Hi,
I see your point in term of readability Dryad and I agree with it.
What about a mixed solution:
- HP and food: a bar each at the bottom with a width proportional to
the building width that shows the percentage of remaining, as you
proposed. Maybe the bar should have a maximum width so than it remains
not too large for huge buildings but that's a detail.
- Units working and units using: for each a small icon along with two
numbers (current / requested or max), like Starcraft 2 is doing for
the workers assigned to the mineral or gas collection.
This approach splits the two types of information, the overall one
focusing on ratios on the one hand, and the precise numbers on the
other and. Also, it is extensible to additional counters.
What do you think?
cheers,
Stephane
On 29 December 2019 16:39:26 CET, address@hidden wrote:
On 2019-12-29 11:51, Stéphane Magnenat wrote:
On 28.12.19 17:35, address@hidden wrote:
Regarding bars, what do you mean proportional? Currently a bar of
length N represents N * k elements, with k being proportional to the
width, respectively the height of the bar for vertical, respectively
horizontal bars.
http://www.winterdryad.co.uk/bars.png
I mean something like this. What do you think?
Personally I prefer having bars at different locations to denote
different statistics (bottom: HP, left: food capacity/current, top:
unit assigned/working, right: unit capacity/inside), but I would be
curious what others would think. Anyone has opinion on that?
Problem is, this system is also not really scalable. What if we need a
fifth bar?
A beautiful solution would be to add the capacity as a graphic element
that is different for each building BUT you would need to change the
graphic every time you modify the stats. That would be a mess. It
creates a dependency that is not really needed.
It also feels a little boxed to have all sides occupied. What do you
think?
I have just used random colors for the bars, but the idea is to
keep
them closer together and having a width that is proportional to
the
element's one. This way it scales smoothly, because in the end we
don't have many different "sizes". Just multiples of 32 if I
remember
correctly.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by "having a width that is
proportional to the element's one". Somewhat several statistics,
such
as number of units assigned/working, are precise at one unit and it
somewhat matters for the player to see that.
But maybe there is a design that allows to have bars more together,
if
we think it is better, and still have this precision?
Problem is, as long as it is up to 4 your eyes can actually
differentiate the number, but, can you differentiate 2 pixel dots
between 7 and 8 on a straight line? I cannot really tell at a glance
if
there are 7 or 8 dots on top of the buildings, but I can say there are
5
on the right, bottom is full (even if I cannot say how many are there)
and left is almost full.
Fact is sometimes you need precision (you are right on the capacity),
sometimes you need an overview.
If I see a set of buildings on the map, I need to see which one of
them
has or not units assigned to, but I don't really care if it has 123 or
124 HP on 200. It is important to see that "hey, it has already lost
almost half of its hp, let's repair it!".
And you don't really want to select each building to read the single
stats.
Why not going for precise stats top and overview stats bot?
By proportional I mean:
Unit occupied space: 1 square
pixels per space: 32x32
full health bar length: 24 pixels (4 pixels from left, 4 pixels from
bottom)
Unit occupied space: 2 square
pixels per space: 64x64
full health bar length: 48 pixels (8 pixels from left, 8 pixels from
bottom)
Unit occupied space: 3 square
pixels per space: 96x96
full health bar length: 72 pixels (12 pixels from left, 12 pixels from
bottom)
Unit occupied space: 2 square
pixels per space: 128x128
full health bar length: 96 pixels (16 pixels from left, 16 pixels from
bottom)
It should scale pretty nicely. It is independent from gameplay, since
you can set the health (or any other arbitrary length value) of a unit
to 1200 without covering other units.
I was also thinking at some very nice animation that can be
adapted to
every building to differentiate between working ones and idle
ones.
You mean whether the building is currently doing something, such as
training unit? It seems cool indeed!
yes, that is what I was thinking. It doesn't have to be complex, but
just to understand if something is idle or not.
cheers,
Stéphane
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