AI War 2 - Alpha 0.504 - Part 4 - Programming : Build Menu Revisions

[keith.lamothe]

The Build Menu has an encounter with a chipper-shredder:


You can see the current state of the menu around 1:30:05, if you'd like to cut to the chase. But there's a lot about how to work with the UI system leading up to that. Iirc, 100% of the actual changes were in external code and xml, so stuff that's possible for a modder.

[BadgerBadger]

You asked in the video about whether people liked the fact that you can use numbers to control a lot of the menus. I do like it; my largest quibble is that I tend to scrap units or quit the game when I get confused as to which menu I'm in.

[keith.lamothe]

my largest quibble is that I tend to scrap units or quit the game when I get confused as to which menu I'm in.

Yea, that's a good point; several things need confirmation steps, like those and probably also tech unlocks.

[BadgerBadger]

Oh, the other thing I don't really like is the use of 0 for "show me the main menu"; 0 is a hard key to hit all the time (my right hand usually types those things, but that hand is on the mouse when I'm playing so my left hand needs to track away from WASD and find an unusual key which often means I need to glance down at the keyboard). Given that 0 also exposes the path to the Save/Quit screen, what would you feel about rebinding that to Esc? Or is it too early for discussions like that.

[keith.lamothe]

Given that 0 also exposes the path to the Save/Quit screen, what would you feel about rebinding that to Esc?

We could try it. I don't normally think of Escape as a key to press during gameplay.

[BadgerBadger]

Given that this is something I can rebind locally, if everyone else likes 0 then you should leave it as is.

[Draco18s]

Escape for me, it's a very common "pause and open the main menu" key as well as the "back out of whatever window you're in" key.

[WolfWhiteFire]

Same here, that is what I and probably most people are used to.

[x4000]

Agreed on the escape key.  I'm also not a fan of 0, for the same reasons.

[BadgerBadger]

Okay Keith. I've played for a while with the new build menu, and I love it but for one quibble. When I click on something with Mark Levels (for example, I want to build eyebots after capturing an ARS and I have unlocked Mark 2 and Mark 3 of them), my head really wants the other marks to appear right over the current one, not in another left-justified column. It frustrated my eyes because I now need to look at another chunk of menu. Also, once you have 3 or 4 layers of build buttons the top one becomes way less distinct to my eyes, they kinda blur together.

A ASCII picture because I'm graphically challenged. Here is what we currently have

Eyebot 1 | Eyebot 2 | Eyebot 3           |
Fighter   | Bomber   | Missile Corvette | Eyebot

Here is what I think would be better     
                                                         Eyebot 3
                                                         Eyebot 2   
                                                         Eyebot 1
Fighter   | Bomber   | Missile Corvette | Eyebot

Edit: In fact, when we get to this screen, why don't we show all the possible build options immediately like in AIWC? That's what everyone is more used to, and that's also what the Tech Menu is doing right now). It's really annoying to be manually placing turrets (which I still enjoy doing) and not be able to see at a glance what tech levels you've unlocked; this could easily lead to "Oh crap, I forgot I upgraded Mark II missile turrets so I didn't build any with my limited power on this planet"

That removes the ability to select things with the keyboard (I imagine we could set something up to allow it to take pairs of numbers (1,2 might mean "build a mark 2 fighter), but especially in the case of manually building turrets you're using the mouse anyway.