Star Wars Rebellion 2: Path to Power

[steel]

Sorry about the incoherent last post. Was all over the place.

 

Anyway I could try having a drop down system which has a list of all your planets, from there if it has shipyards or facilities I could add another menuwindow allows you to open the production dialog for either ships, facilities or troops. Only if the system had production capabilities would it be shown and then only the relevant subsystem that has a production type and isnt currently producing.

 

eg

 

Kuat - Ship Building

- Troop Training

Coruscant - Facility Construction

Hoth - Troop Training

Yavin - Facility Construction

- Troop Training

- Ship Building

 

This would hopefully reduce the need to find individual planets and open up their production windows.

 

Thought on that process?

[Callahan]

I once had a very simple rebellion minigame of my own.

 

I had some fixed buttons on my interface that not only openend a prod window but also cycled it throug all available systems if you hit that button again. The button also had a number on it to show the # of sectors with idle facilities of a given type.

 

While it was a clickfest to get to a specific system that way, it was quite simple to keep them all producing.

 

A system like that could be convenient.

[Serrera]

Just started playing rebellion again, i searched the internet for other players and found this plattform.

And up to this point from what i have read i really hope you get your project running.

 

The last times i played rebellion in a big galacxy, i really got lost in: where i produced what at which time...

So as a sugestion: would it be possible to implement a seperate overview of all shipyards, barraks and factories, with name of the planet , product in list, destination, sugested production time. (my idea would be really simliar to the overview menu in Civ IV)

 

So far to "just adding some ideas", i would offer my help if you would like to implement a third party (like the Yuuzhan Vong). While i have little expierence in game-design, i have some major coding skills and so know what is possible to create and implement and won't just fool around with stupid and impossible ideas.

[steel]

The project has a fairly solid base.

 

I could certainly add more simple information in the form of idle facilities and what not.

 

I think I could implement something along the lines of Civ4's city builder. It probably wouldnt be that hard and would give you a quick overview of your owned starsystems. I actually really like that idea and will try and add an overview of systems soonish so people can have a look.

 

I will have to have a think about how to go about changing up production.

 

With regards to the implementing yuuzhan Vong idea, I do have an editor which would allow you to create your own team as such. Then its simply a matter of getting together the required models and textures that would be part of that.

[budious]

Sorry about the incoherent last post. Was all over the place.

 

Anyway I could try having a drop down system which has a list of all your planets, from there if it has shipyards or facilities I could add another menuwindow allows you to open the production dialog for either ships, facilities or troops. Only if the system had production capabilities would it be shown and then only the relevant subsystem that has a production type and isnt currently producing.

 

eg

 

Kuat - Ship Building

- Troop Training

Coruscant - Facility Construction

Hoth - Troop Training

Yavin - Facility Construction

- Troop Training

- Ship Building

 

This would hopefully reduce the need to find individual planets and open up their production windows.

 

Thought on that process?

 

Well anything to simplify the process. I was thinking of having a primary system finder menu, varying options on how to sort, alphabetical by system name, sort by sector then by name, or custom sort (drag system name icon to order systems to preference in menu). From there, when you hover a particular system name, a submenu rolls out to the side, this menu would quickly collapse back to the main system finder menu when the mouse focus leaves the panel. Within the submenu, provide a row of tabs at the top for characters, troops, ships, structures, production. This type of system would bring all the available system windows into a single menu system for faster logical access. For navigating the submenu, support for mouse button 4/5 and left/right arrows on keyboard could also allow faster system scrolling. I borrow this design concept from Birth of the Federation which is the equivalent of Rebellion from the Star Trek gaming catalog.

[goryani]

Sorry about the incoherent last post. Was all over the place.

 

Anyway I could try having a drop down system which has a list of all your planets, from there if it has shipyards or facilities I could add another menuwindow allows you to open the production dialog for either ships, facilities or troops. Only if the system had production capabilities would it be shown and then only the relevant subsystem that has a production type and isnt currently producing.

 

eg

 

Kuat - Ship Building

- Troop Training

Coruscant - Facility Construction

Hoth - Troop Training

Yavin - Facility Construction

- Troop Training

- Ship Building

 

This would hopefully reduce the need to find individual planets and open up their production windows.

 

Thought on that process?

