received.
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