Improve unit stat visualization

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Nescio said:

The left selection panel also hosts formations and stances, as well as barter (when a market is selected).

Indeed. @badosu do u even play bro?  

[badosu]

40 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Indeed. @badosu do u even play bro?  

Nope, not for the last 3 months, too busy playing BAR.

I like modding tho.

Formation for single unit would be interesting to not display

[badosu]

Reason why the window (right click info view) UI feels clunky is because there's a shared template viewer for all templates, regardless if unit, structure or technologies.

https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/master/binaries/data/mods/public/gui/reference/viewer/ViewerPage.js#L151-L164

Seems straightforward to handle units separately.

Edited January 10, 2021 by badosu

[Stan`]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

SHOOT ME NOW

Hyrule went for Full HD only and now they have to teach everyone how to change their gui.scale

 

[Nescio]

20 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Hyrule went for Full HD only and now they have to teach everyone how to change their gui.scale

@Angen wrote a patch to allow changing it from within the game: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3037

It probably could use @bb_'s graphics options clean up: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3034

And some small gui patches I wrote and would appreciate feedback on:

• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2247
• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2568
• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2985
• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3268
• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3295
• https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3311

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

36 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Hyrule went for Full HD only and now they have to teach everyone how to change their gui.scale

 

I think if we went to a minimum resolution of 720p then you'd have 200+ more horizontal pixels to work with. 

Anyway, here are a couple simple ideas for GUI changes:

 

Spoiler

This one has the benefit of snapping together at 1024x768 resolution, but then spreading apart at higher resolution. It's also the simplest to implement.

 

 

 

Spoiler

The commands panels can be separated out on this one (stances separated from formations, etc.) so that they can be condensed on top of the info panel. These command panels can then show up or not show up based on the selected object. If an object has no production queue or upgrade component, then the production panel wouldn't show up (for a tree or hero for instance). This one you can increase the size of the Info panel in the corner if you wish to show more stuff (the topic of this thread).

 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[nifa]

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

And some small gui patches I wrote and would appreciate feedback on:

i like the ideas

One could also show the specific gather rate near to the cursor, when you hover over a tree, a mine, an animal or a field?

Or even show a specific attack chance near the cursor (eg. calculated from pierce attack of the attacker vs pierce defense of the enemy unit), when hovering over an enemy unit?

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, nifa said:

One could also show the specific gather rate near to the cursor, when you hover over a tree, a mine, an animal or a field?

Or even show a specific attack chance near the cursor (eg. calculated from pierce attack of the attacker vs pierce defense of the enemy unit), when hovering over an enemy unit?

I'm pretty sure I wrote a patch for that earlier in this thread, or perhaps in another thread. IMO it's definitely a better way forward. Show information that's relevant contextually, not just 'show information'.

 

[badosu]

4 hours ago, nifa said:

i like the ideas

I particularly like the minimap on the left, though moving the other panels to the right feels weird, might be better with the center real estate exposed, but feels harder to access.

Edited January 10, 2021 by badosu

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, badosu said:

I particularly like the minimap on the left, though moving the other panels to the right feels weird, might be better with the center real estate exposed, but feels harder to access.

I actually like the HUD being centered. It keeps all the info I need right there in the middle of the screen. I felt some eye strain shifting my eyes from corner to corner with the edited versions. 

[hyperion]

Also there are 21:9 monitors, so the corners might really be far off.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, badosu said:

I particularly like the minimap on the left, though moving the other panels to the right feels weird, might be better with the center real estate exposed, but feels harder to access.

 

Perhaps a minimap button that makes the minimap big, lol:

Edited January 11, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Nani did that.

[nifa]

Would be nice to have buttons "next" and "previous" to jump to the stats of the next unit; 

instead of closing the window, selecting the next unit and opening the window again

A button to change the unit's rank that is displayed would be awesome too

Edited January 25, 2021 by nifa

[wraitii]

I've started a mod: https://github.com/wraitii/ui_mod / https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3472

So far i've begun with the selection details:

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I've never needed to see a bunch of number stats in the HUD, so I don't like it (I am a stark minority apparently). And I don't like moving the command buttons into the production panel.  You can add a Ui like this to the game because a lot of people will like it for some reason, but I'll do my best to mod DE and get the current UI back, as DE focuses on unit roles instead of stats.  

