Allright, so one of the items on the developers wishlist is a better UI interface so, why don't we sit down and look a bit at the issue and how to go around it, i will start out with showing my idea of how the layout should look and it's very much inspired by starcraft 2.
This is it.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/etb4lnNow. At the bottom you see the unit selection, at the left side you see numbers, these numbers are for looking at large unit selections in this unit selection it's able to have 144 unit's selected at one time. by clicking on the numbers you can see all the different unit's in your unit selection.
in the right lower side of the UI you can see unit commands (slash abilitys).
in the left lower side of the UI you can see the current selected unit's stats. (health points, amor ect.). And the minimap
the black bar's are custommizable and can be colourd/given texture whatever, much like the current overlay we have.
The space between icons and minimap and stat's are in this picture transparent but i would imagine make the backround of the lower UI would be one colour. and not transparrent.
I think this UI design is very nice, is small, makes good sense, looks modern.
The second part of the design is command hotkeys.
Command hotkeys are a key assigned to a command.
So fx, the move command of a unit could have a key named "M", so when you press M it would work like you pressed M and a location with your mouse.
The real benefit of this is not on a move command tho, but that you don't need to move the mouse down over the fx, build command but instead can move the mouse over your build location and just click "b"(in this case for the build command). And then "c"(because you are now inside the build menu and the castle have the key "c" assigned to it.).
XML-wise it would look like this.
<code>
<command>
<type value="build"/>
<name value="build_basic"/>
<image path="imagehere.png"/>
<unit-requirements/>
<upgrade-requirements/>
<move-skill value="move_skill"/>
<build-skill value="build_skill"/>
<buildings>
<building name="castle" hotkey-value="c" />
<building name="barracks" hotkey-value="b" />
<building name="farm" hotkey-value="f" />
<building name="farm_thingy" hotkey-value="t" />
</buildings>
<sound enabled="false"/>
<start-sound enabled="false"/>
<built-sound enabled="false">
<sounds-file path="something.wav"/>
</built-sound>
</command>
</code>
This could be accompanied with a small tooltip where the hotkey is defined with a small "c" and if part of the name of the unit have it light up in a yellow colour perhaps, or red or something else.
This is a picture With the tooltip, IM aware the tooltip is VERY small, It's in the lower right corner but it should be enough to give a general idea, you might have to zoom in abit.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ds9e2fI have abit more ideas, but id like to hear what other's think first.
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