Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface

[butterw]

Menu update

@lafayette

• I can submit a pull-request for merging WebMenu with HelpMenu in v2.6.
  In the Help menu, my proposition is to shorten the title
  "Movement/Selection Help (Keyboard & Mouse)" to "Movement/Selection". The full title would appear in the dialog window.
• What about merging Debug with Export as suggested by @theDog ? The Debug Menu currently has a single entry (AI log).
• with v2.6.231 I'm getting a null pointer exception when I try to save Engine Settings/Testing.

[LaFayette]

@butterw Debug and export are quite different. Having the AI log appear in 'help' might be more appropriate. Not sure though offhand.

The "movement/selection" menu item title change sounds good.

[butterw]

@lafayette
The Debug menu shows one subMenu "Hard AI" (only if Hard AI is playing) with only one entry show AI logs. My suggestion would be to rename Debug to something else and bring in some features which don't really fit their current location (in View, Game Menus).
It shouldn't be in HelpMenu IMO.

EDIT: "Debug" Menu could be renamed to "Tools".
These are the menu entries I suggest moving to "Tools":

• Game / Battle Calculator
• Game / Game statistics
• Game / Show Dice Stats
• Game / Roll Dice
• View / Find Territory

[butterw]

Display map zoom level on screen when hotkeys are used to change it.

I've implemented this feature suggested by @Cernel using the status bar display.

[LaFayette]

@butterw Zoom menu in status bar has a few considerations:

• One would expect to be able to click it to toggle it. Why else have it listed? OTOH this would be inconsistent with the other status bar displays that are all read only
• status bar can get crammed on maps with lots of resources. The civil war maps are good test candidates. Is this info that important to compete with the other info presented?
• One would also probably want other map rendering details to be displayed in an option, maybe, like turning on and off map blends.

How about the zoom level were printed as temporary text on the screen? I'm picturing how "EDIT MODE" renders, but instead it'll be for zoom level and would disappear after a second or two.

[butterw]

@lafayette

• Having a zoom display when zooming is a useful feature.
• The status bar display isn't permanent, it only stays from when the zoom hotkey is pressed until the status bar Label gets blanked or overwritten.
• Map zoom could be displayed at startup, but it isn't that useful. View Menu > Map zoom can be used to know the zoom at any given time.
• The GlassPane used to paint "EDIT MODE" on screen could potentially be used instead of the status bar, but there may be issues with this. The display would need to be smaller and anti-aliased (are there performance issues ?) and you would also need to handle the case where you are zooming in Edit mode.
• Adding zoom display from keyboard hotkey or View menu is simple to do, the mouse wheel hotkey may be more difficult.

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/9339

[TheDog]

More UI suggestions

Players tab: On the current Players tab, it would nice to have smallest flag displayed against each player and the faction colour is the background colour of the text of that faction.

Tech tab: On the current Players tab it would be nice to have a Tech tab, but with the axis's swapped, with the player listed vertically and the Tech horizontal.
Currently the tech can get in the way when then there are say 16 players listed. The tech is currently listed in alphabetical order, but should be in player turn order.

Tool Tips: The placement currently says Placement Restrictions [ ] and should actually list the terrain restrictions.

Tool Tips: Can modify unit movement should list the units affected, currently if there 3+ units affected it just says Can modify unit movement
.

End of turn summary: Needs a little attention so the numbers are listed, one to line.
Unspent PU from previous turn xx <-- New and needs adding
Blockade PU lost xx
Player collects xx
Units generate xx
Player end with xx

At the bottom of the frame the Blockade should list the territories that are being affected.

[butterw]

Regarding end of Turn Summary:

• The end of turn summary is written the way it is because it is currently also used for history log entries.
• The player has the option of turning off the summary pop-up.
• If someone wants to try create a custom summary it probably doesn''t require great programming skills to do so, but it may take some time to get the exact desired result.

The Territory Panel could use some improvements IMO, with a lot of space wasted/not so useful stuff. I would get rid of the buttons for instance.

Unit tooltip issues should probably be discussed in a separate thread.

[Cernel]

So, how about my suggestion of having the scroll wheel default zooming?

It can be Alt+Wheel to move the map up and down and Alt+Shift+Wheel to move it left and right. Mouses having bi-axis wheels would scroll the map with Alt+Wheel only.

Then, clicking the scroll wheel may reset the zoom at 100%.

[butterw]

The solution is ultimately to have customizable hotkeys.

Alt+Shift+Wheel doesn't seem practical unless you have a side-scrolling mouse, (Shift+Wheel is the key combination produced by a side-scrolling mouse).

It does require significant modifications to the code, and may be more difficult to achieve for the mouse than for the keyboard.

The objective is to have a file with definition such as:
Hotkey.ZOOM_IN1 = Ctrl+mouse_wheel_forward
Hotkey.ZOOM_OUT1 = Ctrl+mouse_wheel_backward

EDIT: CTRL + mouse_wheel is the standard hotkey for zooming if the display is scrollable (ex: web browser).

[butterw]

Help > About... Dialog (work in progress)

• We can move some of the links from the current help menu to this html dialog.
• It gives the version info in the main game interface.
• I'm probably going to add Dpi scaling info (ex: 100%).

EDIT 1: This JOptionPane.showOptionDialog based version does some kind of glow effect after the dialog loads (could also be a bug as it wasn't intended )

[butterw]

The Animation effect is done by Substance.

Does anyone use a look and feel other than Substance or Nimbus ?

