GUI Focus Group: "Start New Game" P2: Lobby Interface

[Dune]

Suggestion: When you enter the lobby there's a button for "Lobby Tutorial". If this is enabled, a series of additional popups will appear: "First, choose your player colour and settings. You can do that here <arrow pointing>" "Then configure the AI" "You can add additional tweaks and minor factions here". This would be similar to the gameplay tutorial. There would be a "Disable tutorial" button.

Also, the first time you start a game on a given profile, you will always get the Tutorial.

I like that idea.  So are you saying that the "Lobby Tutorial" will default to enabled the first time you start a game on a given profile?

[BadgerBadger]

Yeah. This way a new user will Always encounter it. And if there's an easily accessible Enable/Disable button an experienced player can disable it, and a novice can turn it on later ("Crap, I forgot how to do XYZ. Lets turn the tutorial back on")

[Atepa]

I agree with Badger that having a “on by default” tutorial is a good idea, it just needs to be done in a way that it is easy to bypass for those vets who have re-installed and thus have a new profile, but don’t need to walk through everything again. And as he mentioned a way for us old folks who may always keep the game installed but forget how to play every 6 months, heh.

[BadgerBadger]

One of the reasons we wanted planet names in the lobby was for convenience for multiplayer ("Hey, I'm going to start at Murdoch, why don't you start at Old Murdoch"). But if we add the ability to ping locations on the galaxy map, doesn't that accomplish the same thing? Pinging on the galaxy map will also be very useful in game.

Another thing to consider is letting the planet name text change size depending on your zoom level. That would let it feel less crowded.

[Atepa]

Are we still able to highlight the planet that each player takes with their appropriate color as well? I know that was a thing in AIWC but was hard to tell who was where because only the bonus ship type changed color, if the whole system did that would be a pretty clear indicator of who was where too. Although to have that not be troll-y the redraw would have to be as quick as it was back then too. (which was almost instant)  I know part of the delay at the moment would probably be lack of optimization, since we're still in "functional, not pretty" stage, but I would assume the release version would have that tightened up a fair bit.

[etheric42]

Hey everyone, I've got a mockup of an idea of where this could go.  Take a look at the attached png file (I've also included the original openoffice draw odg file in case anyone wanted to play with it).

If people like the direction this is going, I will start mocking up what some of those "advanced" and "more" menus might look like.

Please note that this is rough.  Not everything is perfectly lined up and the exact font sizes haven't been nailed down or anything.  This is just visualizing a way this could go to see if it is worth pursuing more.  The objective is to lay the important items out in a clear order while tucking wiring/unnecessary options behind the drywall/extra clicks.  I sometimes have analysis paralysis and when confronted with games that have too many options from the start, I feel the same way many people do when they start term papers: "I'll just start this some other time", but it is important for us to leave a lot of options open to accommodate different ways people might want to play the game.

Tell me what you think of the mockup!

[Atepa]

I like the idea of it for the most part, my only suggestion would be to try and shuffle the realestate around alittle so that the map could be bigger. While the names and such of the planets aren't of much importance during setup, I worry that a map that small may be difficult to identify good starting systems in some of the more compact maps. (Spiral, Maze, etc) I'm going to see if I can't get openDraw on my system and fiddle with things to hopefully try and explain myself a little better. Stay tuned!

[etheric42]

I am away from my computer, but later tonight I will upload the most current revision for you. I have added a view larger map button as well.

[Atepa]

Nice.

In the mean time, this is somewhat what I had in mind... I have a bunch of dead space that would ideally be 'Blue-ed' (can we use Blue as a verb? will she mind?) away but as a general idea it portrays what I was thinking.

[etheric42]

Zip attached.  For revisions in the odg I just used new pages to mark each reivision, so revision 6 is page 6.  I did something weird to make the popups work, because Draw exports hidden layers to the PNG file, in order to hide the popups for export I lock the "content" layer, select all the popups and then send them to the back.  So in order to bring them to the front to use, you'll need to hide/lock the content layer and all the popup layers except for the one you want to see and bring that one to the front.  Or you can just look at the PNG files attached (some of them are revision 5 because I was too lazy to re-export if they didn't change).

FYI, I'm waiting on some feedback from Keith before moving to revision 7.  There are several advanced options that need to be added, but it mostly comes down to how the AI opponents are set up (apparently it's possible to have multiple sentinels and multiple hunter/warden fleets, so that is going to need to be moved around to better express how that all works).

[Atepa]

I really like the idea of having pre-set settings that you can load up with a push of a button. It lets people not have to worry about those kinda things until they are ready for it.

*gasps* Multiple Hunter/Warden fleets?! <Insert Squee sounds here>

and actually as a tangent off that note, do we know if they plan on letting multiplayer integrate in with steam ala - invite friends or 'join game' off a friend? to simplify connecting games? I seem to recall Chris having a 'roadmap'-ish style post somewhere before... but you think I can remember/re-find it now days? lol

[etheric42]

Yeah, I'm just trying to grok what multiple hunter/warden fleets means to gameplay so it can be presented clearly.

As far as Steam integration, it has been brought up, but I am pretty sure it's a no-go since there may be plans for the game to be sold outside Steam this time around.  Currently it looks like multiplayer will be IP connect only in order to keep recurring costs as close to zero as possible.  But we'll have to see what the people working on multiplayer cook up.

[etheric42]

@Atepa Do you think making a button for a bigger is acceptable?  One of my concerns about the always-large map is that it emphasizes something that isn't as important as it was in the original, and doesn't leave room for the large quantities of other factions that will be in normal games.

[Atepa]

@Atepa Do you think making a button for a bigger is acceptable?  One of my concerns about the always-large map is that it emphasizes something that isn't as important as it was in the original, and doesn't leave room for the large quantities of other factions that will be in normal games.

Yeah I think something like that could work too... maybe have it as the little expand-y icon from video players. Allowing pressing the icon, or hitting ESC to slip it back.


Maybe I'm just missing something but why is the galaxy not as important? Or is it because the location isn't tied to your extra ship in the new one?

[etheric42]

Two reasons as far as I understand:

1. Your starting ship isn't tied to your starting planet anymore.
2. Losing starting planet isn't your game-over condition anymore (now it is losing your Ark).

So the shape of the galaxy still influences the game (chokepoints, etc), but where you specifically start is not as important.