MWIF Game Interface Design

[gridley]

Thanks for taking the time, Steve.

That looks pretty good...covers a lot of ground. With all the tools you have pointed out I feel a lot better about it. As you said earlier it was a concern for you too, looks like you have done as much as you can to alleviate it.

Gridley

[Eichenblatt]

For some screenshots/info on NRD, check posts 975, 1004 and 1021 of this thread.

For screenshots/info on NRS, check out post 1048 of this thread.

keep up the good work!

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Eichenblatt

For some screenshots/info on NRD, check posts 975, 1004 and 1021 of this thread.

For screenshots/info on NRS, check out post 1048 of this thread.

keep up the good work!

Thanks.

Something I just figured out today[8|], after 9300+ posts, is that there are 30 posts per page. So 1048 should be on page 35.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is today's latest for the screens that control the Player Interface settings.

There is a menu item in the Main form's menu bar labelled Interface. clicking on that brings up the Player Interface Settings. Clicking on the button Disable CAP by Major Power and Phase brings up the form with that heading. This lets you speed up the game (slightly) by skipping the CAP subphase for any or all of the 8 air mission phases.

If you look closely, you can see the border around the detailed map that is the automatic scroll area.

Most of the other stuff you should be able to figure out.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I am revising the Naval Review Details form (NRD). My primary goal is to enable players to pick up units from this form and place them on the map. Because all the units in a port are readily visible in the NRD, and grouped by type, this makes selecting which units to put in a task force fairly easy to do. Once selected, you move them out to a sea area (or where ever you want them to go).

But an important secondary goal for this form is to enable players to place carrier air units onto carriers and other units to be transported aboard naval units that can carry them. To do this I needed to add a high zoom picture of the selected unit - here it is the Gladiator. I am going to place it on the ASW Escort, which I will do by clicking on that unit. The Gladiator will then appear alongside the ASW Escort (and no longer appear in the rightmost column).

Sadly, to add the high zoom picture, I had to reduce the number of units visible in a column from 8 to 7 (on a small monitor: 1024 by 768). What you see here is me exploiting my larger monitor, by resizing the form vertically so 9 rows are visible.

I still ahve work to do on the functionality of this form, but the visual finished (for the moment - pending the ever possible tweak-to-improve).

[OzHawkeye2]

The "Only use Primary Monitor" option there I noticed. Does this mean support for dual-monitors? (I use 2x22" LCD's).

[micheljq]

Thanks again for the nice screenshot very interesting.

ASW carrier?

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: micheljq
ASW carrier?

An ASW Carrier is a unit that appeared in the CoiF kit, that expanded the war between the convoys and the SUBs by introducting a couple of new units types. ASW Carriers are amongst them, with the regular ASW, the Schnorkel, Walther, Milchcow & Supply SUBs, and the very fun CX (Auxiliaries Curuisers, i.e. "Raiders").

I had asked the designer of CoiF for what these counters represented, for scale purposes, and he answered me :

. 1 ASW = around 5 to 20 DD/DE/corvette type units, depending on which class & the unit's factors, etc., etc.
. 1 ASW Carrier = around 6 CVEs

[micheljq]

So you have CV - carrier, CVL - escort carrier, and ASW carrier right?

Thanks a lot.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: micheljq

So you have CV - carrier, CVL - escort carrier, and ASW carrier right?

Thanks a lot.

Not really.

CV = Carriers (examples : Akagi, Kaga, Ark Royal, Enterprise, Essex...).
CVL = Light Carriers (examples : Shoho, Eagle, Hermes, Independence, Princeton...).
ASW Carriers = Escort Carriers (CVEs)

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: OzHawkeye

The "Only use Primary Monitor" option there I noticed. Does this mean support for dual-monitors? (I use 2x22" LCD's).

Multi-monitors, not just dual. If you have 4, you can use them all (assuming that they are configured as one logical screen under Windows).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: micheljq

So you have CV - carrier, CVL - escort carrier, and ASW carrier right?

Thanks a lot.

Check out the tutorial thread on naval units. It covers this in more detail.

All the tutorials are accessible from a thread at the top of the forum. They contain the entire development process, so you might want to just skip to the posts with the interesting screen shots. Though the screenshots are slightly out of date (since I keep tweaking them from time to time), nonetheless, the threads contain at least one example of each of the 110+ pages in the tutorials.