 

I see two problems with your recent screen shot and this new idea:

1. All the windows and their contents lead me to believe this design is as much a click fest as the original.

2. The windows are about 10 times larger than they need to be.

 

In the original game, if I wanted to build something in a construction yard, I took the following actions:

• click on Galactic Information Display Icon
  hover over Manufacturing to enable a popout menu
  click Idle Construction Yards to display some information icons on the game map
  click on a sector where one of the information icons was located
  click on the manufacturing plant icon next to the planet where one of the information icons was located
  right click on the "Facilities Under Construction" area of the newly opened window
  click build
  click on the "Items to Build" arrow icon
  click-n-drag the scroll bar to move the scrolling window to the desired location
  click the building you want built
  click on the "Done" checkmark

 

Getting the information icons to display on the map should take 1 click or hotkey, not 3.

If you can display an informational icon, you can click the informational icon to go straight to the build window (1 click instead of 4)

A hotkey system will let you press one button to choose which building to build (1 button press instead of 3 clicks)

The "Done" checkmark is superfluous and should be eliminated or disabled as a user option.

 

The original 11 button click fest can be reduced to a svelte 2 or 3. Issues such as number of buildings to build and destination location still exist, so not all actions will take 3 button presses, but saving 8 or more per action is badly needed.

 

Your design can still reach the magical 2 or 3 clicks.

 

For starters, shrink the size of the windows. A Lot. Get the "Production Dialog" window down to the size of a black box in the "Coruscant Build Dialog" window. It can be done. The compact windows will give you extreme flexibility in UI design. It will be worth it.

 

Next, give each window easy access. One click/button to open. One click/button to close. No unnecessary clicks/buttons to complete the dialogs.

 

If Corellia has a shipyard, show a tiny shipyard icon somewhere on the star map next to the planet. There is enough dead space. Clicking or hovering over that icon will open up the shipyard production "window." I use window loosely because it will be much much smaller than it is currently. It may help to think of it as a popup rather than a window. This window/popup will be about the same size as a black box in the "Coruscant Build Dialog" window is now. As I said earlier, it should appear when clicking on the little shipyard icon next to a planet and disappear when you finish the build dialog or move/click your mouse off the popup. The contents of the popup should be mostly controllable through keyboard shortcuts (destination is the only exception). If you don't want to have the popup appear over the planet, you can have it appear in some corner instead, but having it appear over the planet makes it much easier to tell which planet the production popup belongs to.

[steel]

Okay. I have been investigating other 4X titles to see how they do it and see if I can use some ideas or some similar things to incorporate and make it all a bit easier on the user.

 

First of all, I plan to have the GUI add an additional 4 buttons along the top bar which will also be hot-keyable. These 4 buttons will be System Overview and Management, Fleet Overview and Management, Character Overview and Management, and the Map Overview.

• Map overview will show a map similar to the original Rebellion where you can see all systems on the map with the varying stars. I will try and add the overlays so you can check where concentrations of units and buildings are, diplomacy, etc etc
  
• System Overview and Management will give a tabled list of the systems you control with a a brief overview of the planet( facilities used/max, whats being built, other relevant information) Ill make it so you can open the planet dialog from this overview window or even just the production dialog.
  
• Fleet overviews will be similar. Ill make it so you can open the Fleet windows for fleets from here
  
• Character overviews will be similar. Ill make it so you can open the planet windows for the characters chosen. I will also make you able to cancel missions or set adm/gen/comm from the screen.

I will do away with the two windows for Build and Unit dialog and convert them into a single window where you get your planet overview and buildables, as well as show the different units.

 

In reply to goryani, you certainly gave me some ideas to think about. Doing away with the second production dialog will allow me to move the fleet icon to the top left. Then I can add 3 mini-icons for each planet in a semi-circle from top to the right. These mini icons would be displayed if a planet has those particular facilities and was idle. Will also be easy enough to implement opening the production window from there as well. I think you will have to click on/off these icons as there will be so many that you will forever be accidently opening and closing them though.

 

I will experiment with making all my UI smaller and more appropriate as well. I didn't see it before but I do now.

 

On a more personal note, your post is full of arrogance and I find it slightly inappropriate. I greatly appreciate being given direction when it comes to improvements and I cannot wait to see it come to fruition and see people playing my game. However, I have put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of learning, practicing, testing, coding, and re-coding. The majority of it solo. I am not a coder by profession nor in any form of game development so it hasn't been an easy slog. yThere are some pure impossibilities you what ou suggest (11 interactions to 2-3 is just impossible, shrinking my GUI down to 15% of size) and it doesn't help me to give unrealistic design goals. Its not an easy process to just draw what I need. The Build Dialog alone is around 940 lines of code and it requires lots of work to get going.

 

Thoughts and Comments are welcome however I need to make a decision in the next day or two so I can resume the project? I cant really just sit around waiting for brilliant and/or perfect ideas to show up to implement.

[goryani]

Like many others, I find some aspects of SW:R's original design to be less than ideal. Some aspects are oft repeated (click fest) but not often in great detail (11 clicks vs. 3 clicks). Other aspects are more nebulous (too many windows) and offering no concrete alternatives.

 

I was attempting to not only share my opinion, but to do so in a manner that gives alternatives. In short, I was trying to give constructive criticism rather than criticism. If I came across as arrogant, I apologize.

 

At the risk of sounding even more arrogant, I respectfully disagree with your characterization that my ideas are pure impossibilities.

 

Getting down to a magical 2 clicks to build a ship may require design decisions you aren't comfortable with or programming you aren't yet familiar with, but it is possible. Having a clickable shipyard icon around the planet will save several interactions. Letting hotkeys such as 'X' select the X-Wing will save several interactions. Those two suggestions will cut the number of interactions in half and add very little to the overall complexity. Other shortcuts can be made to further reduce the number of interactions but may involve more complex coding (highlighted/flashing/pulsing/situational icons) or design decisions you may not like (pressing the 'X' hotkey as above will not only select the X-Wing but also press the build button). The size of the galaxy will determine if you can get down to the 2-3 range as opposed to the 4-5 range without on-Hover programming trickery.

 

The window size comment I made was brusque and lacking enough detail to be useful. I will join you in flogging myself for my poor execution. I told you to make your windows smaller but I didn't mention the secret recipe for doing so. I don't have a problem with the size of the elements in your UI. I have a problem with SW:R including most of those elements in the first place.

 

Look at the Production Dialog window. There are only 2 critical elements in that window: the unit selector and the quantity selector. Even the quantity selector is optional if you really think about it. That entire window exists to give a home to an 18 pixel by 200 pixel unit selector. Both selectors plus a few convenient, small, square buttons (close, build, more info) will fit into something the size of the 160x125 pixel black box in the Coruscant Build Dialog window. The elements of the old Production Dialog window no longer in the new window will be moved to a newly created "More Info" window that appears when the More Info button is pressed and will look much like it does now.

 

Other windows can undergo similar scrutiny. In SW:R, the Production Dialog window does not appear until you right click or double click on the appropriate icon on the Coruscant Build Dialog window. In other words, the Coruscant Build Dialog window exists to hold the buttons that open the various Production Dialog windows. If you follow the suggestion of changing those buttons into icons around the planet on the main map, the Coruscant Build Dialog window can be completely revamped if not removed entirely. The mines and refineries tab can be accessed through the pez icons. The important aspects of the overview tab (destination and a progress bar) are both small enough to be placed on the individual compact Production Dialog window. Other info such as the Jedi tab (I'm curious!) or the rest of the info on the Overview tab can still be accessed through the normal method of double clicking on the planet icon.

[steel]

Considering your options, I can easily implement the production icons. Hotkeys for the different types aren't feasible as the game is based around being able to edit all the different units. The code isn't locked in so someone who wanted to add in the e-wing, would have no hotkey and then just be forced to resume the old way of doing things.

 

I will look at replacing alot of the useless information that is replicated throughout the system and create a Rebcyclopedia style rather than displaying the unit costs/upkeep in each window.

 

Perhaps adding a small popup on hover of these mini-icons of the different build facilities will show what is being built,progress and destination? Double clicking will obviously open the production dialog

 

If your interested, since your close to the only person who has given helpful ideas on how to implement the UI, would you be interested in testing out the UI after I have made the changes?

If so, email at aaron.mijatovic@gmail.com at Ill get a build out to you once its been coded up.

