Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface

[beelee]

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

If you click on the territory and hold down the click button, you can then move the mouse while holding click and the territory tab will not change. It's not an ideal UX, no.

wow that works pretty good ! Wish i'd have known that years ago lol

[Cernel]

@butterw I guess TripleA is a rare "game" not allowing the user to set the tooltip delay time. Still, having the option of not having tooltips at all might be good too.

[butterw]

@cernel
The map tooltip delay value might be easy to hack in the code.
Making a value configurable in the interface requires more work, and setting a value is more complex than just enabling/disabling, then there is the issue of whether it should be made persistent, etc.

None of this actually requires great programming skills, but any such changes would need to be tested and proven to be beneficial to make it into the main game version. Feedback on development builds is very critical here.

The current configuration ui also wouldn't scale, meaning only the most important parameters can realistically be made configurable.

[TheDog]

@butterw
From you have said I would drop the hover ability in favour of a right click.

It can happen that I have a window application open over the top of TripleA and the hover pop-up, bleeds through and pops up over this window disrupting my work.

[butterw]

1080p fullscreen with hidden sidebar and menubar, window is undecorated.

[TheDog]

@butterw
Looking very good!

Just in case you have missed this, the History needs a H

[butterw]

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

Just in case you have missed this, the History needs a H

I haven't looked into why but with the History and current game mode, the sidepanel tabs can actually get re-populated at 3 different places in the code.
If there is room keeping the special tab "History" in full probably makes sense. Same for Edit.

For your tooltip bleed-through issues, you should Iconify the app rather than use Alt-Tab.
F11 will toggle (undecorated window) fullscreenMode.
It looks like it would be troublesome to change the decoration status of the TripleA frame at runtime, meaning full screen (undecorated frame) will need to be set before you the map is launched.
CTRL+F11 will allow to iconify triplea (in fullscreenMode). Modal OptionPane dialogs will need to be closed before iconifying as they get their own iconified entry.
CTRL+ALT (on key release) will toggle the menubar display.
It would be possible to always display the menubar when ALT is pressed, but this would cause a hidden menubar to display when ALT is used as a hotkey modifier, which seems undesireable.

[TheDog]

@butterw
Thanks for the advice and CTRL+ALT is fine.

[butterw]

I haven't add time to do much progress. I still plan to post an updated dev version this month.

I will also be adding the status bar to my frame mockup and will upload the code for it. The flag and ressource PU icons can be used as command launchers.
The fullscreenMode option should be persistent, but can be changed at runtime with F11. In fullscreenMode, the window decoration is removed, this also causes the (map) gameName to not be immediately visible.
With the menubar displayed, it is possible to have a menuLabel to display info. The menu is also used to display hotkeys.
I've added the new commands to the Game Menu, however it would be better to move them to a new Window Menu.
Game Menu should be solely dedicated to Gameplay options IMO, and View Menu should only contain Map Display options.

)

[butterw]

I will be posting my ui mockup (see image in the previous post) at https://github.com/butterw/ui

To run it unzip the MenuSwing.zip file to your work directory
java -jar BFrame.jar
or
java MenuSwing.java (requires Java 11 JDK)

the display (text, icons, etc) can be customized via the ui.properties file (this is a scalable approach for user parameters).
It uses the Nimbus look and feel. dpi scaling and the font can be customized.
the sidePanel is hidable (by clicking the player flag icon or via a user customizable hotkey), F11 toggles fullscreen mode (undecorated +maximized window). The menubar includes a status Label.

The code is a lot easier to modify than the triplea code.
Hotkeys are in a single class.
The Menu is a single class (structure directly matches the displayed menu).

v0.1 features:
File > Exit (Alt+F4)
Window Menu (Fullscreen F11, Iconify, toggle sidePanel, reset sidepanel, toggle menubar)
View > Map Zoom
Help > About

[butterw]

The jar version v0.11 has now been uploaded:
https://github.com/butterw/ui/blob/main/code/MenuSwing.zip

It can be used for experimentation, ex: with the player flag icon size (24, 32, 48), which sets the size of the bottomBar.

Menus can be reorganised, ex: the File Menu entry could be removed.

I would expect to add the sidepanel layout.

Some different features will be added to the dev build (ex active hideable menu).

Unless there are issues with it (I haven't done much testing and only on Win10), I would expect to open a pull request to add fullscreenMode to the triplea v2.6.

[butterw]

Java versions

to run a jar file, path.to/java.exe -jar BFrame.jar

Java 11 is required, to check the version: path.to/java.exe -version
It is possible to have multiple version of java installed on a system at the same time, but the version used by triplea (v2.5/2.6) is java 11.

JRE (Java runtime) only allows to run programs.
JDK (Java development kit) allows to (modify) compile programs as well as run them.
available at: https://adoptopenjdk.net/

[TheDog]

Thanks as Oracles Java did not work, but your adoptopenjdk.net works well.

Had a quick test and the only comment is the Menu Bar ctrl+alt appears to work best when I
press ctrl (hold down) then
press alt
Pressing ctrl+alt together does not always work, but the above does.

Otherwise looking very good.

How do I uninstall adoptopenjdk.net, it has no Win10 Uninstall and is not listed in the Apps?
A quick Google says to remove the environment path variable, is that the best way to uninstall it and then manually delete the folder?

[butterw]

@thedog
Oracle Java works fine. Your issue is that your system java install was java8. You can avoid this issue by setting the path to the java executable bundled with Triplea v2.5/2.6 on Windows, as suggested in my previous post or by modifying the classpath environment variable.

The hotkey to hide the menubar is ctrl released ALT: Press CTRL (hold), then press Alt. Releasing Alt fires the hotkey.

[beelee]

@thedog just saw this again over at git. I haven't actually installed it yet but can you still open the battle calculator with ctrl b ? It's just removed when the territory panel is open ?

[TheDog]

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

but can you still open the battle calculator with ctrl b ?

Yes, activates where the cursor/territory is.

.

It's just removed when the territory panel is open ?

On my version its still in the Territory panel.

[beelee]

@thedog right on thanks. I saw he said something about removing it. I'll give this a shot once I figure out how to install it I like the "currently owned" feature. That is big.

[TheDog]

Just in case you missed this link.
Its a step by step guide to using it.
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2798/achievable-improvements-to-the-triplea-user-interface/49?page=3

Just make sure you copy a working 2.5 version as its faster than 2.6.
For me 2.5 is for solo play and 2.6 for multi-player games.

[RaiNova]

@thedog @butterw @beelee Given the wealth of improvement ideas and the shortage of developers: What would you require to change the code of the game yourself? E.g. would you to that if the menu structure would not be Java code but a configuration file?

[TheDog]

@rainova
Im not sure a configurable menu file would give me anything more than what I have at the moment and I would guess all players would be very happy with butterw code if only it was in 2.6 as is.

What I would like is a new Tech screen, in its own panel, like Politics, and not shoe horned into the right hand pane as it currently is.

These past months I have been using it without fault and it currently gives;

• On the purchase panel, if a unit has maxBuiltPerPlayer it shows how many unit left you could buy with =< eg if you cannot buy any, it will not allow you to buy any.
• On the purchase panel, bottom left, it shows a / ##, this number is how many units your factories can possibly produce/place.
• Players tabs reduced to one letter, hover over them for expanded description, this is to save space on the right hand pane.
  The pull down menus got regrouped, from 7 items to 6.
• NEW Help> About it has web links, your hardware display in pixels, what dpi, TripleA LookAndFeel
• Bottom right has a ZOOM ###% when you ctrl+Scroll wheel

The first two are the ones that save time and stop frustration.
.