[apoger]

>Dom1 feels like it lets me move around in it faster?

It does. I know the fanboys will throw a fit for me saying this, but Dom1 had a better interface in some ways.

There a a bunch of very simple GUI issues that really make a difference.

As an example:

The "Triangle" between the characters, army button, and province commands.

These are the functions that players access most often.

In Dom1 the characters are on the left side, the army button just above, and the province commands in the center. This formed an interface triangle about half the size of the screen.

In Dom2 the characters are on the left side, the army button is on the right, and the province commands are on top/center. This interface triangle is the size of the whole screen.

This means that players must mouse-move over a vastly larger distance while issuing commands. I know that many will comment that it's a trivial distance, and they'd be right. However it becomes and issue when the motions/clicks need to be done repetitively. Since these motions are repeated hundreds if not thousands of times, as an aggragate, this is a heck of a lot of extra movement.

It's my opinion that all the commonly used buttons should have been placed as close as possible in order to make the interface sharp.

Frankly there are many other small issues with the interface. I honestly don't think I can get IllWinter to change things. I'll be happy (delighted) if I can get them to fix the replays so we can control the speed again.

However as long as I'm on my soapbox...

As long as we are displaying icons in the top/center province box that represent the types of dominion scales, why the heck do we need to "mouse over" to get the amount of scale associated? How about just putting in a number next to the icon showing the +1 +2 or +3? Or put 1-3 dots under the icon. Or make the icons come in three sizes (small/medium/large/). Or three different levels of transparancy. Why go through the effort to bring us those very useful visual icons and leave out half the info... forcing a mouse over? Argh!

Along the same lines, everything we need to know about a province is in the top/center province box on the main screen... except one thing. The only info of consequence missing is the number/type of enemy troops. For that we need to go through the extra layer of interface and either hit the "province info" button or keystroke "i". Why? As long as we have all the rest of the needed info on the main screen, how hard would it have been to squeeze in a single line of small text saying "50 Hostiles, mostly archers, lead by a Manticore"? Then we could skip the whole extra screen and save the players zillions of province checking keystrokes. It adds up!


Sorry for the rant. It just gets me heated when I see such a massively awesome product getting the short stick over some simple interface issues.

[ December 30, 2003, 00:10: Message edited by: apoger ]