Toggle Flags and Toggle Highlight Movable Units Updates

[Hepps]

A lot going on here. Some feverish back a fourth!

I do not have a strong opinion either way since I feel like the entire UI could use an overhaul to allow the player the ability to expose much more map and expand and reduce windows when they want to. That being said... the discussion is very good and everything has to start somewhere.

So here is some food for thought about how some of what we are talking about is actually displayed on the game screen. I am just throwing some stuff out there as I have no idea what is feasible.

Current display

Highlight All

Center on Units

So again just some mock ups related to what you guys are talking about.

[Hepps]

@Hepps As far as the initial request...

[Cernel]

@Hepps Good idea about the foot. Not sure if it is the best pick, but certainly much better of whatever the current thing is (I don't even understand).

[Hepps]

Lots of options...

The only recommendation I would make is that whatever it is we want in these short cut icons is something our players universally need all the time.

[LaFayette]

Third option is a lantern, that's the same as the current icon : )
That's what I thought made sense for highlight, an analogy of something that adds light.

The white flag, I initially had one and it just looked like "surrender" to me. Hence the stylized flag, looks a bit less plain and less like surrender. I think once you get the surrender idea in your head, it's hard to shake.

The only recommendation I would make is that whatever it is we want in these short cut icons is something our players universally need all the time.

Generally agree. Should highlight units function during an opponents turn to highlight their units? If so, then it's a functionality that is available all the time.

[Cernel]

Really not important in practice, but TripleA lacks a "surrender" button. While the savegame proves that you won a game by reaching the victory conditions, there is no proof that you won any games by surrender.

[Hepps]

@LaFayette Lantern... almost like I picked up on that.

Yes I was not trying to say what is already suggested might not be considered universally helpful... but rather that it should be. Since I haven't used many of the functions available... I am not well versed at how helpful they might be to both novice as well as vetran players.

[ff03k64]

Could a menu option with all of the hotkeys be put in on the top? Might not get used, but people might look at it to learn what they are.

[LaFayette]

@ff03k64 The 'movement help' menu item under "help" is supposed to list all hotkeys. It's not cohesive to that menu item as the hotkeys are not all related to movement help. We also are missing the mention that "L" toggles flags.

I've been wondering if it makes sense to have a "hotkeys" menu item under "help". A good next step after doing that would likely be to make them configurable. A first step might be to simply break the help dialog out so it stands out and can cohesively capture all hotkeys.

[LaFayette]

Wow, looking at that help menu, it suffers from a common developer problem where trying to solve one thing "people don't know about this" feature, the information is plastered in the wrong places. Most of those ctrl hotkeys can be seen by simply opening the menus and looking there. The 'turn off map artwork' is the same, just a restatement of menu options. The extra details about that do not belong here.

This is a bit of a UX issue, overloads unnecessary information on a user and out of context. The problem that creates is it detracts from the rest of the information that is present here.

Anyways, that is a digression. For now flags/highlight has a new home with the unit scroller for better or worse.

Further progress I would agree needs a bigger vision. For that we should know what more controls we are going to need and then work to create mock-ups of how they could be arranged. Follow up is in this thread: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1525/ui-mockups-needed-unbury-the-controls