[steel]

What about a design style similar to the game, Sword of the Stars?

 

http://yfrog.com/jpdesignideap

 

Instead of having windows for planets you have a sidebar associated with a currently selected planet. This can show the current important aspects such as fleets in orbit and characters as well current builds and important information. The only problem I could see would select missions against other units? Anyone else see a problem with it?

[steel]

Ive also quickly put together another idea with g-mans ideas put in practice. its not complete but i just wanted to get a little feedback as well.

 

http://yfrog.com/nganotherpreviewattemptp

 

The build and unit dialogs are now combined. I have finished updating the build dialog but both facilitiy and troop will be in place obviously when it is done. There will be 4 buttons at the top. I just quickly put those together that will bring up a fullscreen overview of the different parts(planets, universe, characters, fleets).

 

Those 3 icons on the top right of planets will either highlight if not active or be dull if producing. Hover over that icon, and it will bring up a popup build dialog which I havent re-made yet.

 

Thoughts and ideas please?

[Callahan]

I think this will improve the overview over your systems assets and productions. I like it.

 

I experimented a bit with interface ideas and tested combining keyboard input with cursor position.

 

ESC will close the window the cursor is in, ~ key below will minimize it. So you do not have to go to the close button each time and become faster.

 

If DEL is hit while hovering over some unit/building icon - like the system asset icons in my test interface graphic below - it will scrap 1 item each time without confirmation dialogue.

 

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/548/testaa.png

 

May this be useable to increase UI speed ?

[goryani]

What about a design style similar to the game, Sword of the Stars?

 

http://yfrog.com/jpdesignideap

 

Instead of having windows for planets you have a sidebar associated with a currently selected planet. This can show the current important aspects such as fleets in orbit and characters as well current builds and important information. The only problem I could see would select missions against other units? Anyone else see a problem with it?

 

I don't see other problems besides selecting the target of a mission.

 

Do you follow the SW:R design of requiring the source and destination to both be visible before starting a command? Breaking that design rule will let you fix the problem of missions against other units. If that isn't feasible, then perhaps two sidebars will suffice. One sidebar can be for friendly planets while the second sidebar can be for enemy/neutral planets. I can't think of any mission in which you need sidebars for two friendly planets or for two enemy/neutral planets.

 

Ive also quickly put together another idea with g-mans ideas put in practice. its not complete but i just wanted to get a little feedback as well.

 

http://yfrog.com/nganotherpreviewattemptp

 

The build and unit dialogs are now combined. I have finished updating the build dialog but both facilitiy and troop will be in place obviously when it is done. There will be 4 buttons at the top. I just quickly put those together that will bring up a fullscreen overview of the different parts(planets, universe, characters, fleets).

 

Those 3 icons on the top right of planets will either highlight if not active or be dull if producing. Hover over that icon, and it will bring up a popup build dialog which I havent re-made yet.

 

Thoughts and ideas please?

 

Looks like a good iteration. I'm assuming that the appropriate icon isn't visible until a production building exists. What type of hover? I originally said click or hover can open the production windows, but I now think that hovering won't end up working so well. "Instant open on hover" will be too much like whack-a-mole. Delayed hover probably won't be an improvement over simple clicking. Conditional hovering will be fantastic in some situations, like choosing the target of a mission, but may introduce too much complexity.

 

Other thoughts:

The new troop icons are nice - better visibility and contrast.

 

What are the white lines going from planet to planet or from planet to UI element?

 

I notice you don't have the energy/mine bars under the planets. Is that because you don't want them or because they aren't implemented yet?

[steel]

The icon will be dulled if active, lit up if not active, and not there if the production building doesnt exist

 

Energy and Facility bars havent been implemented partially because im unsure whether to include or not. The only one way i can think of implementing them is rather expensive draw wise though I havent put any serious thought into it.

 

Conditional hovering isnt hard to implement depending on the conditions.

 

The white lines are a change from the original rebellion. No longer is there a jump anywhere approach. Each system has neighbors and you will have to travel through them to reach destinations. I might consider removing this approach if it doesnt work well but I would like to try the idea first.

