Author Topic: Project Clarity: Tooltips  (Read 18278 times)

Offline RCIX

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #30 on: August 11, 2012, 04:34:51 pm »
For everything below this I haven't got an opinion yet. What really needs to be said though is that sometimes less is more. Get rid of those ugly commas. Commas have absolutely no place in a GUI, it has to be dots OR they have to be visually different (fainter) from the number. And they need to blend in properly. The main reason why the mockup still looks kinda "untidy" is solely the commas. Look at all these numbers, they look like they are damaged (visually)
Us 'Murkins use commas instead of periods in numbers you know ;p
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Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #31 on: August 11, 2012, 04:55:50 pm »
On ability descriptors, the attack boost for allied ships... why is that not just called something comparatively shorter?
+40% attack boost aura
vs
+40% attack boost to allied ships (3000 range)

That's actually half the space used up with something I feel is just as clear... so long as the ranges can be conveyed properly using the display range key.
While we're at it, the maximum limitation on attack boosts and stuff could just be shown on units receiving too much attack boost, rather than as an ability, right? It'd just say something like [1.20x attack boosted-capped-]. Someone else can find a better way to do it I'm sure.

Is there something wrong with the possibility of ships having massive, massive amounts of health though? Armor multipliers or no, there can perfectly well be superweapons that go above and beyond. Just for the sake of possible extremely powerful superweapons, having as versatile a display as possible for stats is going to be important, no? So, if necessary, you can just condense those overlarge numbers down if there needs to be yet more space for units with massive amounts of health. So, in that case...
100.000.000
vs
100.000k

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #32 on: August 11, 2012, 05:21:16 pm »
On ability descriptors, the attack boost for allied ships... why is that not just called something comparatively shorter?
+40% attack boost aura
vs
+40% attack boost to allied ships (3000 range)
Specifically because players repeatedly requested that it include the range :)

Granted, "to allied ships" could be replaced with "aura" or whatever, as I imagine most people would know that it applies to friendly ships.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #33 on: August 11, 2012, 05:27:32 pm »
On ability descriptors, the attack boost for allied ships... why is that not just called something comparatively shorter?
+40% attack boost aura
vs
+40% attack boost to allied ships (3000 range)
Specifically because players repeatedly requested that it include the range :)

Granted, "to allied ships" could be replaced with "aura" or whatever, as I imagine most people would know that it applies to friendly ships.

I'd go with "+40% attack boost (3000)"
"Aura" isn't really needed, and one can infer that the attack boost is allies only as devices that effect both player and AI ships make it clear that they do so.
Afterall, we don't note that repair beams are ally only.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #34 on: August 11, 2012, 05:29:36 pm »
I'd go with "+40% attack boost (3000)"
The question "3000 what?" (some would think it's range, some would think it's ships, some would think it was a display bug, etc) would become entirely too common for me to be comfortable with that :)
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #35 on: August 11, 2012, 05:31:39 pm »
I'd go with "+40% attack boost (3000)"
The question "3000 what?" (some would think it's range, some would think it's ships, some would think it was a display bug, etc) would become entirely too common for me to be comfortable with that :)

Oh, point.  Hmmmmmmm....

+40% attack boost (3000 range)

That would work.  Would like to make it shorter, but it's still an improvement.

Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #36 on: August 11, 2012, 05:45:54 pm »
Well, an idea I had and kept to myself was that, if at all possible, you give that attack boost a color. For instance...
+40% attack boost
Then, when you press 'z' when mousing over that unit, it draws a blue circle just for attack boost's range. For the regular attack, it'd be white. For radar dampening...
Radar Dampening
It would be a red circle.

My issue with actual 'range value' stuff is that I don't know what it's 3000 of. I know it's 3000 range, but I don't know how that relates to the actual view of the planet or anything. It could be 3000 anythings. I need to actually SEE the circle of range, to actually know how far it reaches. But, again, I don't know if there's some kind of secret behind that number that I just don't know about.

Edit: For the record, the colored text and colored circle stuff, I understand, would not work with the current way tooltips are. But, if abilities are in their own box, the box is what keeps it organized, not the colored group.

Offline TechSY730

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #37 on: August 11, 2012, 05:51:33 pm »
Just to toss in something. I would still like an in game way to get all the information, even if the "on the field" tooltips give a nice condensed version.

