Top Panel UI Opinion

[manowar]

The issue here refers to showing the ceasefire timer to players who do not use the dev overlay timers. This and a few things I noticed myself have prompted me to make some changes in a mod that possibly should be considered for the core game. Specifically:

Issues:

1. The game version text on the top panel takes too much real estate in-game
2. There is no ceasefire feedback to players not using the game time overlay
3. It is not easy to identify if Wonder Win or Regicide is active - I have seen this determine matches

Actions:

1. Move the game version info to an About page available in-game freeing space on the top panel
2. Add color and countdown status to the diplomacy icon 
3. Enhance the Match Settings icon to give feedback about Wonder Win and Regicide 

I'll post some screenshots in comments below this for discussion.

[manowar]

A potential About page in-match:

Diplomacy ceasefire indicators:

• No color overlay = normal match attack mode
• Green overlay - ceasefire in operation hover shows time remaining
• Orange overlay - ceasefire will end with 1 minute
• Red overlay - ceasefire will end within 20 seconds - get outta Dodge! 

The text below highlighted is what would be moved to the 'About' page to save space:

Edited Tuesday at 11:07 by manowar

[manowar]

Match Settings indicator:

• Could show time remaining for wonder win when hovering (as this is sometimes lost in the center notification area with other messages)
• Red when an opponent will win with Wonder
• Green when your team will win with Wonder
• Yellow when no wonder has been built yet
• Magenta when regicide is enabled

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:57 by manowar

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The About page and moving that info from the top ribbon to that page is now a must have for me. Good job on that. Let's make a PR for it!

About the color overlays: I'd much rather just have a visible timer like any other RTS in existence. The color overlays are a neat idea, but not intuitive at all. 

[Stan`]

On 26/08/2026 at 4:45 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The About page and moving that info from the top ribbon to that page is now a must have for me. Good job on that. Let's make a PR for it!

My only grief with that is that any screenshot sent to us will no longer give us that information

[manowar]

Good point. Maybe the build number should be in the screenshot file name ?

[Stan`]

13 minutes ago, manowar said:

Good point. Maybe the build number should be in the screenshot file name ?

Can't really enforce that, also, applies to streaming too

[guerringuerrin]

Perhaps it could be kept in a shortened form with just the most important information.
For example: r-0.28.0, a2cae

[manowar]

My opinion is that it doesn't add to game play so that makes it superfluous. It doesn't appear on various other screens (lobby, loading). The onus should be on the users to feedback the version info from the About page. 

The built-in screenshots could be amended with the version info in source/renderer/Renderer.cpp:795 e.g.

  const VfsPath filenameFormat{
  	L"screenshots/screenshot-" + wstring_from_utf8(PS_VERSION) + L"-%04d.png"};

So that would output:

  screenshot-0.29.0-0001.png

 

[manowar]

PR is here: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/9172

[Stan`]

9 minutes ago, manowar said:

It doesn't appear on various other screens (lobby, loading)

It appears on the main two, which are the menu and the game  My experience with additional steps is that nobody follows them, look at all the incomplete bug reports copying text that tell them to do extra steps

Edit for screenshots, on macOS I ussually don't use the ingame tool cause I have no clue where the images are gonna be

[manowar]

IMHO these are not strong enough reasons to avoid making the game better. With an About dialog we could have a facility to send a bug reports from inside the game or take and send screenshots ;-) Assuming we could create a service on the other end for receiving them.  

[Obelix]

Over at Gitea, some minutes ago @fabio argued against the removal of the version and build information, too. I support fabio and @Stan`s take, that it would be a regression. Indeed it doesn't add value to gameplay but to game development.

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, manowar said:

IMHO these are not strong enough reasons to avoid making the game better. With an About dialog we could have a facility to send a bug reports from inside the game or take and send screenshots ;-) Assuming we could create a service on the other end for receiving them.  

That means more legal work, data processing and stuff;

[manowar]

ok clearly I am on a different page. I'll close the PR but I don't think the desires of the developers outweigh the players. I can't think of any other software that needs the version info up front for user screenshots.