Always visible history mode?
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Been wondering if it seems all would be equal if we made the history side-bar always visible. Instead of turning on/off history mode, you'd just minimize the history side-bar when you do not want to see it.
Accessing history mode is a bit clunky, notably that you turn on "history mode" then turn on "game mode" to go back to the game rather than turning history mode on/off. It's still possible to make moves during history mode, so it seems a bit of an artificial construct.
When viewing the game in history, ie: you click on a preview round, then it might make sense for us to display a history mode banner somewhere to indicate it's not the live game (and enable a button to 'return to live').
What are peoples thoughts?
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@LaFayette I don't like the mini side bars (I know they are minimal, but I'm still disturbed by their presence). I prefer being able to remove the side bar completely. Off topic, but I would also prefer being able to remove the right side bar completely, instead of minimizing it.
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@Cernel I understand, removing the side-bar even in history mode would still be a problem for you, it's a bit tangential to this topic but I can see how it would make your preference 'worse'. I think we'd need to, from your point of view, take one step back before we could take two forward. There is a lot of cruft due to history mode, the fact that you need to hit a different hotkey/menu item to turn it on vs off is already very confusing, it's also difficult for new players to even find it off the bat. There are certainly greater problems IMO to consider first before 10px of a minimized of a side bar.
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@LaFayette I am using history mode quite often so I like the idea. It would make access to that mode definitely easier.
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@Cernel do the mini side bars actually take extra room for you? I just observed the collapsed version does not add any room, it may as well be removed in such a case.
Without further objection it sounds like having an always visible history mode is a go for whenever we have available capacity..
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@LaFayette said in Always visible history mode?:
@Cernel do the mini side bars actually take extra room for you?
The collapsed right side bar is 8 pixels wide.
I just observed the collapsed version does not add any room, it may as well be removed in such a case.
No idea what you mean here.
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Bad phrasing, if the side bar when collapsed is taking up the same space whether collapsed or not present, then those two are equal. That behavior is maybe system dependent, I'm not observing the same behavior on my laptop compared to desktop. So forget that point.
The history mode really does have some problems to it, we can discuss those further if there needs to be more motivation on why it needs to be fixed, but watching a new person unable to play the game and not able to find the history was very compelling
We certainly should try to be creative in our thinking here. The tiny arrows to collapse and expand I do not like very much. IMO 8 px being "too much" IMO is perhaps pet peeve territory, but I will grant there is a cleaner aesthetic when there is no collapsed side bar at all.
Perhaps we can have a pull out tab of some sort? Maybe a button to expand the history vertically? A vertical expand button would be similar to how the 'units to place' expands and collapsed, maybe we could do something similar for the history view.
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@LaFayette ... Like @Panther I also use the history bar / history mode quite often. And it is a little nuisance to have to travel to the menu dropdowns everytime. It could be nice to test out a version of TripleA that had a left side bar with easy accessible history mode. I could easily imagine a colapsable history mode that opened up to fill 100% of the left bar and collapsed to the buttom.
In regards to what is added to the two sidebars, could it be possible to have game settings ("Game Screen"?) that could switch these things on /off? Maybe the customization options of unit text size, color, flags etc. could also fit into the same category. Basicly all visual stuff, sidebars and controls.
EDIT: Tabs might be just as good
