UI Feedback

[Creator]

Awesome! I like Ben Frank, Hum Frac, and mayflower

[Trilarion]

Thanks Creator for all the good work. Yes, I will take care that all our content is properly licensed. I know that probably nobody would care really but if the game ever gets big some people will look more careful and in some cases a legal action might follow and that would mean a comparably large financial risk to me and I don't want to risk it. Also I am convinced we can do without easily.

Belwe fonts we might get later. It wasn't top priority but in principle they are old and out of copyright - we just need to find a sample of it. I found a nice guy who made many fonts available this way: http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designe ... /index.htm and one Belwe (Gothic) is included http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designe ... /belwe.htm.

Ven's fonts also are fantastic. I like Ben Frank, hum Frac, Mayflower and Sorts Mill.

Why don't you two just choose a font and later we can easily change it within the Photoshop files - if we want.

[Trilarion]

...Do not hold back guys. If you don't like something say so. The sooner you mention it the sooner I can fix it. Once we are all happy with the Scenario UI I can then start working on the other interfaces.

Here is my feedback: Both, green and wooden, design look nice, but wooden seems to capture the spirit a bit better in my eyes. There isn't much difference between Draft2 and Draft3. In Draft4 the bevel border of the whole dialog is too prominent - I would make it quite small (try 5px).

In general I wonder if we could have a connection of wood and metal in the design of the dialog. For example a wooden background but cast iron/brass/bronze/steel look of the buttons and the dialog borders. The single element borders already have this distintive black, delicate look that is contrasting with the solidness of the wood nicely. So I think that wooden buttons are maybe too much of the same.

I agree that the font color should not be black but I have no good idea what color would be good..

Regarding the main menu effects: The right door opening is probably finished, we have to see it how it looks when incoporated. I will include it in the game asap and then we might decide if it should be opened a bit more or ... With the throne it is the same, maybe the items should be a bit larger, especially the stick (is this the correct word?) but we need to see it before. For the fireplace I have the feeling the colors do not fit into the general impression of the image. I would use less red and more yellow/white. Also the flames seem to go a bit out of the fireplace, better to have them vertical inside the fireplace (towards the chimney). For the map I think I can add a programmatic effect (fading in the opacity of the overlay), so instead of just appearing the territories of france and britain get bright within a fraction of a second.

Now with the left window I have to admit I thought it is the window that is already open on the left side, not the closed window. I imagined a bright sunshine effect through the already open windows. With the closed window next to the throne room I feel like the image is not balanced, i.e. too many buttons on the right side and close to each other while nothing on the left. What do you think about it?

I attached the areas of the buttons as I imagined them. But we can change it, we could for example introduce a special credits button on the left side where the painting of the heads is.

P.S.: I especially like the idea of having maps as dialog background images. That gives the game a nice historic feel.

backgrounddraft4.jpg (110.64 KiB) Viewed 9776 times

[Creator]

thanks for that comment tri. Good to have you back.

To tell you the truth I completely forgot about the wood UI from the first one when I made my first draft Ven reminded me of it and I end up liking the wood version more now. I thought the bevel design was too prominent as well so I will decrease it to 5px and probably decrease the depth a little so it is not so in your face. plus I will have more room I like the idea for the buttons I think I might do a couple in different metals and put it all in the one image so we can decide which one is best.

specially the stick (is this the correct word?)

It is a crown, scepter, and grail. These three things are usually held by monarchs during there coronations. I wanted to make them look realistic size's but I see what you mean. I could make them glow if you think they need to be more prominent? I just worry about blowing them up to unproportional sizes

Yes I agree with you on the fire. There was something always nagging me about that and I will give your idea a go.

I love your idea about the map. DO IT!!!!

Oh Dear Lord! I cannot believe I did not think about that for the left window. That would have made my job a hell of a lot easier and then I would have not had to handle that damned chandelier! That sounds good idea and I will do that. Just one thing though. I plan on making the light coming through the window to take up at least (width wise) over half the image. This will not interfere with your coding thingy will it?

Huh I did not even think about having the picture unbalanced but now seeing it all in that image you are defintely right

[Trilarion]

The light coming through the window can be as large as the image/screen if you like it. No problem at all.

P.S. One more thing, do we want the user to resize the dialogs? At least for the help browser and for some dialogs containing maps this would make sense. In that case we might get problems with the background image. The layout of the elements is not a problem, I can control everything (what should resize in which direction and how much). But we might want to have a large background image (at least 1024x768) or a tileable background image...

[Creator]

May I suggest we try it first and see what happens when we risize it. the idea of the background image is that it should not really be noticeable so the hope is when you resize it you won't really notice it.......

But we might want to have a large background image (at least 1024x768)

So do you mean increasing the UI to a bigger canvas size than it currently is?

Also. I have posted another draft of the ui. I will work on the buttons for the main menu tomorrow as it is quite late here

[Trilarion]

...So do you mean increasing the UI to a bigger canvas size than it currently is? ...

Yes, monitor resolutions increase all the time and some people might want to have larger dialogs. Resizability is a big advantage when designing UIs.
It actually also effects the border of the panels but there the solution is simple, you just have to divide the frame into the four corners and two continous pieces which can be scaled.

[Creator]

...So do you mean increasing the UI to a bigger canvas size than it currently is? ...

Yes, monitor resolutions increase all the time and some people might want to have larger dialogs. Resizability is a big advantage when designing UIs.
It actually also effects the border of the panels but there the solution is simple, you just have to divide the frame into the four corners and two continous pieces which can be scaled.

well resizing the canvas is easy enough

but with the other stuff you said you've lost me..... I get what you are saying but as the whole UI (except the buttons) would be a .png file would not the whole image (including the borders) just resize itself or am I missing something?

[Trilarion]

Hmm, the system is as follows. We have a dialog. Depending on the screen size or upon a user action the canvas of the dialog changes size. Then there is a layout manager. It has rules how to re-layout the elements on the canvas. They can change position and size. We decide what is done with the rules that we give. For example we could keep the sizes of the elements constant but increase the space between them or we can increase the size of some to fill the space that is new or any combination of these.

Actually it is already inbuilt. The main map element resizes according to the screen resolution so that it fills the whole frame. So on different monitors it will have different sizes. So a decoration of the main map cannot have a static size. I decided furthermore that the buttons never resize, so on larger monitors they will look smaller. But this makes design simpler.

Try changing the size of a dialog (larger) in the current version and you'll see the resizing rules in action.

The whole topic is most how we want to react to different screen resolutions. We follow a mixed approach here with allowing some resizing which is done automatically of appropriate elements (like maps) while buttons for example do not resize. I will do it under the hood and when you see it in action you'll probably know better what the important aspects are. For now we just need the background image to be large or to used as a tile.

[Creator]

gotcha do a resize.

Thank you for explaining it to me. Not all of it sunk in but I get the general gist. I will just leave all cody thingys to you from now on