Disappearing UI

[Loren]

I just stumbled upon a way to make it disappear and the game appear unresponsive.

The problem is that the pop-up box showing unit actions appears at a location some distance to the right of the cursor no matter where that would put it.

I apparently brushed the space bar. The mouse had been over on the menu on the right--there goes everything, it's on that box which is probably 2" beyond the right edge and thus entirely invisible. ESC gets things back to normal but if you don't realize what happened or don't know about the box positioning problem it could be an issue. This is probably behind some of the posts here about a vanishing UI.

That box location should be checked to ensure it's visible!

(I've hit this before when I knew I was calling up the box and thus I got out if it without thinking about it. This time I hadn't intended to call it up and it got me for a bit. A 3:45am alarm clock {inconvenient airline schedule} probably didn't help, either.)

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting. I verified that it works that way.

I doubt that its behind many of hte vanishing UI complaints. I think that most of those are pirates. But I always did feel that it was best to give benefit of the doubt. So now we have another thing to mention as a possible legal reason for the problem, along with "maybe your ID key got messed up"

Thanks.

[OmikronWarrior]

I've experienced this "bug" as well. I think what happens is the orders menu appears somewhere not on the screen. I know I see it appear so much over the margins as to be unaccessible.

[Edi]

This is common as dirt. I get it several times every turn on every game. It's no the UI itself that disappears, it's the commands menu when activated. I don't know if it's tied to the resolution used, but at 1900x1220 I get it all the time and did with 1280x1024 on my previous monitor. When I was stuck with a 1024x768 display, I never got it.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Edi

This is common as dirt. I get it several times every turn on every game. It's no the UI itself that disappears, it's the commands menu when activated. I don't know if it's tied to the resolution used, but at 1900x1220 I get it all the time and did with 1280x1024 on my previous monitor. When I was stuck with a 1024x768 display, I never got it.

The thing is, you usually have the mouse over the province you just selected.

To an experienced player it's a nothing other than when I didn't realize I had hit the space bar. To the novice it could be quite confusing.

[Edratman]

I always use 1024x768 and have never gotten it as Edi states.

[Gandalf Parker]

It seems easy enough to duplicate. Put your mouse to the far left of your Dom3 screen. Then while a commander is selected, hit the space bar. Now put the mouse in the middle and hit the space bar. Then put the mouse to the far right of the Dom3 screen and hit the space bar.

Its not really a bug. Nothing is happening that is unusual. The same things dissapear or gray-out that always have when the commands menu appears. Its just that the commands menu which would appear "in front" of everything else is off the screen.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

It seems easy enough to duplicate. Put your mouse to the far left of your Dom3 screen. Then while a commander is selected, hit the space bar. Now put the mouse in the middle and hit the space bar. Then put the mouse to the far right of the Dom3 screen and hit the space bar.

Its not really a bug. Nothing is happening that is unusual. The same things dissapear or gray-out that always have when the commands menu appears. Its just that the commands menu which would appear "in front" of everything else is off the screen.

I'm inclined to class it as a bug because the behavior is wrong enough even though it causes no actual harm if you know what happened.

The window position is somehow related to the cursor and I think the logic that's figuring it is flawed.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think the logic is Linux, and doesnt translate well to Windows. It probably does not have the same problem with Mac though so it would only affect some of the users.

[mivayan]

My bug report, Windows xp:

Using full screen:

• 640x480: pressing space bar, the window appears too low / left of the cursor. Southwest if you will.
• 800x600: perfect.
• anything higher: too far up/right. Northeast.

When I play in windowed mode, making thin/wide windows, the same holds true for the x and y axises independantly.

A: out of bounds checking to the right is imperfect - but it works correctly up/down.
B: The window placement code overcompensates for non-800x600 screen resolutions.

(should I send this somewhere?)