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Re: UI: Enhance impassable terrain/damage indicator display

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 12:43:32 +0200, Jens Granseuer <jensgr@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On 02.07.2005 23:55, Andrej Krivulčík wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:18:56 +0200, Jens Granseuer <jensgr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> The red dot may actually work nicely in combination with shading IMO.

I haven't actually seen it either way but the way it is now the water
tiles are a bit confusing (for example in the troopships' info window --
the darkened shallow water looks like normal deep water (which isn't in
the window) and the deeper water is lighter than it)...


You have a point there. Attached is a shot to compare both versions.
It's pretty obvious the shading doesn't work too well.


I like the not-shaded version more. How about the others?


> What I like about the current design is
> * needs no labels/additional description/whatnot

This is true but the player also doesn't have any information which could
come handy sometimes. If there would be a row of movement points for the
terrains under the terrain images, there wouldn't have to be too many
extra elements (like "Movement" or something like this) and just few notes
in the tutorial mission and manual. 

That gets us back to what we want to display. If it's just movement
points, then you're right. If it's combat modifiers, too, then probably
not.

It looks like the movement cost will suffice. As the terrain modifiers are the same for each unit, it would be redundant to show them in each unit's window.


Another possibility would be to display the movement cost and/or combat
bonuses in the lower left-hand corner (where the shop/unit names are
shown) when clear terrain is selected. This way the player would have just
the information he needs (me thinks)... 

Nice idea, but it won't work, I think. You will often (mostly?) want to
know what the modifiers are for terrain you or your enemy is standing on.
We could of course always show the info, but that way i feel the bar will
get more in the way than it helps, since after you've played a few
times, you probably won't need the information much anymore.

How about implementing a help system? It would comprise of a window with a menu (with entries Units, Terrain, maybe some general game information, Combat, ...) and a submenu for each menu entry (or just some entries pop out). This would almost certainly raise information accesibility because reading 'man crimson' is a step further than just kicking in the game and selecting Game Info or Help or whatever...

Andrej