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GUI Feedback

BigDuke66

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2014
Messages
69
Points
8
Location
Terra
As the biggest and most obvious changes are related to the GUI I thought I give some feedback to that.

For now a big problem are the options for "Command/Supply Lines" and "Range Rings", turning them on will make scrolling the map slower and slower the more lines and rings are drawn.
Just for fun I turn to all range rings and marked all units what made the map movement so slow that it's unusable, now of course no one marks all units but I see already an impact when marking a single unit, I would say that alone half's the map speed.
That must be priority to fix as it is very annoying.

Now some feedback:
- The overlays should be switchable back and forth with left & right mouse button just like all the options in the lower bar.

- Make main bar not only turn on windows but also turn them off by clicking the same button again, this comes handy when you activate the wrong window.

- A lot windows have scrolling bars as the information is to big for the provided window area, I suggest to make at least those windows re-sizable that often provide a lot of information like OB etc, while you can leave out or at least spare for later windows that obviously wouldn't provide from it like Tools & Orders windows.

- Now with all these windows a docking function, be it on the screen edge or onto another windows, would be handy, by this you could make sure that you maximize the map view by moving windows to the edge and you could make multiple windows docked into a "clusters" be move together, by this the player wouldn't have to shift multiple windows out of the way.

- The main bar could as well be integrated into the lower bar, there seems to be more than enough space even on lower 4:3 resolutions.

- It would also be very handy to be able to open multiple Force windows via the right mouse button "Force Info" to compared friendly units, It seems that I can already open multiple Force windows for enemy units by using right mouse button and "Intel Report". If that is done some form of "connection" should be added that runs from the unit to the Force window as that would help the player to know the unit that is related to a specific Force window.

- The Reinforcement window could use some improvement, first by adding a way to "expand" a reinforcement that is made up of multiple units to be able to see and check each unit in the force window. Than by automatically selecting a reinforcement when the player is browsing through the OB and selects a unit in it that will come in as reinforcement, this way the player would be able to find out when the unit selected in the OB will arrive.
Of course making it work the other way too would also be handy, so the player could browse the Reinforcement window and if selecting a reinforcement the unit is also automatically selected in the OB window so the player knows were the reinforcement will be inserted into the Order of Battle.

- Mouse wheel should scroll a window if it is over it and not always the map. That already works for the briefing window but for no other windows like OB for example.

- Crossing Point window should refresh just like the force Window when selecting a new crossing.

- Instead of the Dismiss Button the usual X on the top right would be enough, that saves space specially because each window usually has a title bar so there is space at the other end of the bar to place a close button. This would make all windows smaller and by this would allow more windows to be open at the same time.

So that's it for now,a lot but that was to expect with the extensive changes to the GUI.
 

TMO

Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2014
Messages
178
Points
18
Location
Bristol
"The main bar could as well be integrated into the lower bar, there seems to be more than enough space even on lower 4:3 resolutions."

Can I second this suggestion.

Regards

Tim
 

parmenio

Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
5
Points
1
Age
62
Location
United Kingdom
Make main bar not only turn on windows but also turn them off by clicking the same button again, this comes handy when you activate the wrong window.

Second this one. It would also be helpful to provide hotkeys that toggle between showing/hiding these windows.
 

EdJaws

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
76
Points
8
Age
72
Location
USA
I too agree with BigDuke66 suggestions particularly with:

"main bar not only turn on windows but also turn them off by clicking the same button again"

"main bar could as well be integrated into the lower bar"

"Instead of the Dismiss Button the usual X on the top right would be enough"

I'm sure there was a reason to break out the individual windows for the UI but the - Controls, Tools, Orders, and Force Info windows are so critical for basic game play that I feel they should be permanently docked together with a single dismiss button on the bottom.

Or at least be able to dock the ones you want while eliminating each individual dismiss button for those that may not have the screen space. I don't have that problem as I'm on a 1920x1200 screen but I can see laptop users needing it.

One small unimportant note , when loading a saved game only the Main menu and Controls window appear when the game loads. Although the the other windows don't appear they do remember the position they were in when saved.
 

Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor

Panther Games Designer
Joined
Jul 31, 2014
Messages
3,415
Points
113
Location
Canberra, Australia
Website
www.panthergames.com
One small unimportant note , when loading a saved game only the Main menu and Controls window appear when the game loads. Although the the other windows don't appear they do remember the position they were in when saved.
So what you would like is for it to open any previously opened dialog. There is a problem with this in that the force data, edit task and view task and crossing point dialogs won't necessarily be seeded with any data and we can't really guarantee that the old data will still be current. What normally happens in play is that if a edit task dialog for instance finds that its order has been deleted then it automatically dismisses the window. So I would be reluctant to automatically open these. The others though would be fine.

I'm going to treat this as a feature not a bug.
 
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