SE V demo Interface

[Makinus]

First impressions of SEVdemo:

What i liked:
- The need to survey new systems (i simply found kind of strange in SEIV that your scouts scanned instantly all the system, with all the data of every planet and so on)...
- The 3D view... i know that a lot of people are complaining about it, and the difficulties of managing the view, but i found it not so hard and i think it gives a more epic feel to the game (this don´t mean that the interface should not be improved, as there is room for a lot of improvements in the UI)...
- The tactical combat, both in space and ground combat, and the moddeling of units in combat individually instead of stacks (one of my main gripes in SEIV).
- The way that research is handled, i find it much more realistic, and easier to manage than SEIV scheme.


What i didn´t like:
- Vehicle Design, i find the interface too clunky, with too much unecessary clicking, and i can see at least 2 improvements in the UI that would be simple and reduce a lot of clicking (see in suggestions below).
- Empire flags: even when small they obscure too much, while they are bearable in the 3D view, they are horrible in the 2D view, obscuring the planets nearly completely.
- Events display, maybe it´s only me, but i found the SEIV event display much more advanced, and i think the SEV events are too huge screen wise.

Suggestions:
- In Vehicle Design, when viewing a component, eliminate the need for the player to click the "Close" button to close the information of the component, allow the player to simply click the information screen again to close it. This should be applied to all static screens, i.e. all screens that the player don´t need to choose anything...
- In Vehicle Design, when you choose a component to put in a design, keep the mouse with that component after putting the first one in the design, only changing the component when the player chooses another one in the component list, this would make putting multiple components of the same type quicker.
- Events Display: reduce the size of each event, maybe with smaller icons, as the icons and not the message is what is occupying most of the screen.

I´m still playing around the demo (didn´t reach the turn limit yet) and will probably have more commentaries, but for now the major problem is the UI and not the game itself, aasi´m finding a much more advanced game than SEIV, but with a worse UI, as the majority of the people are finding too.

Just to add my 0,02 cents...

[Captain Kwok]

Makinus said:- In Vehicle Design, when viewing a component, eliminate the need for the player to click the "Close" button to close the information of the component, allow the player to simply click the information screen again to close it. This should be applied to all static screens, i.e. all screens that the player don´t need to choose anything...
- In Vehicle Design, when you choose a component to put in a design, keep the mouse with that component after putting the first one in the design, only changing the component when the player chooses another one in the component list, this would make putting multiple components of the same type quicker.
- Events Display: reduce the size of each event, maybe with smaller icons, as the icons and not the message is what is occupying most of the screen.

These ideas already exist: Use ESC to close the windows quickly, shift+click allows for adding multiple components, and the log/event pics can be made smaller/none by clicking on the column header (which also works for the list screens as well).

[Makinus]

Cool, i´ll try playing some more, i dind´t knew about these options...

I should play some more before suggesting things that are already there...

[Raapys]

Still, they should probably be the default mouse functions, instead of requiring the assistance of the keyboard.

[Captain Kwok]

Most of the windows are moveable (click on the blue name box at the top of the window to move it around) so having a mouse-click close the window might not be the best idea. And plus I don't know of any program that uses windows that close when you click on them either.

[AMF]

Wait, I couldn't move the three windows in the main screen (quadrant, items list, and orders). I've pointedly suggested that to MM, but are you implying we can actually do that in the full (non-demo) version of the game?

Thanks,

AMF

[Phoenix-D]

Its actually not that uncommon for info-only windows Kwok.

[Phoenix-D]

No, I think he means the pop-up windows.

BTW, what resolution is everyone running in? I'm begining to think some of my non-annoyance at the UI comes from the fact that I'm using a 19' LCD and running the game at 1280x1024..

[Captain Kwok]

Phoenix-D said:
No, I think he means the pop-up windows.

BTW, what resolution is everyone running in? I'm begining to think some of my non-annoyance at the UI comes from the fact that I'm using a 19' LCD and running the game at 1280x1024..

I'm sure that helps. The screenshots I posted at my website are at 1024x768 and they are a lot more cluttered than my default mode of play which is 1280x960...

[Phoenix-D]

-peeks-

Ok, yeah, I can see that now. The UI elements stay the same size, meaning the smaller your resolution the less you can see of everything else. :/

I was *wondering* why there was so much space between UI elements..