Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface

TheDog

@butterw
Thanks for the suggestions.

What round button platform are you using ?
Oh what is this, how do I change this?

If people did not know, on the big map, you can right click hold and drag to move the map around.

butterw

@thedog There are a number of ways to change the map viewport.

Clicking the mini-map to where you want to go as suggested by @beelee.
This does work, my issues with it:

It requires to move the mouse from the map to the side-panel.
Because the minimap is small, the result is imprecise and you en up needing additionnal fine-scrolling.
dragging the minimap doesn't feel natural to me.
Using the minimap, requires the right-side panel to be displayed, which reduces the screen space dedicated to the map, which then means you need to scroll more !

A possible alternative to the mini-map could be to use a modified CTRL+F territory finder. The idea would be to jump to India by pressing I.
Holding right-click and dragging the map. It's good for fine adjustments, but it gets tiring if you have to do it all the time.
Mouse Wheel Scroll. This is my preferred way of fine scrolling, but is only for vertical scrolling.
Keyboard Scroll (using arrow keys, +Ctrl for a larger move). I'm going to try out coding left-handed WASD bindings instead, so the right hand can stay on the mouse.
Edge Scrolling. Scroll by moving the mouse to the screen edge (no keyboard action required).

This feature can be disabled. I would recommend reducing the detection zone so it doesn't interfere with normal operation, but It doesn't play well with the right-sidePanel border or the Win10 taskbar with autohide

Default scroll Settings can be changed in Engine Settings > Map Scrolling:

butterw

What screen resolutions are you displaying TripleA at ?

Does anyone use 1440p or higher ? I would be interested in a Screenshot of the main interface.
Does anyone use less than 1080p ?

With the Win10 taskbar displayed on the side, the space available for the Triplea window is only 1840x1080.

butterw

@beelee said in Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface:

I thought they got rid of ctrl z with the last stable. you can still go full screen

I don't know what you are referring to. Ctrl-z does nothing on v2.5.
Is there or was there ever a fullscreen mode in a version of tripleA ?

TheDog

@butterw
On my laptop I play 1600x900, on my desktop 1080p, in both cases I have the windows 10 task bar on show, but use "small taskbar buttons".
.

One option

can the TripleA menu bar be merged onto the TripleA title bar?
can the TripleA status bar can be made narrower?
Remove the mini map
Make the right hand sidebar as narrow as possible
Add History to the tabs, remove Territory tab (see below)
The main map screen could be controlled by;
- with the mouse scroll wheel for zoom in/out (currently has two other variants)
- left click hold and drag to move map
- right click on a territory/sea zone to show as a pop up the territory info
  the above clicks are swappable for left and right handed players
Ctrl+F1 to Ctrl+F4, "mark" the map F1 to F4 returns the screen to those "marked" screens
F5 same as Ctrl+F find a territory
F6 cycles through all your Factories
F7+ etc
F11 Enter exit full screen mode

Edit:
A pause button, maybe F12, to stop TripleA from executing so you can look at what is happening, useful for debugging problems.

butterw

@butterw said in Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface:

I don't know what you are referring to. Ctrl-z does nothing on v2.5.
Is there or was there ever a fullscreen mode in a version of tripleA ?

@beelee Looking at Github, the Ctrl-Z hotkey to hide the (right) sidePanel was removed in v2.5, because it needed a fix. It was a hidden feature never mentionned in release notes, or even in the HelpMenu.
I just re-invented the feature, which suggests it wasn't such a bad idea after all. This isn't real fullscreen though.

I'm realizing there are many hotkeys, some of them very useful but they are mostly hidden.
in ui/HelpMenu Help > Movement/Selection Help should be renamed to Help > Movement/Selection Hotkeys and needs to be made much more readable. I would suggest using a table per section and using larger text.

WASD controls also existed but were removed, if I understand correctly because of the addition of the F key. WASD wouldn't have been that useful for me, because I don't use a US Keyboard, but some left-handed control scroll key would be good to have as an option.

