Achievable improvements to the Triplea User Interface

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.

butterw

I will try ≤ for the Production panel and will use it, if it works. Thanks For the suggestion. I used < because it is a standard character (always available and typically more readable).

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

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?

Seems doubtful. Different look&feels/fonts/font sizes can be used, so what you see on your screen may not be the same as what others see (ex: with HiDPi Font scaling or on a different OS).
Beyond that, putting the main toolbar in a side panel instead of the main frame is non standard, and would require extensive code modifications. So it's not just a question of whether it fits or looks OK.

EDIT: Adding an option to shorten some text displays in the interface is something I will consider.
I will try out displaying abbreviated names ex: player "BRI" instead of "British". But, maybe this simplification should be done at the map xml level instead.

TheDog

@butterw
As an aside I thought your UI was running faster than my usual 2.6.246.

So I did my standard test, see here;
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/9001
and I got 41 seconds

I thought fluke 39s
and 39s

Sadly not many people will appreciate what you have done as its about the same speed as v2.5 so they will not see the massive speed difference.

butterw

@thedog My code isn't optimized.
If your results are correct it would suggest there is a performance issue with v2.6.

TheDog

A minor formatting problem.

Above the "-Can Summon a unit" is a tooltip comes from the file tooltips.properties.

Above the unit without a tool tip.

So "currently owned:" needs a capital C ?
And catering for tool tips.

TheDog

For me its CTRL (not ALT) while Scrolling the Mouse Wheel.

TheDog

17 this is fantastic and correct, 7 Factories that can produce 2 units each and 3 Sorcerers that can produce 1 unit each, total 17.

.
A feature request.
The ability to cycle round "Production" capable Units with a CTRL+P or similar, in any phase of the game.
This would be "isFactory" units but might also include "canProduceUnits"?

butterw

Improved Production Panel

@thedog

Does adding <br> to the last entry of your tooltips.properties solve the issue (also check, if you get an empty line with regular triplea) ?
"currently owned" isn't capitalized because it's helpful for dev to know it was added to the tooltip.
The MoveHelpMenu ui was added to v2.6-pre. I need to backport my latest version to this build.
≤ looks OK.
There is currently no check on placement restriction (if applicable), so that aspect could still be improved.
Tabs of the Right-Hand side Panel could fit in a single line if the title is shortened (with the full text in the tooltip).

v2.5.31-bu patch with Win10 @100%dpi (custom scaling with font scaling%: 125)
L&F: Nimbus (Font: sansserif-15).
I've shortened the player name from Germans to GER in the map and I'm using a 24x24 pixel player flag

TheDog

Putting <br> at the end of the tooltip works, but its not common practice, so all maps with tooltips will need this adding.

Can the currently owned be placed before the tooltips?

TheDog

@butterw "There is currently no check on placement restriction"

Im not sure what the above means.

For example, in two of my maps I have placement restriction, an aircraft carrier cannot be placed or move into a river, whereas a Destroyer can.

TheDog

@butterw
I dont appear to be able to use the Battle Calculator as I used to, how do I activate it?

Also it does not detect the nations in the fight and default always to the same two.

butterw

Battle Calculator

@thedog
Battle Calculator is launched via CTRL+B or Game Menu.

I didn't intentionnally change how it works. But it's unclear what the current ways to use it are (Probably needs to be documented ?)

butterw

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

@butterw "There is currently no check on placement restriction"

Im not sure what the above means.

For example, in two of my maps I have placement restriction, an aircraft carrier cannot be placed or move into a river, whereas a Destroyer can.

Ideally, you would get a warning when you attempt to purchase more units than you are currently able to place because of placement restrictions.

butterw

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

Putting <br> at the end of the tooltip works, but its not common practice, so all maps with tooltips will need this adding.

Can the currently owned be placed before the tooltips?

putting it after the main tooltip, but before the appended properties tooltip would not be easy.
TooltipProperties.java joins the .properties tooltip and the main tooltip defined in UnitAttachment.java by toStringShortAndOnlyImportantDifferences().
It could be put before the main tooltip, which may be a better solution:

**2** Sorcerer: Type Land

TheDog

@butterw
I used to be able to hover over a territory before a battle, press ctrl+b and it would populate the Battle Calculator with the units from the territory, this does not happen now. As mentioned it does not even detect the factions involved.

TheDog

@butterw

**2** Sorcerer: Type Land

Yes that would work, as the next best alternative.

TheDog

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

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

@butterw "There is currently no check on placement restriction"

Im not sure what the above means.

For example, in two of my maps I have placement restriction, an aircraft carrier cannot be placed or move into a river, whereas a Destroyer can.

Ideally, you would get a warning when you attempt to purchase more units than you are currently able to place because of placement restrictions.

For me, I think thats a very nice to have, not a must have function.

As your time is precious, I would prefer to have the ability to cycle round "Production" capable Units with a hotkey.

butterw

As your time is precious, I would prefer to have the ability to cycle round "Production" capable Units with a hotkey.

Probably the unitScroller would be the closest thing, but I haven't looked at the code.
The issue with cycling is that it works best when the list is short (2 or 3 entries)

Alternatively, having a shortlist of favorite territories you can center the map on would be a good new feature

TheDog

Yes that is a very good alternative. Its almost the same.