Suggestions to improve the UI

[SlowMotion]

One of the 1.06 improvements is

"Heavy team weapons display their minimum and maximum ranges in the panel with the name, caliber, etc."

This has been very useful. I wonder if this could be somehow used for missiles used in vehicles and tanks?

[wunwinglow]

Steve, can I say I REALLY appreciate the spacebar menu addition, it has improved my playing of the game immensely, apart from all the other 1.06 tweaks. So many thanks indeed!

Wunwinglow

PS You didn't think I'd REALLY wipe SF off my hard drive, did you?!

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks As I said, it's not something we originally thought was necessary. Customer feedback convinced us otherwise, though it took us a few patches to have the time to get it in.

One thing readers of this Forum need to keep in mind... we reserve the right to determine if, when, and how to inform you about things that aren't in your hands already. If you guys review this thread you'll see that I never said we wouldn't put in the popup menu. Rather, I said why it wasn't in there to begin with and why it doesn't have to exist to play the game effectively (which was the gist of the criticism). In fact the popup was already in the game for a while and it's been on a ToDo list for an even longer time, so arguing against something I already helped make a reality would be rather silly

Short of it is Charles and I still don't get why people want it. We really do find it a hinderance rather than an aide. But hey... we don't mind there being room for disagreement and reversing ourselves when we feel it's in the best interests of the game as a whole. The initial hubris had to die down before we could assess if it would be positive. Again, some people don't like the fact that we don't immediately give them whatever they personally demand, but that's not our problem.

Steve

[Pandur]

steve,

wasnt it said once that the "unit info window"(Enter) comes maybe back!? is that somewhat right!? i picked that up some weeks or months ago.

i often wonder what "exact" capabilities a given unit has and would like to see more than the showen info, on a more "overview" like sheet(i admit, like CMx1, but it doesnt need to be the same ). now you have to read it out of the many panels and boxes.

however it could possibly make room for another row of commands, like more cover arcs, but thats another thing

[SlowMotion]

And the other part of the Info window - kill stats. I think that would be even better now in CMx2 because if you play in RT mode you can't replay the action. Usings stats it would be possible to pause the game and check the statistics window.

[M1A1TC]

Steve

Thanks for putting the pop up menu back in.

Another thing that could use your attention is the scenario selection in-game. Id like to see an ability to search/select scenarios by alpha-betical order, by size, by red vs red, blue vs blue, blue vs red, etc

Another thing that needs improving is the editor. It would be nice to be able to paint the roads, foliage, place buildings in 3D view, instead of having to switch back and forth. I have use editors in Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights, and I like the options they give vs BFC editor

[ February 09, 2008, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: M1A1TankCommander ]

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, there are a LOT of good ideas for UI improvements. That's part of our problem. We could spend months coding UI improvements at the expense of core game improvements. It's always a balancing act for us because we simply do not have time to put in everything concurrently.

I will say that a number of UI improvements will be added for the first WW2 game. One of my top personal wishes is to see casualty tracking put in. I've even got a pretty good idea of where/how to display it

Steve

[Garm]

I will say that a number of UI improvements will be added for the first WW2 game.

Is there any chance for a release in 2008? And another question concerning the engine: Will it be possible to reduce the action spots from 8x8m to, let's say, 4x4m? And are you planning to add the old quick battle system which allow the player to choose units individually? Quick battles in the old CM games were great.

Thank you for 1.06, by the way.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Garm:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I will say that a number of UI improvements will be added for the first WW2 game.

Is there any chance for a release in 2008? And another question concerning the engine: Will it be possible to reduce the action spots from 8x8m to, let's say, 4x4m? And are you planning to add the old quick battle system which allow the player to choose units individually? Quick battles in the old CM games were great.

Thank you for 1.06, by the way. </font>

[Garm]

We now have sub-action spots of 1*1m...I guess we BFC could make them bigger if you really wanted [big Grin]

No, thank you very much

I don't know why, but somehow I thought that those action spots were 8x8m. Never mind.

But the question if the WW2 game could be released this year is more interesting anyway, I guess.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Garm:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> We now have sub-action spots of 1*1m...I guess we BFC could make them bigger if you really wanted [big Grin]

No, thank you very much

I don't know why, but somehow I thought that those action spots were 8x8m. Never mind.

But the question if the WW2 game could be released this year is more interesting anyway, I guess. </font>

[Garm]

OK, thanks for the information. Well, I guess that CM:SF can also be regarded as some kind of beta test for the WW2 game

[Barleyman]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I will say that a number of UI improvements will be added for the first WW2 game. One of my top personal wishes is to see casualty tracking put in. I've even got a pretty good idea of where/how to display it

I'm not sure I'd call that much of an improvement since it's something CMx1 engine already had.

Now if you want to be NICE for all of us hard-paying customers, please take cold hard look at how to give us that click-able OOB everyone (?) seems to want.

[Battlefront.com]

Quick clarification... Action Spots are still 8x8m, however for certain LOS/LOF functions they are down to 1x1m. This refinement is made possible by the larger Action Spots, not as a replacement for it. We have no plans to reduce the Action Spots below 8x8m for the foreseeable future because of the hardware hit.

Barlleyman,

I'm not sure I'd call that much of an improvement since it's something CMx1 engine already had.

What CMx1 has or doesn't have isn't really relevant. They are two different game systems. On balance CMx2 has more features than CMx1, but that too doesn't really matter.

Now if you want to be NICE for all of us hard-paying customers, please take cold hard look at how to give us that click-able OOB everyone (?) seems to want.

Well, there is no such thing as "everyone" in this business. Even if "everyone" agreed there would probably be a wide range of strong opinions as to what the OOB should and shouldn't do. A clickable OOB is on a list for possible implementation, but it isn't at the top of our priority list. And I guarantee you that if/when it gets into the game, 90% of the people that want it will complain to some degree or another about how we implemented it. Grognards aren't called Grognards because of their ability to be happy and agreeable with what they have instead of what they picture in their heads

Steve

[ February 09, 2008, 04:59 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Pandur]

OOB;

as it was just said, i for one wouldnt see a use for this...!? i mean i am not totaly sure what it should do , but i guess it is basicly intended for persons wich cant remember what units they have!?

i mean you look around the battlefield and see your units!? why do i need a list of them in addition to the one wich should be in the briefing!?

sorry, but i dont quiet get what the OOB should bring as enhancement.

[Barleyman]

Mainly a tool to select your units, like. So they can be easily kept together in platoons and have their leader keep in touch too.

Doubles as a unit status tool..

Sort of what the previous/next unit buttons do now. Like a rock and M14 are essentially refinements of the same idea.

[ February 10, 2008, 05:06 AM: Message edited by: Barleyman ]

[Barleyman]

Speaking of improvements to the UI.

How about in-game hotkey editor finally? Feels like I've been warped back to 1992 when I have to switch keyboard to english layout to make hotkeys work. It'd help tremendously to have CMSF do this like most games that allow you to reconfigure keyboard do. When I press "ä" button, windows knows how to handle it, even if you guys do not.

Many games actually show funky internal system names for the accent keys when you assign them. Do not really bear resemblance to what the characters look like!

[CommC]

Speaking of hotkeys, is there a way to switch the space bar popup menu to the right mouse button, and put the camera control that was on the right mouse button to an alt key or the space bar?

[M1A1TC]

Right-click also de-selects a unit BTW

Did you try editing those in the text?

[CommC]

Special keys such as the alt or the mouse buttons can't be edited in the hotkeys.txt file. Is there another way to possibly edit these?

[ February 10, 2008, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: CommC ]

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, OOB would be a way of quickly getting to the exact unit you are interested in. Also, a picture (so to speak) of how your units are organized would be a good thing on its own.

Eventually there will be an ingame way to edit hotkeys. As I said somewhere in this thread (I think it was here) we sometimes take shortcuts with UI because functional is a lot quicker to implement than pretty. And when time is overbooked functional is better than nothing

We also should allow people to bind functions to the mouse. Again, it's on our list.

Steve

[Drusus]

I know this one will probably fall into "too much micromanagement" departmet, but it would be great to be able to disable / enable the use of weapons by clicking the icons of the weapons. That way it would be easy to have the sniper teams to just use the sniper rifle, RPG squads fire the RPG first, and only after that shoot with their rifles, use ATGMs with BMPs and so on. To avoid too much micromanagement, don't allow every weapon to be enabled / disabled.

[vincere]

Drusus, on the face of it that sounds like a simple and effective idea to work around a lot of issues. Could also help with ammo conservation.

[Moosegum]

Steve wrote:

One of my top personal wishes is to see casualty tracking put in. I've even got a pretty good idea of where/how to display it [/QB]

Do you mean 'casualty tracking' as in: Tracking of a unit's kills (and even losses) over whole campaigns à la Close Combat - maybe also with the possibilty of an award system...?

In other words, a modest role playing element....?

[Battlefront.com]

Druss,

That's an idea that we've kicked around already. It's suboptimal, but we do understand that some additional control for using certain weapons is necessary. So we will come up with something and, for all I know, it will look similar to what you suggested.

Moosegum,

Casualty tracking like we had in CMx1 where you click on a unit and it shows all the "kills" it racked up during the game. Awards and other stuff like that isn't what I was thinking about, but sure... in theory that sort of a system could happen.

Steve