[wraitii]

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I've never needed to see a bunch of number stats in the HUD, so I don't like it (I am a stark minority apparently). 

I think it also comes down to what the gameplay is. 0 A.D. EA is currently more similar to AoE, so a more similar UI makes sense IMO.

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

[...]

Fair point, I'm willing to generate some discussion on this too.

I intend the implementation to be somewhat flexible, so you could somewhat easily mod the top-right icons to show the unit roles, IMO.

[nifa]

I like it

The icons are not really self-expressing, but I get it's WIP. The Attack stat is calculated like (Crush+hack+pierce):Interval right? I think it get's it wrong sometimes when there are multiple attack parameters

The command icons are bigger now, but i guess it's because of the building menu. they should be more distinguished from each other

59 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

And I don't like moving the command buttons into the production panel. 

[hyperion]

Why limit yourself to the current panels? Putting preselect actions into a separate one probably beats stuffing them into the right panel which is already overloaded for different purposes. As they all have a hotkey attached it might even be desirable to have a menu option to not display said panel at all.

About numbers, there are to many for them to be listed all. So except for the most important and dynamic ones like resource carried the rest is probably better hidden behind a redirection like a tooltip or pop-up menu and the gained space used for other things or given back to the viewport.

[wraitii]

5 hours ago, nifa said:

The Attack stat is calculated like (Crush+hack+pierce):Interval right? I think it get's it wrong sometimes when there are multiple attack parameters

Yes, that's one big potential issue: how to handle multiple attacks? I guess in 0 A.D. proper it's unlikely to be a very large problem (we'll probably have most units have just one attack).

(and yeah icons are obviously placeholders to an extent)

5 hours ago, nifa said:

The problem with that is that you don't really have room for the capture bar and the resource bar (or at least not all three bars), and several of our unit names are quite long, and simply wouldn't fit.

3 hours ago, hyperion said:

Putting preselect actions into a separate one probably beats stuffing them into the right panel which is already overloaded for different purposes.

One problem is that our minimum supported resolution is 1024 × 768, which doesn't really leave much more room. The UI is already big at those scales. I am considering moving the commands to another panel for wider screens, e.g. maybe to the right of the buildings, where you don't risk misclicking them so much.
I think they should remain (possibly optionally) visible though, because beginners won't necessarily know about them.

3 hours ago, hyperion said:

About numbers, there are to many for them to be listed all. So except for the most important and dynamic ones like resource carried the rest is probably better hidden behind a redirection like a tooltip or pop-up menu and the gained space used for other things or given back to the viewport.

Yes, but there is debate regarding what a "key number" is and isn't. I think we could also make it an option. My approach above is a trade-off, it shows _something_ instead of nothing (Armour in particular is important, because HP really isn't the end of the story).

I think there is an argument to make that this acts as a tutorial: it shows new players what information is important. Those that care can always look into the details. Further, this will help us declutter the tooltips, possibly making it easier to read the relevant information when you need.

[hyperion]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

One problem is that our minimum supported resolution is 1024 × 768, which doesn't really leave much more room. The UI is already big at those scales. I am considering moving the commands to another panel for wider screens, e.g. maybe to the right of the buildings, where you don't risk misclicking them so much.
I think they should remain (possibly optionally) visible though, because beginners won't necessarily know about them.

The right panel is currently 10x4 icons and could be changed to auto collapse if not enough space to 4x1 each of the 4 opening a submenu - preselect, build, research, train. Not saying this is the best solution but at least the room argument would no longer work.

I fully agree with you that the preselect actions should be available via gui by default in some way.

About the resolution of 1024 × 768, the last time I bought one of those monitors was in the 90'. Rather than absolute pixel one should consider screen format a primary concern and have properly working scaling in place.

 

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

Yes, but there is debate regarding what a "key number" is and isn't. I think we could also make it an option. My approach above is a trade-off, it shows _something_ instead of nothing (Armour in particular is important, because HP really isn't the end of the story).

Armour are currently 5 values - hack, pierce, crush, fire, poison

Worse for attack, even without weapon switching - hack, pierce, crush, fire dmg, fire interval, fire duration, poison dmg, poison interval, poison duration, range, attack interval, counter boni

This obviously won't reasonably fit. My take, instead of showing half the truth better to not show at all.

 

2 hours ago, wraitii said:

I think there is an argument to make that this acts as a tutorial: it shows new players what information is important. Those that care can always look into the details. Further, this will help us declutter the tooltips, possibly making it easier to read the relevant information when you need.

For beginners I'd say those numbers are rather useless. Far better to have a page which roughly tells in prosa which unit to use for what purpose. Numbers only start to matter once you can play somewhat competitive and have a good understanding how those numbers interact, but by then you likely already know them by heart.

I know there is no definitive answer how to go about it and I appreciate that you take the time thinking about how to improve the current situation which is tedious and difficult to say the least.

[soloooy0]

8 hours ago, nifa said:

I like it

The icons are not really self-expressing, but I get it's WIP. The Attack stat is calculated like (Crush+hack+pierce):Interval right? I think it get's it wrong sometimes when there are multiple attack parameters

 

I would like to see it as you say

[wraitii]

19 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Not saying this is the best solution but at least the room argument would no longer work.

I don't disagree, but it's more complicated to implement .

As for the resolution, this is just what we support right now. I haven't seen stats lately on what our users are doing, so I'm going with that for the time being. That being said, I think we could afford to enlarge the centre panel based on resolution, to fit more things.

Quote

For beginners I'd say those numbers are rather useless. Far better to have a page which roughly tells in prosa which unit to use for what purpose.

Assuming that people read tutorials is not necessarily a good idea, unfortunately.
This also eases in players that come from Age of Empires, which we might want to consider since Age 2 is absolutely thriving right now.

Quote

Numbers only start to matter once you can play somewhat competitive and have a good understanding how those numbers interact, but by then you likely already know them by heart.

Except that this lets you check quickly if your opponent has researched technologies, which you probably want to know.
Further, it will make it possible to have tooltips on attacks / armour specifically, which probably will make them more readable.

Overall, I think the current strategy takes too much space for what it does. Either we basically remove everything, because what's the point (even health bars are already on the map itself, and the icon / names are completely dispensable, all in all), or we try to show some more stuff.

I draw inspiration from other games, because I haven't really done the research, and they have, and for example Age of Empires 3, for its Definitive Edition, removed the 'click to see stats' interface and just put them on the unit directly: https://static.ageofempires.com/aoe/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Definitive_100_Musketeer-2048x1152.jpg

Overall, I would like to go for easier modulability, more flexibility with perhaps options.

[nifa]

 

1 hour ago, hyperion said:

Armour are currently 5 values - hack, pierce, crush, fire, poison

Worse for attack, even without weapon switching - hack, pierce, crush, fire dmg, fire interval, fire duration, poison dmg, poison interval, poison duration, range, attack interval, counter boni

This obviously won't reasonably fit. My take, instead of showing half the truth better to not show at all.

About what stats to show:

I like wratii's approach, merging the attack stats into one and showing the kind of attack (h/p/c) with an icon.

I've been playing for some time now and still can't remember the stats. I'm playing just for fun, so it's a nice to have the approx strength of a unit with one glance.

Displaying fire, poison and counter bonis is impossible, but that's the same for hero bonusses etc too. Therefor there is the viewpage. Maybe it's possible to add icons for those without the number, so you know there's something you might wanna look up.

The only stats that I'm kind of missing are the gather rates. Also I like the idea to make it look familiar to players from other RTS games.

What would you think about putting the command icons in a vertical column like that? Optional on the other side

(Of course they need to be turned around, i just was too lazy :D)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

Except that this lets you check quickly if your opponent has researched technologies, which you probably want to know.
Further, it will make it possible to have tooltips on attacks / armour specifically, which probably will make them more readable.

Okay, I'll bite. So, you click on an enemy Spearman and see that his attack is now +1. What will you do differently that you wouldn't before this knowledge? Invest in more armor? But you'd want to do that anyway.