 

As to Callahans idea, the overview will be tabulated much like Civ4's city overview. You will see all the important details in the table and be able to access the build screen from there, perhaps a jump to button to move the camera and anything else that comes to mind

[Slocket]

Those three button areas (upper right hand side corner) in the original Reb1 would show your or enemy fleets. Are you going to display what fleets are above a planet somewhere or somehow else?

 

Are you going with the money/credit system and no more resources/mines/refineries?

[steel]

Ive removed the build GUI and integrated it with the unit GUI. Fleet Icons have been moved to the upper left as I find the 3 buttons to be more aesthetically pleasing at top right vs top left. They do not represent fleets but they represent a quicker way to view what is being built, or not built. Hence the talk about highlighted icons a few posts back.

 

For the sake of simplicity, I am going with a simple money/credit system AT this stage. I do not see a bigger benefit towards using resources/mines however If there is cause to change it, I am not adverse to the idea.

[Slocket]

I thought that mines/refineries were a way to cripple the Empire by the Alliance economically. If ships have a maintenance cost and material to produce them. That is the only thing off hand for the mines and refineries, economic sabotage. Else, ditch them for now. I do not think people really worried about them that much in the original game...

 

It does simplify the coding to leave that out for now, maybe replaced with something else more esoteric to accomplish economic sabotage -such as blowing up one of the Empires precious ISD ships, or shipyard.

 

Planet population, planet bonus, popularity, control, population happiness, and length of ownership could form a basis for credits.

[steel]

Rather than maintenance points, upkeep will be taken directly from your credit bank. Income from "refineries" will go straight into that bank as well.

 

At the moment only the planets number of refinerys will change upkeep, though I could easily add modifiers that change that should it become neccessary. Or even additional income based on those attributes you mentioned.

[steel]

Currently upgrading to XNA4/.NET4. Its not an easy process but Im pretty close to finishing the upgrade. Have it compiling and running, but now I have to fix out all the bugs that were introduced with the upgrade. And then retest everything. Joy

 

its been a slow fortnight as I have been incredibly busy with university. I had some help from a couple of guys recently and I would like to thank Pranay for helping with the units he gave me, Callahan for his help in creating a playable universe and Ben for giving me some ideas and help in using shaders.

 

So I have a week off from university coming up so hopefully I will get a fair chunk of Rebwork done then. There is CivV coming out though

[steel]

Hey guys,

 

Been a slow slog these last two weeks. The upgrade to XNA4 is NOT going as planned and certainly wasn't an easy process. Created quite a few problems and additional bugs that I have to fix as I go along. Ive been told that XNA4 adds in quite a few useful things and makes things much simpler for those trying to play the game so for that reason, I went ahead and upgraded.

 

Hopefully in the next week or so, I will be back on track and making additions/upgrades to the program.

[Timoteo]

I'd like to offer myself to this project for moral support, testing, and design suggestions.

[murph]

I've been lurking for more years than I'd care to mention as I don't have anything of value to contribute, however I do hope sometime you (or someone else) are able to give us a Reb 2. Best of luck and keep motivated.[list=]

[steel]

Latest update:

 

XNA4 upgrade complete. Working on some performance enhancements because its not the fastest design out however can't really do a full performance test till everything is in.

 

To Timoteo, Ive sent you a PM .

 

And thanks for the support murph. Depending on my increasingly busy schedule, I hope to have at least some form of game out by years end.

[steel]

Completed a few of the GUI's I need such as Main Build, Production Dialog, and Production Popups.

 

Need to complete these few thousand more:

- Battle

- Message/MessageManager

- Mission

- Fleets

- Characters

- System/Character/Fleet overviews

- Probably missed a few in there.

 

Currently taking a break from production of GUI's and concentrating in creating a workable QuadTree for rendering and collision detection to increase frame-rates and make it far more scalable. GUI work is generally unfun and involves many numbers so its good to get out and work on actual algorithms for a while.

[Slocket]

You have done a lot of work. I hope you can get it finished some time. It is a bigger game than I thought to program. You are the one to succeed where no one else has. I seen how much code is written on the web site. That is quite a bit of programming.

 

My project version went into game limbo...I do not know if it will ever be completed. I used a simple language and I am paying the cost now it as it became bigger. I only know that simpler language. It was made to do simple things fast. For large games such as Rebellion, a person must use a real, more difficult language that requires a real education.