[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7127) [FS] Screen design

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Morgan Jones wrote:

> Ok here's a new hastily thrown together layout idea.
>
> Please note that I haven't covered everything; I just wanted to see if
> this idea was worth pursuing or not.

Looks very nice! You have talent for pixel-perfect layout.

> As I said before having as much of the map visible as possible is IMO
> essential to a good layout.  I was also thinking about how it's

Yes.

> frustrating that if you want to find a city or unit you have to open
> the find city, city or military report, select the unit, click popup
> or centre or whatever and then close the dialog to see the map again
> (well unless you've got a massive screen resolution).
>
> So my proposal is that the main GUI has different pages that you can
> switch to and from without ever opening anything over top of the
> mapview.

Yes, I like this. GalCiv is more like this as well. The thing is, when
I play a game, I'm not very interested in doing janitor work managing
windows. So fixed position windows or mode screens work better.

> I've attached a picture of the GUI as it might appear on both the 'Map'
> page (minimap, current unit, etc) and a hastily put together idea of
> the 'Cities' page (i.e. the City Report).
>
> Not all reports or dialogs will work well like this, the city popup,
> the help menu, and the spaceship screen spring to mind and these would

Perhaps the city menu, but the others could work in this fashion as well.

> still have to be opened over the map.  Ideally though these would also
> be part of one big dialog/screen each on seperate page.  Some like the
> city popup page, would have subpages.
>
> The overall effect of this is that there would be only three parts to
> the entire screen:
>
> - The main GUI (see picture), which would be present all the time.
>
> - The mapview itself
>
> - A large GUI that appears on top of or replaces the mapview when
> called.
>
> Is this idea worth pursuing?

Yes, it is very nice. I am still unsure about the chatline though. Perhaps
that one would work better with a sort of translucent drop-down console
a-la Quake, with messages superimposed on the map, like in Quake. It
either uses too much space or isn't visible enough otherwise.

Quake 3 Arena superimposed text messages:
http://www.overclockers.com.au/image.php?pic=techstuff/a_q3_slayer/screen2.jpg

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa