Tooltips 2: Poll Harder

[RCIX]

Have you thought about opening up a poll (or something like that) to ask what information people actually want from tool tips and using that as the basis for a design? I ask because if you look at the default tooltip attack is pretty much the first piece of information that my eyes fall on. I know that when people get used to stuff they no longer look at it in the same way but it is just striking to me that where the information on your mock-ups are (which I like by the way) is different to the default.

I like the idea of graphics and concise information but I think that it needs to be really clear as to what people really use these things 1) for and 2) most often.

(Thanks)

Here's our current set of concepts, for reference:





I'm not offering abilities and immunities because short of replacing them with mass icon swarms, there's no effective way to redesign them and they can be a modifier key away.

[Histidine]

You probably know this already. but icons still need replacing. I think more abstract icons would be good.

Some ideas:

• Ammo type: Bullet (i.e. not blue)
• Reload time: Bullet superimposed on circular ("cycle") arrow
• Range: Horizontal red arrow with notches
• Damage: Red crosshairs
• Armor: Metal shield
• Speed: Horizontal green arrow

Hmm, build time isn't listed (even when expanded)?

[RCIX]

You probably know this already. but icons still need replacing. I think more abstract icons would be good.

Some ideas:

• Ammo type: Bullet (i.e. not blue)
• Reload time: Bullet superimposed on circular ("cycle") arrow
• Range: Horizontal red arrow with notches
• Damage: Red crosshairs
• Armor: Metal shield
• Speed: Horizontal green arrow

Hmm, build time isn't listed (even when expanded)?

I may or may not have forgotten the resources in the expanded tooltip. I'll fix that.

Icons are placeholders =p and will be until/if it gets picked up by Keith.

[Diazo]

I'm not offering abilities and immunities because short of replacing them with mass icon swarms, there's no effective way to redesign them and they can be a modifier key away.

That kills any sort of redesign for me. I'd say roughly half, if not more, of the time I'm actually looking at the tool tips it is because I'm looking for an ability or immunity to deal with an outlier situation I've run into.

The other time I look at tool tips is when I'm deciding what to unlock, again the abilities and immunities are very important at that time.

I'll look at the other stats once at the start of the game on my bonus ship, but after that it's a matter of "I just ran into what? Quick, I need cloaking/missile immunity/insta-kill immunity/FF immunity/etc."

I suppose having said that I now need to put forward my own suggestion for what I'd like to see, I'll see what I can do when I get home from work this evening.

D.
(Did not vote yet.)

[chemical_art]

Once you know the ins and outs, the name itself is all I need.

What is ironic is that I needed to know the ins and outs of the game to establish the units, but now that I do, I lump the units to really vague uses.

<Zombards, snipers, and sentienels are all long range units, swarmers swarm, etc>

[RCIX]

I'm not offering abilities and immunities because short of replacing them with mass icon swarms, there's no effective way to redesign them and they can be a modifier key away.

That kills any sort of redesign for me. I'd say roughly half, if not more, of the time I'm actually looking at the tool tips it is because I'm looking for an ability or immunity to deal with an outlier situation I've run into.

The other time I look at tool tips is when I'm deciding what to unlock, again the abilities and immunities are very important at that time.

(Did not vote yet.)

I imagine it would be trivial to have a "revert to old style tooltip" option and/or a "always display expanded tooltips" one. Which is probably going to be needed in any tooltip redesign. I agree they're important, but not so much that you necessarily need them displayed instantly every time (thus the modifier key).

Once you know the ins and outs, the name itself is all I need.

What is ironic is that I needed to know the ins and outs of the game to establish the units, but now that I do, I lump the units to really vague uses.

<Zombards, snipers, and sentienels are all long range units, swarmers swarm, etc>

I like to look over ships damage/reload time/etc because my memory needs a lot of refreshing at times =p

[Winge]

I'm not offering abilities and immunities because short of replacing them with mass icon swarms, there's no effective way to redesign them and they can be a modifier key away.

That kills any sort of redesign for me. I'd say roughly half, if not more, of the time I'm actually looking at the tool tips it is because I'm looking for an ability or immunity to deal with an outlier situation I've run into.

The other time I look at tool tips is when I'm deciding what to unlock, again the abilities and immunities are very important at that time.

I'll look at the other stats once at the start of the game on my bonus ship, but after that it's a matter of "I just ran into what? Quick, I need cloaking/missile immunity/insta-kill immunity/FF immunity/etc."

