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

["Morgan Jones" <morgan.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7127 >

>> Here's a redesign of the City popup screen.
 
>> Essential differences:
>> 
>> - Screen now only covers the map area (2/3 of screen) rather than
>> entire screen. This is to avoid duplication of functions with
>> elements of the main GUI. Now both are accessable at the same time.
>> 
>> -List of cities down the left side is gone as the 'Cities' page of
>> the main GUI can be used for this instead.
> 
> I'm not sure if this was a good idea. The problem is height. In your
> previous screenshot a lot of cities were visible at one time (at the
> left column). Now only 8 are visible in the city list (and this even
> with a small font).

A fair point.  I was working on an assumption that on larger screen
sizes this problem would become less and less.  However I just did a
few rough calculations and found that with larger screen sizes what
you are mainly gaining is horizontal space as increase in font size
tends to absorb much of the vertical gain.

I'll look at switching back to full screen and working the city list
back in.  It'll mean a loss of horizontal space at 640x480 but this
will be better at higher resolutions.
 
> The same problem applies to the list of available build
> targets. Counting on a game at the age of Electronic I got:
> 
> 15 improvements
> 12 units
> 15 wonders
> 
> I would really like to show them without a scrollbar. Doing the
> math: 10 pixel height per entry * 45 entries = 450 pixel height.
> This only leaves 30 pixel for decoration.

I think that at 640x480 a scroll bar is going to be pretty much
unavoidable, as each line of text (9 pt font) takes at least 11
pixels.  Larger resolution will be the only answer. 
 
Other than the vertical size issue do you have any other concerns with
layout or missing functionality?

>> I've haven't had much success experimenting with texture/colour
>> yet, at least nothing that I'd be willing to post. I'll keep at it
>> but I suspect my skills are better suited to functional layouts
>> rather than designing beautiful eye-catching GUIs.
> 
> You may want to look at Space Empires IV
> (http://www.malfador.com/se4/se4pics.html). While it has a _really_
> simple gui (only 2 colors, no 3D effects, no textures) it looks very
> nice. I think the reason for this are the small (button) images and
> the font.
> 
It also ascribes to the whole 'black is sexy' approach.  Some sort of
dark background with white/blue/green/yellow text would be more more
striking than black on grey.  I shall experiment.

And the images are nice too.  It wouldn't be hard to work image buttons
into the layout in place of the text buttons (1x6 text buttons could
be swapped with 2x3 image buttons).  It's a matter of finding/creating
nice images though.  IIRC the Deluxe tileset has some nice ones, I'll
scope them out as possibilities.

Also images are never as clearly obvious as text.  I imagine if we
switched to image buttons the FS client would have to have some sort
of help bubble system to clarify things.  Maybe you're thinking of
something like this anyway?

     -Morgan