Gui suggestions

[Ishmaru]

Hi i've been playing/ modding Glest since version 2.00 and I always wanted to see more development into the in game interface, but there has yet to have been any real changes since then. Here are some suggestions that you may want to implement into GAE. It would help graphically improve Glest, and give it a more finalized look.

Personally I Don't like the Glest ring health counter, its hard to read exactly how much health a unit has. I think that a more traditional health bar, on either the side or the top would be more effective at displaying hp for units. The same could be said about the blue EP counter as well. You could use a tga as a border to the health bar that matches the faction's theme.

Another thing is that most RTS have a border around the main interface points (radar, resources, and unit selection box) Currently Glest just have those things just placed on the screen. I think a tga that be placed on the screen would be the simplest way to incorporate this.

An example of what I mean:

http://static.computergames.ro/cg/assassin/images3/ra3/ra3-097.jpg

This is just my opinion though but I really thinK this would help Glest. Thanks for reading.

[Idanwin]

Yeah, you're right about the hp/mp bars. I noticed that too.
Maybe they should stay circles, but the circles should get shorter.

[John.d.h]

In regards to the GUI and how to possibly deal with micromanagement and excessive clicking, etc., I direct your attention to the following thread:

https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4186.0

While Modman is right, it's still a major pain in the ass sometimes to have to micromanage so much.  It's really the only thing I hate about most RTS games.  That's why I prefer games that have a "build menu", instead of having to select the individual worker and then telling him what to build.  This would also be handy because it would save the trouble of scrolling over to the worker and scrolling back over to where you want the building to be.  It's a lot easier to just say "I want a Barracks right here", and then have it automatically send out a worker to construct it.  Also, clicking on a gold mine and telling it to assign five workers, which the castle would automatically build, would streamline things.  One of the things I like about Star Trek Armada --I've suggested this before-- is that the units have two stances that make them somewhat automated: Recon (which makes the unit fly around revealing more of the map) and Search&Destroy (which makes the unit fly around and destroy things).  For me, scouting is one of the most tedious parts of an RTS and it takes away from your ability to build up an adequate base --since you're too focused on ordering around your scout-- and these two stances help a lot.  Besides, the AI can build up a base and do recon at the same time, so why can't I?  While I'm not suggesting a drastic overhaul of the engine or anything, and you could still do everything the old way if you wanted to (I don't believe in sacrificing control for the sake of convenience), a few extra features could improve the gameplay a lot in this area.

• Be able to build buildings, research technologies, and recruit units without selecting a unit/building first
• Select a resource and pick how many workers should be assigned to it
• Automated scouting

[hailstone]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm currently working on integrating Crazy Eddy's GUI library which is highly skinnable. So you will be able to have borders. These changes will be usable in the 0.3 branch.

[daniel.santos]

Thanks for posting Ishmaru & Idanwin.  I think Ishmaru's suggestions will be addressed with the new GUI that hailstone is working on.

As far as the HP/mana bar, I like the basic idea, but I have other issues with it and the current implementation.  If you're standing on an incline, you'll notice that part of the circle will be non-visible because it overlaps with the ground.  If we used the declining ring idea with the current rendering mechanism, it could render the relevant portion of the HP or mana bar invisible due to this problem.  I'm considering an approach similar to shadows where the ring paints onto the landscape if it's below ground in any given place (basically, an inverse of how shadows are drawn, because we're going up instead of down) as a means to make visible portions of this ring that become invisible due to this problem.  This would make Idanwin's idea feasible as well.  Either way, I don't have a serious problem with the current ring, maybe in the future a config option can specify how HPs, mana and locally stored resources can be displayed (or if they are displayed at all).  Perhaps another solution to make Idanwin's idea work is to always have the start/end of the ring facing the camera.

One thing that's on the 0.3 agenda is adding lines to the selection icons that show the health of each unit you have selected (along with being able to select more than 16 units at once).

[Idanwin]

I know the solution, cut the bar in half (a half circle) which is always on the visible side!
I think that would solve it.

[daniel.santos]

Remember that you can move the camera around virtually any way you want to now (just hold down the middle mouse button and drag), so I don't think I like the half circle idea really.

[wciow]

I agree. No need to change the current health indicators. I actually think they work quite well, at a glance you can see which units are selected and how much health/ep each unit has. As Daniel pointed out, as long as at least part of the units ring is visible you can tell it health status.