I suppose having said that I now need to put forward my own suggestion for what I'd like to see, I'll see what I can do when I get home from work this evening.

D.
(Did not vote yet.)

I'm basically in the same boat.  Abilities and Immunities are necessary, IMO.  They don't need icons or anything special; as I'm OK with looking through text for those.  Yes, I've learned a few of them...but there are a few that catch me by surprise (like Zombards lacking immunity to Insta-Kill, or Fortress immunity to Attack Boosts).

[Hearteater]

I believe he's saying they would just be appended to the bottom like they currently are, not that they would be removed from tooltips.  In other words, he's constraining his rework to the top part of the tooltip, and the bottom would remain unchanged.

[RCIX]

I believe he's saying they would just be appended to the bottom like they currently are, not that they would be removed from tooltips.  In other words, he's constraining his rework to the top part of the tooltip, and the bottom would remain unchanged.

Either this or the expando-tooltips, yes. Abilities and immunities are going to be very resistant to good organization.

[keith.lamothe]

Abilities and immunities are going to be very resistant to good organization.

They stand in proud defiance.

Immunity to Organization?

[RCIX]

Abilities and immunities are going to be very resistant to good organization.

They stand in proud defiance.

Immunity to Organization?

I mean, technically no they aren't, but it involves significant code time and eating some more screen space in all likelyhood =p

[Diazo]

Okay, for reference here is what I play at and what I see.

I have a 23" big, 1920x1200 pixel monitor, although I play windowed so the screen is slightly smaller.

edit: Apparently the image is too big, find it at the end of the post please.

and a small and large tooltip for my train of thought:




Okay, from the top:

Name: Well, this deserves it's own line I think.
Economic Line: Maybe this does not need to be the first line in the tool tip, but only one line of economic info is as small as you are going to get.
1st White: Attack information, again only one line. Maybe this could be color coded red somehow?
2nd white: Ship information, including defense. One line again. Could be color coded? Mind you, with only 2 white lines it's not like the info is hard to find.
Green Attack Multipliers: One line, but worth it, this is important.
Light gray Abilities: These need to be listed, perhaps the most important information for me.
Dark Gray immunities: Again, very important, I want these listed.
Yellow AIP: Critical, needs to stay.
Blue Description: This can go, no gameplay affects here, once you've read it once you don't need to see it every mouseover.

Now, icons vs. text. I'm not sure how I feel here. One of the biggest reasons icons are used to replace text in other games is the control bar along the bottom of the screen is always up and so it blocks game play space. Because the tooltip is pop-up, that is not a (or as much) of a problem for AI War.

Looking at the tool-tip, I actually don't see much I would want to change.

The biggest thing I can think of is that screen space for smaller resolutions. Maybe a control could be added to hide tool tips, then a show/hide tooltips key could be bound.

So if 'hide tool tips' is unchecked (current behavior), the 'show/hide tooltips' would hide the tooltip so you could use that part of the screen.
If 'hide tool tips' is checked, the tool tip would never show until you pressed the 'show/hide tooltips' key.

But if I actually had to cut down the size of the tool tip, I would get rid of the economic stuff and move the Ship Cap up to the right side of the same line as the ship name.
I'd then combine the 2 white lines into 1, only keeping the health, attack power, range and reload.
That would get rid of two lines, but I can't see getting rid of anything else.

This all assumes their would be a 'full details' button that would show the current tool tip.

D.

[RCIX]

I'm going on 3 principles:
1. You can't shrink text tooltips without cutting info
2. Icons break up the visual flow of the tooltip and let you locate and parse relevant numbers quickly
3. Icons are smaller and conserve space

I'm also not sure why "hold shift to display more info" + a "always show expanded tooltips" option doesn't solve everyone's problems :S

I'll push out an updated version a bit later i think.

[Radiant Phoenix]

I was going to say that the health and engine health should be switched to group things intuitively, but then I noticed something:

The most important things are almost always in one of three places in a row:

• The left edge
• The second item from the left
• The right edge

Which is actually relatively easy to find.

One improvement that I think could be made under that paradigm is switching ammo type and damage expression (because you probably care about damage more than weapon type).

[Billick]

I like seeing range actually.  Yeah, I know you can use z, but it's nice be able to see the number too.  Also, attack multipliers are probably the most important thing imo, but I assume you are lumping that in with 'attack stats'.    If you're going to make a smaller tooltip, I definitely think it should be a checkable option.