[OzHawkeye2]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: OzHawkeye

The "Only use Primary Monitor" option there I noticed. Does this mean support for dual-monitors? (I use 2x22" LCD's).

Multi-monitors, not just dual. If you have 4, you can use them all (assuming that they are configured as one logical screen under Windows).

That's excellent news. I have a third and fourth monitor I can connect and that'd be quite fun playing it like that.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is what the aftermath of an air-to-air cmobat looks like.

At teh bottom are all the units that particiapted in the combat and received a result. Only one unit was destroyed, and 3 of the 4 bombers (their range numbers are in gray) that were cleared through did so because all the US fighters had been destroyed or aborted. There is a list of the odds, die rolls, and results in the little table. That's so players can bemoan their bad luck, supported by statistics.

The second screen shot shows the result of those 4 bombers trying to ground strike the Australian motorized infantry. Now I bet you are wondering why so much air power was expended, by both sides, on such an insignificant task/goal. Well, I had asked the beta testers to hammer away at ground strikes, in particular testing how well the code worked for carrier air units performing those missions.

[bredsjomagnus]

It´s always nice with screenshots but...
 
...why is there only three bombers under "Axis bombers (attacking)"? Isn´t there a BN51 with range 4 missing? Or was it cleared through and put aside?

[Froonp]

Also, what is the "AX PX" result that the little table show for a die result of 18 ?
Is "PX" meaning "pilot destroyed" ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: bredsjomagnus

It´s always nice with screenshots but...

...why is there only three bombers under "Axis bombers (attacking)"? Isn´t there a BN51 with range 4 missing? Or was it cleared through and put aside?

The Axis units shown above where still available for combat when the last Allied/US air unit was aborted. The list at the bottom shows all the units that had a die roll result (chronologically from left to right; the first two units were aborted in the first round of the combat) + the bombers that were cleared through because the last enemy fighter was removed (in this case it was aborted).

The 3 bombers you see above as 'attacking' are also shown below (perhaps I should only show them at the bottom, but some information would be lost if I did). The 'missing' bomber had been cleared thruogh earlier - in the third round of combat, die roll of 11, DC result.
---
Patrice, the PX does mean that the pilot was killed.

[gridley]

If you click the [OK - Done] button while you still have fighters and bombers, does that abort the mission?

In Netplay would the CW, USA, and Japanese all have this screen on thier monitor?

By the way, excellent screen.[:)]

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The list at the bottom shows all the units that had a die roll result (chronologically from left to right; the first two units were aborted in the first round of the combat)

Just a remark here.
The order shown in the form above is not really chonologic.

First the Axis rolls a 9 which achieve a DA result on the Allies. The allies then choose to abort their F4F-4.
Next the Allied rolls a 5 which achieve an AA result on the Axis. The allies then choose to abort the Axis A6M6.
etc...

In the list of counters, if it was really chronological, you'd see the US CVP before the Japanese CVP, they are reversed.

I know that the rolls are considered simultaneous, so in reality, both the F4F-4 and the A6M6 were aborted simultaneously, but since you display them sequencially in the small table above, maybe it would be good to show them sequencially inthe bottom display in the same order as in the table.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The list at the bottom shows all the units that had a die roll result (chronologically from left to right; the first two units were aborted in the first round of the combat)

Just a remark here.
The order shown in the form above is not really chonologic.

First the Axis rolls a 9 which achieve a DA result on the Allies. The allies then choose to abort their F4F-4.
Next the Allied rolls a 5 which achieve an AA result on the Axis. The allies then choose to abort the Axis A6M6.
etc...

In the list of counters, if it was really chronological, you'd see the US CVP before the Japanese CVP, they are reversed.

I know that the rolls are considered simultaneous, so in reality, both the F4F-4 and the A6M6 were aborted simultaneously, but since you display them sequencially in the small table above, maybe it would be good to show them sequencially inthe bottom display in the same order as in the table.

I think that there is a problem with the bottom list.
You say that it is displayed chronologically, but this would mean that when the Axis rolled a 18 and got an AX + PX, that they chose the crappy F3F ? This is not true, as the F3F is shown as Aborted. The only unit that is destroyed is the SBD-3, so it must be the unit that the Japanese have chosen. It is far from its chronological position then. It is displayed at the 6th place, when it was destroyed during the second round on the Axis roll. So it should be at the 3rd place, shouldn't it ?