Wishlist: Possible User Interface Improvements

[AstralWanderer]

Originally Posted by Sombre

I don't think a minimap is necessary if you zoom all the way out and use the arrow keys for scrolling.

Doesn't work well. If you zoom out, select a province and zoom in again, the zoom won't centre on that province (resulting in it going off-screen most of the time). Yes, you can use arrow keys but it is a slow process.

Originally Posted by Sombre

Also the issues caused by very large maps are fairly easily rectified by, er, not playing on such large maps.

And what is the point of having a 1,500 province capacity if it is so frustrating to use it?

Another request is with commander names. Since there are a limited number, it doesn't take long for names to be re-used which makes things awkward if you have several Generic Joes in the same province. Adding a numeric identifier (e.g. Generic Joe-2) would help but for thematic reasons, a numbering system specific to each civilisation would seem best, e.g. for the Romanesque positions we could have Lucius Flavius Unus, Lucius Flavius Duo....Lucious Flavius Viginti-et-Unus (21) and so on.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

And what is the point of having a 1,500 province capacity if it is so frustrating to use it?

And the devs might agree. But the 1500 provinces were added much much later than the interface features. So now its either play with it or dont. Its too late to build around it now. Especially if you then have to port the result to Mac and Windows machines.

Another request is with commander names. Since there are a limited number, it doesn't take long for names to be re-used which makes things awkward if you have several Generic Joes in the same province. Adding a numeric identifier (e.g. Generic Joe-2) would help but for thematic reasons, a numbering system specific to each civilisation would seem best, e.g. for the Romanesque positions we could have Lucius Flavius Unus, Lucius Flavius Duo....Lucious Flavius Viginti-et-Unus (21) and so on.

Good idea. I have the same complaint but with the provinces. I did fix it with the provinces. I went with two-word names. Such as the script for the forest provinces tacks one of these:
data "Forest", "Woods", "Copse", "Grove", "Woodlands", "Timber"
data "Timberland", "Woodlot", "Wildwood", "Thicket", "Growth"
data "Trees", "Canopy", "Maze", "Woodland", "Wood", "Forestry"
data "Wilderness", "Willows", "Oaks", "Saplings"

onto one of these:
data "Dark", "Greening", "Darkening", "Forbidden", "Gracious"
data "Elven", "Elder", "Mythical", "Growth", "Feeding", "Blue"
data "Carpenters", "Neutral", "Deep", "Nesting", "Golden"

To get names like Golden Grove, Dark Forest, Deep Thicket.

[LDiCesare]

I think commander and province names can b eimproved by just adding more to the lists.
I think a minimap would actually clutter the interface and be harmful. There's already lots of space eaten by your commanders (if you move 20 mages and their troops from one place to the next, you can't see half the screen). I also think mouse wheel + arrow keys do a fine job, and for the record dislike big maps, but I think a minimap would be harmful if it took any screen space. If you put it behinf a button, it would be ok but probably not that useful.

[lch]

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

Doesn't work well. If you zoom out, select a province and zoom in again, the zoom won't centre on that province (resulting in it going off-screen most of the time). Yes, you can use arrow keys but it is a slow process.

If you use the # key to select a province, it will center the window around the province. You can then zoom in and out of it in any way that you want.

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

And what is the point of having a 1,500 province capacity if it is so frustrating to use it?

I agree to that, the limit should be lower. There just isn't much of a point in playing such large games. The AI will be less dangerous, not more successful, the hosting times will become unbearably long very soon, and you'll eventually hit at least one of the other limits that are in the game. The game isn't designed to be played at those extremes. The minimap suggestion is good, though there are more important things that should have to change first, IMHO.

[AstralWanderer]

Originally Posted by lch

If you use the # key to select a province, it will center the window around the province. You can then zoom in and out of it in any way that you want.

Thanks for the info - but while a little easier, you still need to note the selected province number, then type it before zooming.

Just having a command to centre the map on a selected province (the C key isn't being used at the moment...) would be of benefit here.

Originally Posted by Sombre

I don't know much about nametype limitations, but you can probably just mod the basegame nametypes to include more names (I doubt they are currently at the limit, whatever it is). I wouldn't consider this hard at all to fix and maybe some others would appreciate the mod, so why not do it? I can even show you how if you'd like.

Expanding the nametypes would delay rather than fix the problem. There would really need to be a code change (not a large one hopefully) to identify when name re-use occurs and to alter subsequent ones to make them unique. Gandalf's suggestion of combining words could achieve this without having excessively long names ("Generic Joe One Hundred and Eighty Four").

A quicker fix would be to just append a numeric ID when multiple commanders with the same name are in the same province. That would suffice to avoid confusion.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

And what is the point of having a 1,500 province capacity if it is so frustrating to use it?

Well since I would personally never play on anything anywhere near that large (my absolute max would be around 400, with my preferred being about 70 provinces) I'm not about to defend it. I suppose because people requested that feature and it wasn't too difficult to raise the limit. People who play with even 750+ are a definite minority and are arguably being a bit silly, so I'm not sure why any gui changes should be made with them in mind.

Another request is with commander names. Since there are a limited number, it doesn't take long for names to be re-used which makes things awkward if you have several Generic Joes in the same province. Adding a numeric identifier (e.g. Generic Joe-2) would help but for thematic reasons, a numbering system specific to each civilisation would seem best, e.g. for the Romanesque positions we could have Lucius Flavius Unus, Lucius Flavius Duo....Lucious Flavius Viginti-et-Unus (21) and so on.

I don't know much about nametype limitations, but you can probably just mod the basegame nametypes to include more names (I doubt they are currently at the limit, whatever it is). I wouldn't consider this hard at all to fix and maybe some others would appreciate the mod, so why not do it? I can even show you how if you'd like.