Maybe the tooltips that appear when you hover over the unit name in the reference tab could be the "complete" version, which would contain all the numerical goodness that you would. (And of course, there is always the Excel "stat dump" option)

Also, a slightly more detailed tooltip would be needed for research unlock icons and possibly for the building icons. In these cases, you don't have an active instance of that unit, so that gives fewer ways to "query" data, data which you might use to make a decision

Offline RCIX

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #38 on: August 11, 2012, 06:17:48 pm »
Just to toss in something. I would still like an in game way to get all the information, even if the "on the field" tooltips give a nice condensed version.

Maybe the tooltips that appear when you hover over the unit name in the reference tab could be the "complete" version, which would contain all the numerical goodness that you would. (And of course, there is always the Excel "stat dump" option)

Also, a slightly more detailed tooltip would be needed for research unlock icons and possibly for the building icons. In these cases, you don't have an active instance of that unit, so that gives fewer ways to "query" data, data which you might use to make a decision
I think that there should be an in-game "miniwiki" (which ironically would be more informative than the out-of-game wiki :P) with database-generated detailed stat pages and/or tips (like top 3 unit counters, maybe total cap costs, etc.). In general, a civilopedia style guide in-game would probably help tons.

Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (200) | 120/s (1000) | 200 | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######

for higher numbers

Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (74k) | 120/s (744k) | 50k | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######
I disagree that we need to compact stuff like that, after all the super-compactness is what got us into this situation in the first place. ;p I don't know whether we need to swap costs (because IMO it is important to know that a cap's worth of Flagships costs X metal and Y crystal). In fact, per-second costs are arguably much less useful because those numbers go out the door the second you start assisting anything with engineers.

Plus, there needs to be a spot for debuffs and I believe next-to-the-ship-name serves that currently.

Note the ###'s thats the farthest the tooltip will ever stretch to the right. This has to be a fixed size. Based on this, you can now arrange every other piece of information below.. Also, you should think about shading and background. The name/player part needs to be visibly different from the rest.

I want to nail down something resembling a final design before messing with fancy styles. At that point I'll probably do a tooltip from scratch with the appropriate information, and cop a few icons from AI War. Speaking of, what font does AI War use exactly? Bonus points for listing any relevant style modifiers and point sizes commonly used in tooltips.

And shortening ability descriptors should be done as well. Lots of superflous wording there.
We already have next to no journal D: I don't want to lose most of the rest of my flavor!

Also, agreed on range being pointless. No idea what range even means in the game. I only know its more or less than something else.
Well, it's in-game units... No one has ever been given a formal definition for what a unit is in League of Legends, but everyone gets a strong feel for what a range equates to on the screen (and there's also a rough informative baseline with melee autoattacks usually being 125 range and ranged being 500-550ish). I'd like range to stay for that reason. If you want, we can attach meters or kilometers or something :P

Also, omitting Health raw number is something worth trying. It is not a relevant value in the game.
I assume you mean maximum health? Yeah, probably. Though it could stay with a bit of effort given to shrinking number sizes via smart affixes (200k, 400m, etc.).

OK so now I wanna poke around and figure out what must remain in a tooltip no matter (If I'm correct, it's the name, description, defense panel, and resource panel). From there it's mainly a matter of building a tooltip style which acommodates the common and uncommon information being appended to it without growing to ungodly proportions or insufficiently structuring the information.

*cracks open photoshop*

(weeeee, this is as much fun is playing AI war itself!)
« Last Edit: August 11, 2012, 06:22:44 pm by RCIX »
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Offline RCIX

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #39 on: August 11, 2012, 06:42:15 pm »
Okay so here's my idea:

This would be the base tooltip, present for every ship/station/what-have you. Then additional tooltip boxes would be appended as appropriate for things like weaponry stats (including engine damage >:/ way too much stuff is grouped under the umbrella of "abilities" right now; but splitting that up completely would be a task of it's own), weapon multipliers (if they're separate from weapon stats?), abilities, etc.

I would like to emphasize that this is rough, and I'll redo it from scratch with nice colors and styling and such when I get to something that could be called final.

Bonus question: What all should get icons? I feel like at least everything in the base tooltip needs icons, but what would we use for hull or engine health or such?
« Last Edit: August 11, 2012, 06:44:37 pm by RCIX »
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #40 on: August 11, 2012, 06:46:40 pm »
FWIW, I am following this with interest.  The overall problem is more complex than it may appear due to how much the tooltip content can vary, but I'm willing to give it a shot in a few months.