[LaFayette]

@butterw There are a couple built in look and feels, notably the 'metal' (which seemingly is just 'default OS'). I presume it is pretty heavily used.

[butterw]

@lafayette
I hope nobody is using the java default look and feel "Metal" as it looks very ugly. I would encourage anybody still using it to move to "Nimbus" or to try a Substance look and feel.

The only valid reason to use Metal is that it does allow to specify the font from command-line (but the font isn't applied to triplea JEditorPane displays without a code fix).

[butterw]

Unofficial v2.5-bu test build

--Experimental build for cross-platform feedback, was tested on Win10 local play.

• unzip to your triplea folder run from command-line in triplea folder:
  java -jar bin/triplea-game-headed-2.5-bu.jar
  On windows you can use the provided shortcut, but you'll likely need to correct the path for javaw.

Please upvote features you would like to see it included in a future official Triplea release.
Conversely, if you think a feature should NOT be included, please post your reasons. Bear in mind this is a work in progress and not all features are finished.

1. Fix for Hi-Dpi display issues (Blurry images OR text too small issues with 125% dpi system setting).
   https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2810/fontsize-and-dpi-scaling
   +Engine Settings > UI >Custom Font and Image Scaling.
   Changes are applied when triplea is restarted.

2. Fixed html (JEditorPane) display issues in Triplea with Dark Background Look&Feel.

3. Modified Help Menu (merged with Web Menu, new About Triplea dialog with links and info relative to current dpi scaling, look&feel and font, +browse Games Notes).

4. +Map unit count display option (1: normal count, 2 AI has fog, 3 All players have fog). View menu > Unit Size to refresh.
   https://forums.triplea-game.org/post/50575

5. Right Sidebar
   Renamed Actions tab (CTRL-C) to:

*Command* 

The goal was to have a easier to find Tab with a consistent hotkey.

6. Added a zoom display (ex: 80%) to the status bar. It gets displayed when a zoom hotkey/command is used, until cleared or overwritten.

7. The Move UnitScroller starts collapsed.

Work in progress:

10. "Produce" Dialog enforces MaxBuiltPerPlayer, shows currently owned unit count in tooltip and displays Factory production capacity.

11. When you quit a game in triplea, the current players are remembered. They will only be reset to map defaults when the map is changed.

12. Debug Menu renamed Tools.

13. Modified Export.

14. +Keyboard Hotkeys Numpad +/- for zoom

15. +Hotkey: Game Menu > Hide/unhide Right Sidebar (Ctrl-X)

16. Removed buttons CTRL-B, CTRL+F from Territory Panel.

17. Some panels/dialogs are named for dev purposes, this would be hidden with a dev option in future updates.

[butterw]

v2.5.3-bu available here:
https://github.com/butterw/ui/releases/download/v2.5.3-bu/TripleA_v2.5-bu.zip

[TheDog]

@butterw
Here is what I did

Copied all of TripleA version 2.5.22294 folder to TripleA folder (as I donrt have one)

Copied your .jar file to C:\Program Files\TripleA\bin

Renamed triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar to triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar-org (to be able to return to the original if I need to)

Renamed your triplea-game-headed-2.5-bu.jar to triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar

Ran TripleA.exe from C:\Program Files\TripleA

Loaded a map/scenario

I get [Play2] [ MainPanel Quit 2] buttons so I know its your changes.

Will it work with 2.6.246 ?

[butterw]

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

@butterw
Here is what I did

Copied all of TripleA version 2.5.22294 folder to TripleA folder (as I donrt have one)

Copied your .jar file to C:\Program Files\TripleA\bin

Renamed triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar to triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar-org (to be able to return to the original if I need to)

Renamed your triplea-game-headed-2.5-bu.jar to triplea-game-headed-2.5.22294.jar

Ran TripleA.exe from C:\Program Files\TripleA

Loaded a map/scenario

I get [Play2] [ MainPanel Quit 2] buttons so I know its your changes.

Good point. You need to have an existing 2.5 or 2.6 installation/triplea folder to be able to use a .jar file (as it requires java11 and an assets folder).

On Windows, if you have used the exe installer it creates an exe launcher, in which case you can rename the jar file to match the installed version. Otherwise you can modify the provided shortcut to use your javaw.exe path (ex: "C:\Program Files\Triplea\jre\bin\javaw.exe").

There is a single html file to be added to assets to demo the "Help > browse Game Notes" command, as embedded Game Notes from v2.5 cannot be viewed in browser.

Will it work with 2.6.246 ?

Yes your method should also works with a 2.6 installation.

[TheDog]

10. Production
The < should really be ≤
Oooh and its a counter, it counts down if you bought that unit in previous turns.
Liking the Factory production capacity.

The Construction tab, could be renamed as Place Anywhere ?

5. Right Sidebar
The ideal size of the mini map/smallMap.jpg is 240 x 240 pixels or less.
See here.
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2637/standard-image-sizes

So to that end the Command/Action, Players, Resources, Territory menu bar should also be 240 pixels or less so that it stays in just one level and does not double up, as it does now. (I know we will lose the Notes and the ** of the command).

6. Map Zoom another ++Good function.

New
Can the File, View, Game, Export, Tools, Help menu fit in to the right hand panel of 240-ish pixels and its space be freed up so the main map can replace the space freed up by the File ... menu bar?

[TheDog]

@butterw
A quick test on 2.6.246, your file does load/work and the Zoom works, I shall test further.