To sum it up the Hotkeys are currently not user configurable, which leads to too many hotkeys, no single-list and hard to discover hotkeys. Streamlining hotkeys would significantly improve the ui.

butterw

@thedog said in Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface:

can the TripleA menu bar be merged onto the TripleA title bar?

That's likely difficult to do.

can the TripleA status bar can be made narrower?

The player flag from the map is actually a sizing element. Assuming a 24x24 size player flag, the status bar ends up being about 30 pixels high, which is not unreasonable if its used as the main toolbar/info display.

TheDog

@butterw said in Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface:

Assuming a 24x24 size player flag, the status bar ends up being about 30 pixels high

Ahh, that explains it, my flags are 32x32, I will shrink them to 24x24.

RogerCooper

@butterw I would prefer to run TripleA (and most other applications) in windowed mode. I happily give a little screen space for easily switching programs.

butterw

@rogercooper Triplea will use windowed mode by default, a hotkey (F11) will allow to switch to fullscreen mode.

On windows you can switch applications with Alt-Tab or Win-tab.

butterw

It's possible to make use of spare space in the menuBar and Bottombar.

This is the default Substance Graphite LookandFeel on my system. I've added a "Custom" menu to the right and also a "xxx" button and a "---" Label.

alt text

TheDog

@butterw
Or maybe remove the Menu Bar and replace with the main map screen?

The menu bar could be activated with something like;

A right click
Left and a Right click held together.
Alt+M
or?
For a pop up menu?

butterw

@thedog
I expect some of the features discussed in this thread are achievable, some may even make it in a future TripleA release. Some have likely been tried previously and have failed. It's good to consider alternatives.
From a technical standpoint, the right hand side menu is an easy to add feature, my question is can it be useful, what can be put in it ?
A dynamic menu would be more difficult to handle, but maybe not impossible.
It's possible to add hotkeys:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/9296/files
but the interface shouldn't overly rely on them.

I will make a test build of my screen layout demo once it has progressed a bit for feedback (it is still in the early stages).

TheDog

@butterw

I agree with putting the menu headings in the the right hand panel, as this would not change the space used in the the right hand panel, but with modifications as below;

Web & Help should be merged into one heading Help. Missing from here is About with the TripleA version and Java versions.
Export & Debug should be merged into one heading Export

Then the menu heading will be short enough to not expand the right hand panel.

butterw

Remember Players feature

This not yet implemented feature would add a checkbox to remember the players set during the same session (until the map is changed).

This is useful when testing maps locally. Currently, each time you leave a game you have to setup the players again (they go back to the default value specified in the xml. This default value isn't specified in most maps, in which case the default value Human is used).

alt text

@thedog

Web and Help menus should be merged.

TheDog

@butterw
Debug needs to able to Export, hence it should go under the Export heading.

At the moment for Debug you have to Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to Select All and Copy to a text editor like Notepad++.

butterw

@thedog
Debug Menu seems to be empty but still present in v2.6. So I'm not sure what the current plan of the dev-team is with regard to the Debug menu and console

TheDog

@butterw
I think you have to do Game> Engine Settings> Testing Tab> Show Beta Feature = True

To see the Hard AI logs, you will need a restart of TripleA.

I think it will become a feature, as map makers use it to debug their scenarios and to work out what the AI thinks is of value to purchase in the purchase phase.

LaFayette

@butterw Re: remember players

A checkbox is unnecessary, the game could just remember the last setting.

The remember players was built into a swing based rewrite but we then opted to try and stick with an attempted JavaFX rewrite which then was put to the side.

One issue is the select players screen is written 3 times in the code. You could implement the feature thrice if you really wanted.

3.0 would very likely rewrite the initial UIs. I don't think there will be a 2.7, so it would make sense to focus UI redesign of the launch screens to be folded into 3.0. This is something to be debated in the 3.0 thread that is up.

butterw

@lafayette
Correct, the checkbox isn't needed, the game should just remember the current players (the players can be set to default to reset, and a new map will load its own defaults).
This is a useful feature, I'm hope it is included in v3.0, when the code for the launcher finally gets refactored.