User:Geoff the Medio

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Revision as of 17:11, 4 April 2005 by Geoff the Medio (Talk | contribs) (still more)

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Musings


Emails to tzlaine Dump

1

For moving things around in the queue, it would be rather nice if the # Turns indicated on the box for the tech changed as you dragged the box up and down the queue. The number would indicate the number of turns it would take if you dropped the tech at the location where you current have it dragged. This way, you wouldn't have to actually drop it to find out how long it would take in a particular queue position. (You could also update all the other techs on the queue to show how long they would take if you dropped the tech you're currently dragging.)

IMO the double clicking (a tech on the queue) to remove from the queue isn't very intuitive. It also has the somewhat annoying side effect of centring the tree on the removed tech...

Could you add the ability to drag and drop a tech from the queue onto the tree window to remove it from the queue?

Similarly, being able to drag from the tree onto the queue might be good, though double clicking to add is sufficient for me... I note that you can't scroll the tree view by clicking on a tech and dragging, so there's no lost functionality if clicking on a tech and dragging has the same effect as it does for tech boxes on the queue.

2

A minor complaint: If I expand/collapse the subtree off a tech, the tech moves. It would be much more intuitive if that tech stayed in place, with just the stuff around it changing.

A semi-major complaint / request, that I doubt you'll be able to fix: It would be nice if techs were spaced horizontally according to the number of prerequisites they have.

This would be based on the longest path from the tech back to a tech with 0 prereqs. It would ensure that all 1st-tier techs (with 0 prereqs) are at the left edge of the tree, and all 2nd tier (with all prereqs having 0 prereqs themselves) would be at the same distance immediately to the right of 1st tier techs, and all 3rd theirs (all prereqs having 0 or 1 prereq them selves, and at least 1 tech with 1 prereq), etc.

It's rather odd looking now to have a 1st their tech floating around some 3rd tiers, as happens now with Orbital Construction and Industrial Farming in the All view (assuming your tech view displays the same as mine).

This is especially problematic in that it's hard to see much of the tree, and there's no quicklist of currently researchable techs, so unless you hunt around looking for every last tech, you could miss some currently available techs because they aren't grouped logically together near other techs of the same tier.

A related request: An alternate view in the tree window that just lists all techs, appropriately colour coded for available/researched/unavailable, in alphabetal order by category/all would be good. A few minutes ago I was trying to find a tech (Environmental Encapsulation), but couldn't remember what category it was in. It was rather difficult to find it. The alphabetical list could go in place of / alternate with the tree view, since you'd only need one or the other at any given time. Being able to sort by cost / research time would also be nice.

Also, a minor thing: The Requires / Unlocks listings at the top right could be compressed vertically. There's a lot of wasted space in there... You could chop about 6 pixels off the height of each tech box without problem, I think. An extra tech or two could then fit into the window without scrollbars.

You can't enqueue a tech that's not currently available (ie. for which not all prerequisites are known).

This is problematic because it means we can't enqueue a long series of techs, which means that a) the player has to keep going to the research screen to enqueue new stuff, even if they knew what they wanted beforehand, and consequently b) we won't be able to save / load research queues which include techs not currently available.

Various people have been quite keen on the idea of saving / loading queues...

It's hard to immediately know which category you're looking at in the tree view, especially after clicking on a quicklink at the top right. I realize that the tech you click is shown in the top middle tech info box, but the tech shown there isn't always in the category of the tree being shown, so isn't a reliable indicator of what category view you're looking at.

Could you make the buttons look like tabs, as in BreadMan's mockup, or could you highlight the button of the techview currently being shown

3

I figured I should check what would happen if we added a few more tech categories (see attached). ((NOTE: TEXT DIDN'T FIT IN BUTTONS IN IMAGE))

I'm not sure what to do about this...

Scrollbars for the buttons would be annoying... Going to multiple rows of buttons might work, I suppose... Adjusting the size of the buttons for the length of the text wouldn't look very good, I suspect.

I suppose you could make the buttons toggles that work independently that include or exclude each category's techs from the tree, rather than just having the "all" view and a view for each category. You could then toggle on any combination of categories you wanted to see, and get rid of the "all" button, to save some space... though if you did the toggle thing, having "all" would still be desirable (as clicking all the buttons each time could get annoying), and this would only add extra space for one button, which might not be enough extra room, especially if there are any more categories than my test added.

4

Add controls in-game to adjust autosave settings. Current command-line or config.xml options:

--autosave.multiplayer
    If true, autosaves will occur during multiplayer games. | Default: 0

--autosave.saves
    Sets the number of autosaved games that should be kept. | Default: 10

--autosave.single-player
    If true, autosaves will occur during single-player games. | Default: 0

--autosave.turns
    Sets the number of turns that should elapse between autosaves.
    Default: 5

5

Bug: single planet view crashes when switching to "No Building"

6

In a recent CVS update comment: "...also changed the same code to always show moving fleets first in the list."

I won't be able to get the updated code from CVS to check for at least a few hours, so I'm asking via email:

Does this mean that if one selects a fleet, then gives it a move order, it will change position in the list of fleets in the fleets window?

If so, is this change immediate, or only after closing and reopening the window, or doing something else like destroying or merging fleets or ending the turn?

If the ordering of fleets in the list changes significantly during a turn for reasons other than the player specifically doing the reordering (drag-drop or clicking a sort button), it could be confusing and difficult to keep track of which fleet is which... Though perhaps I'm overreacting? Even if I am, IMO it would still be better to use a marker icon or text on the fleet's box in the list of fleets to indicate orders given to the fleet, rather than reordering the list using an autosort by order type.

The icons would be in addition to the textual indication below when each fleet is selected. This could also be extended later to cover additional orders as they become implemented... for now "Moving" and "Idle" or somesuch would be sufficient, or appropriate icons. Later we could have "Patrol", "Blockade", "Intercept" or whatever is relevant. Indicating move destination or target of the fleet (when applicable) on the fleet box might be nice, but there's probably not enough room.

The icons don't need to be pretty right now, so it shouldn't be an art issue limiting such a feature... Even a red circle (or octagon) and a green circle for stopped and moving would be sufficient.