Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cruxador]

Yeah those are good points. I was thinking the tool tip window would be a new window at the cursor location, but I am not sure how feasible that would be to code in.

That box could technically go anywhere though. The solution you posted would be a good option.

Based on past interviews, I would say tooltips are a very likely addition to the game. As well they should be, tooltips are a great way to provide additional information without compromising other elements of the design.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Worth nothing (moreso for the followup suggestions than the original images), red and green are probably the worst two colors to use in a thing like this, as it's the two colors people are most likely to have issues with to some degree (color blindness and such, which isn't at all uncommon).

[voliol]

Personally I like the original solution more than the ones suggested here, I don't really see the point of bigger icons when there is text explaining the item, and everyone able to read the text should also be able to "read" the icons just fine. My only qualms are the aforementioned lack of tooltips, keyboard shortcuts (I assume those are in, but not represented graphically), and distinct embark button.

Edit: ”text explaining the item” is the item name, not some sort of item description.

[Vordak]

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 3 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 4 (click to show/hide)

[Bumber]

@Vordak

I feel that adding in horizontal scrolling makes the user experience worse, not better.

[Vordak]

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 5 (click to show/hide)

[Starver]

I would suggest a sane nesting. Single column (per side, major list anyway).

Super-categories of items (expandable), like "Food"
o Sub-categories if items (expandable), like "Milk"
o o Items, like "(containers of) Cow's Milk".

The trouble being that the obvious hierarchy, the Stockpile list, is quite awful in parts.  Glob stuff, for one. Under the Meats, there's optional subdivision of source-creature then the various subtypes of (cookable) meats. Or would you prefer the other way round?  Bags could be furniture subsetted, but they are containers in non-built circumstances (and, whichever, do you subdivide bags by material, or by cloth-class then precise cloth, adding layers). What if you want to accumulate (for review, at least) items made of Steel, do you need to dig into weapons, armour, furniture, toys.. etc, all separately, or could you switch to Material-property sorting?  Before you have optional value/cost sorting.

This problem applies to multi-columned versions too (the first organisational category in multilayered drop-down collapsability could be the headers) and I don't propose this as a visualisation problem suitable for this thread, just raising it as something hovering in the background of the issue.


I'd also like to see the way this screen behaves with respect to resizing.  Already I'm unsure about the ellipsis use in the various Vordak examples (it shows that we're at a limit of easy display) yet this is an image that is already depicting a screen far wider than I can see properly on most of my desktop displays and all my other ones (despite the ultra-widescreen ratio and fairly good resolution on this tablet, I can't seem to scale it well enough).  I know the "5 plump helmet..." duplication is copypasting, but there'd be some definite cases where that truncatuon would matter IRL.

[Shonai_Dweller]

A lot of these screen layout ideas seem to assume that items are going to be given descriptions before Steam Release. While, yes, they should of course, it's a lot of work considering how much other programming stuff has to be done for the release. Has Toady indicated anywhere that he's intending on doing this?

[ror6ax]

Just voicing my concern about making a dwarf-themed clone of MS Excel here.

[Starver]

I think that's a rash comparison. Sometimes things are lined up in rows because there are things that work best in lined-up rows. As it is, it's barely tabular in a spreadsheet manner and you could say it is more Access than Excel in its nature. By then chopping up the columns and lining them up next to each other you're making it less like a spreadsheet? (Albeit a spreadsheet being used as a proxy for a database, which far too many of mine are...)

[ror6ax]

I'm just questioning the general direction this conversation is going - that being a list with collapsable sections is not enough, we need more control.
As someone mentioned before - embark screen has probably caused least amount of anguish to people.
I have zero issues with it's UX and never needed any googling to understand how it works - which cannot be said for many other DF screens.

...that is I never needed googling about what does the screen do. I did need and still need frequent trips to the wiki about properties of items on the list. AKA are llamas shearable? This problem is not unique to embark screen - at any given time of playing in both fortress mode and adventure mode a player can encounter items that they are not familiar with. Hence my ugly mockup with informational popup. Having a set properties window would work in embark screen but in the actual game you'd still need a popup of sorts.

[ror6ax]

i keep clicking quote instead of modify

[Vordak]

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 6 (click to show/hide)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 6 (click to show/hide)

By Jove, I think you've nailed it!

[Uthimienure]

Spoiler: Vordak-Number 6 (click to show/hide)

By Jove, I think you've nailed it!

Absolutely!  The embark screen doesn't need graphics.
Search & sorting functions, yes.
A line at the bottom of the screen giving a description of the currently selected item, yes.