But oh will it be painful ;)
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Offline RCIX

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #41 on: August 11, 2012, 06:53:27 pm »
FWIW, I am following this with interest.  The overall problem is more complex than it may appear due to how much the tooltip content can vary, but I'm willing to give it a shot in a few months.

But oh will it be painful ;)
Glad to hear it!

If you have a bit of time, mind filling us in on what constraints we're looking at? For instance, I just realized that you technically don't even need the resource cost for things the player is never able to build. Basically just a full list of possible info categories and then what the minimum information set is should be enough.

(oh and the font info would be great, but you don't have to)
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #42 on: August 11, 2012, 07:49:55 pm »
If you have a bit of time, mind filling us in on what constraints we're looking at? For instance, I just realized that you technically don't even need the resource cost for things the player is never able to build.
Technically, though energy is still important due to IRE's.

Quote
Basically just a full list of possible info categories and then what the minimum information set is should be enough.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean.  I could show you what the tooltip would look like with all possible flags on the ship, but I'm guessing you're aiming at a conceivably-possible target, not the theoretical-worst one ;)

Quote
(oh and the font info would be great, but you don't have to)
I don't actually know the font style and point size used.  I could post  the OpenType Font files we use but I think at least some of them are non-free so "distributing" them might be putting my foot in it ;)

Looking at Unity and the .otf file properties... the "MediumTooltip" font is Systopie (by Sergio Ramirez) at 15pt, but the name of the actual font is not known to me.  That's the font used for the ship's name, etc.  the "MediumSmallerInfo" font is also Systopie, but at 14pt and used for the metal and crystal per-second-cost and some other stuff.  If there's another font in there that doesn't match one of those, let me know where it's showing up and I can look it up.
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Offline RCIX

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #43 on: August 11, 2012, 08:12:50 pm »
If you have a bit of time, mind filling us in on what constraints we're looking at? For instance, I just realized that you technically don't even need the resource cost for things the player is never able to build.
Technically, though energy is still important due to IRE's.
I'm thinking that resources should just be zeroed out or N/Aed if you can't build it. That's an implementation detail to worry about later though :3

Quote
Basically just a full list of possible info categories and then what the minimum information set is should be enough.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean.  I could show you what the tooltip would look like with all possible flags on the ship, but I'm guessing you're aiming at a conceivably-possible target, not the theoretical-worst one ;)

Well, considering the crazy stuff people think of that gets implemented... :3 Ideally, yeah, conceivably worst would be nice.

Quote
(oh and the font info would be great, but you don't have to)
I don't actually know the font style and point size used.  I could post  the OpenType Font files we use but I think at least some of them are non-free so "distributing" them might be putting my foot in it ;)

Looking at Unity and the .otf file properties... the "MediumTooltip" font is Systopie (by Sergio Ramirez) at 15pt, but the name of the actual font is not known to me.  That's the font used for the ship's name, etc.  the "MediumSmallerInfo" font is also Systopie, but at 14pt and used for the metal and crystal per-second-cost and some other stuff.  If there's another font in there that doesn't match one of those, let me know where it's showing up and I can look it up.
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/sardiez/systopie/

Look familiar? Unfortunately it's 20 bucks for one flavor and it seems a little impractical to shell out just for a couple of tooltip mockups ;p I have the strange feeling I'll be grabbing a lot of random screenshots and doing a LOT of recoloring :x It might be possible to "loan" it to me under the Graphic Designer clause in the license, but that might be too messy to figure out.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2012, 08:15:48 pm by RCIX »
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Project Clarity: Tooltips
« Reply #44 on: August 11, 2012, 08:58:41 pm »
gets me thinking, what is the size x*y you are aiming for the tooltips anyway? Because if the size is decided, it becomes easier to place stuff.

Also no, not everything needs icons.. in fact a good grouping with colors and shading should always be prefered to icons imo. That said, I think I may try a mock-up at some point, once I seen yours ;p I think we should decide on something first though.

Maybe, having a -1- step tooltip is not a good idea. Optimally, if you hover a ship or click on a ship only the most vital information displays at a set location. This needs to be highly polished, keeping the mouse longer over that ship (3~ seconds) makes the advanced tool-tip display. A 2 stage tool-tip, so to speak. If done this way a lot of "useless" information could and should be condensed for the general tooltip. And proper grouped sections for other information should popup above/next to the primary tooltip.

What I am saying is basically, to split the tooltip into smaller subwindows and not make it 1 window fits all. That way, you can scale it better to fit what information you need too.
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