Kasnavada : Yellow shirt. UI needs rework + 45 min video (bad sound)

[kasnavada]

After playing for 45 minutes, I find that the UI requires heavy changes. I'm not speaking about the numerous missing decriptions... I mean it's a beta. That's fine.

General placement of UI elements in the main screen.

A game video screen is like a book, it's designed to be read. Reading is from left to right, then repeating lines. Why is the "end turn" at the middile of the first line of reading ? Is my turn supposed to be stopping once I read over the statistics ? Please put the end-turn button where it belongs, at the end of the screen, at the bottom right corner.

Otherwise it's quite good. First, look at resources, then annoucements, then building list (main actions for the turn) then parse over reports. That part is fine. The "end turn" button being replaced by "plan research" is also a very, very good idea (taken from civ5 I suppose ?).


Position of elements in the upper left bar.

Again, reading. The "first" information there is supposed to be the most important one, and then it would be nice if there was groups for dependant resources.

I'm suggesting this:
First line : Crown, "production", water, crops, food, population, max population, jobs (all of those are dependant in that order so they need to be grouped), and last housing.
Second line : Energy first. It is the major resource for actions and should be easily seen on the start of the line. Then crime, pollution, wounded people, unclaimed bodies, and so on. I'm not sure of which are most important here, but basically indicators related to problems to solve should be grouped here.
Third line : In order, the most important of those should be research, then social progresses. Research deserves a larger size here, like the quantity of research done per turn, the name of the research should be shown, and

I've no idea where to put compatibility and temperature. "Right" of research might be good but still it needs to be grouped together. Having one on the left and the other on the right is confusing.

Victory conditions can be moved next to end turn at the bottom right. It's really useless here in the resource subscreen.


Position of buildings in the left bar.

Ok... seems that lot of inspiration was taken from Skyward Collapse here. First of all the "current" order of buildings is very confusing for me. In my 45 minutes game I've got police, then military, then explorer camp, then housing...

Let's take the same approach as was done in the upper left bar. Buildings are designed to allow a city to grow, so...
Most important would be "allow more construction options". It's a city-building game after all. So here, you place most of industries and banks. It needs to stand out as a "mini bar" detached from other bars.

The next group would be "population buildings", "food", These need to be the first ones in the bar. Again, as a mini-bar.

Then, you've got energy and "problem reduction buildings". All those buildings related to the "problems" identified in the second line, top-left corner. The order in which the "problems" are solved needs to be in the same order as the problems are shown in the top-left bar. Again, as a mini-bar.

Last, still following the pattern from the first bar, research and social progress buidlings. Again, as a mini-bar.

Military buildings and actions should stand out in another part of the game, maybe on the right (those ain't designed to build cities). Including demolishing.


For "mixed" building, place them twice.


Building detail window in the left bar

That "subscreen" gives too little information. Part of what is down in the bottom left corner should be placed here. For me a building "small" description should show:
- price, turn to build
- costs (energy, jobs, resources needed for the building to work)
- production (anything that the building produces).

As it would be good to keep that in "short" size I'd suggest using icons only for this screen and have both icon and text in the bottom left corner to make things clearer.

Finally, when control + clicking buildings, we get a detailed sub-screen. Could we be allowed to change what detailled screen we are looking at ? Currently we have to close the window to see another building.


Placement of buildings

This is also very confusing for me. I appreciate the "town" limits, but I've no idea what a district is, or what those bluish border means. First I think that adding a "border" on the main screen independant of the greenish thingy might be a good idea to know where we can build most buildings.

Then, I'd like to have the costs updating under my mouse. Terrain has an effect on building efficiency and on the building times but it's shown in the bottom right corner. That means every time I move my mouse I need to check the bottom. In my video I missed crucial that information for 30 minutes. If the logger I'm placing gets a bonus then show "+45% crown production" next to the mouse, and if there are increased build time, then show "6  turns (+ 5 from jungle)" in another line.

Related to above idea, the "gains" should be shown as well. Let's say I'm placing a farm (called 1) next to another already built farm (called 2). It would be nice if 2 showed "+26 crops" or whatever the bonus is as well.

Another idea, could you show an outline of where similar stuff is placed ? When I place a building I'd like the screen to gray out somewhat, then highlight for example every similar building in green, highlight where I can get adjacency bonus with shades of (let's say) blue depending on said bonus.


Bottom left display screen

I don't get why "control" gives more information. All should be available.

What it writes should be reorganized somewhat following what is proposed above in the "small" detail window :
- price, turn to build
- costs (energy, jobs, resources needed for the building to work)
- production (anything that the building produces).
- specials (in any order).

If there are adjacency bonus I'd like the list of what is providing the bonuses here. For example I got a farm producing 351 base crop, and it got bonus from other farms. It should show 404 crops (+ 26 from farm, +26 from farm) instead of just 404.


"Conclusion"

Hum.

I had other suggestions but I'm going back to work.
I'll mantis those once I get feedback from the community for improvement / thoughts.

Last... I captured that game on video, but my microphone was badly set-up and it's difficult to understand what I was saying at times.
I'll try to do better next time. I'll share it here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpUdjhC-gIs&list=PLSGbTQ-iIJ_wboQrEZIupWnIBtg0-FjQk&index=2

Really sorry about the sound and I'm not articulating very well (to say the least). I tried not to wake up wife and kids. I'll find some time to be louder if I do another video. I planned to spend 30 minutes but spent 45 instead...  So the game made me lose track of time. That's a good thing =).

[kasnavada]

Ok, back from work:

Interaction between the left bar and the upper bar.

There currently is no interactions between both. There should be. When I have a problem with, let's say, not enough food, I'd appreciate being able to click on the food icon, which would in turn propose to the player all food producing buildings.



Ok, enough about the main game interface. Things found in other parts of the game:

Main game : cities subscreen

It's called "City grid" on the "link" to the screen and "Cities" on the screen itself. Either one or the other please.

Otherwise it's a nice screen. I suppose that being able to see data here will only be there because the whole espionage is not done yet.

City management :

Is there a point for this screen beside the 3 buttons ? The building list as-is is not intuitive not fun. I suppose it's also in progress ?

Social progress and research
The social research sounds like a neat idea.

However, is that a random tech tree ? As in completely random to the point where "high level" researches could cost 100 after researching some costing 4000 ? It's confusing to see some researchs far back in the tree at the same level as "higher" cost ones. It seem to only be able to increase though. But maybe there should be some kind of limitation as how far back a tech can be put if its cost is too low.

New game screen

It's probably planned for later, but a decription of the races would be nice.



That's about it for now.

Next I'm going to want to write about gameplay changes but did not play enough to speak about that.

[crazyroosterman]

regarding the description for races in new games Chris said when he announced the super patch he said he's was going to make so you got loads of info on everything in the set up screen as well as a racial tweaking to make races feel distinct although I think Chris might have forgotten about that entirely.

[kasnavada]

Yes, I know they are working on it, but to me it's priority work.



Also, major "OMG" moment and UI issue. There is a major need of placing something to show the player that there is an underground level by pressing "TAB".

[crazyroosterman]

Yes, I know they are working on it, but to me it's priority work.



Also, major "OMG" moment and UI issue. There is a major need of placing something to show the player that there is an underground level by pressing "TAB".

I know its priority work it was meant to be worked on after resources/international incidents were sorted but again like I said I think Chris got beaten up and made him forget all about and yea when I was first in I had literally no idea you tab put you underground in till I asked somebody here.