AI War 2 - Alpha 0.505 - Part 1 - Programming and Art: Build Menu Icons

[x4000]

A lengthy look with me at how to set up new GUI prefabs and then use them in code.  This is shown while setting up the build menu to look better/clearer.

[BadgerBadger]

I think this looks like a great start. A couple comments.

First, for novice players it won't be immediately obvious what the different icons mean, so we need some mechanism for allowing them to quickly check what ships/turrets/structures correspond to which icons. Advanced players who want to be reminded of the stats of a unit have the same issue. Hovertext? Something else?

Second, it would be nice if this would also tell me how many of a given unit I have and how many more I can build. As an example, lets say I have a planet that is about to become a battleground and I have already built my full Power Cap of turrets. So I build the structure that converts metal income to power for this planet, then I want to say "Alright, how many more of each turret can I build?" Another example is that right now it's not obvious how to check how many bombers I have across my empire.

[x4000]

It already does hovertext, but it was just being obscured by the buttons as a bug previously.  Keith has mostly fixed that.

Regarding showing counts, what we used to do in Classic was show a count of how many more you could build.  I'm not sure which is better -- though with the extra width that we have now, we could potentially do something like "5 / 100" or something.  But what does that mean?  5 out of 100 have been built?  95 out of 100 have been built?

I guess for someone new coming in and seeing 0/100 and 0/10 and so forth all over the place, that would clear it up.

Anyhow, I bequeath that entire issue to someone else.   It's a good one for mantis or similar, but it's out of the scope of what I was brought in to do as a hired gun on those buttons, haha.  I'm mostly keeping my head out of the interface except where it relates to the graphics pipeline.

[Wanderer]

To me 5/100 will always mean 'you have 5'/'you can have 100'... if that helps any.

[x4000]

To me 5/100 will always mean 'you have 5'/'you can have 100'... if that helps any.

That does help -- thanks!

[BadgerBadger]

Yeah, I agree with that. If you put the cap in the hovertext then you could even say "X of Y"; "5 of 100" would make it really obvious.

[x4000]

Good point!