MWIF Game Interface Design

[c92nichj]

ORIGINAL: rtamesis

I prefer having moveable Tool Bars whose visibility can be toggled from a Windows dropdown menu from the Menu bar, again like what you can find in Adobe apps like Illustrator or Photoshop. That way, if the player has a lot of screen real estate, eg. Apple's 30 inch LCD monitor, then he or she can position it anywhere they find it more convenient. Just set the default position to the left for novices and give more experienced players the option to reposition it anywhere they like.

You may also want to consider the idea of being able to dock different windows and palettes into the right side of the screen to form tabs as a way of hiding them and reducing screen clutter while still making them easily available to the player.

I wouldn't spend any uneccesary time coding toolbars, instead focusing on the gamea nad playability.

[Froonp]

There is the perennial problem of gearing up production. Germany wants to have a lot of armor and infantry to invade Russia. Russia wants a ton of infantry to stop the invasion.

Maybe you could type inside the production sheet of a given turn the Gear up you want to reach on that turn.
That way, the program would prompt you to built units of that type during previous production phases (previous turns) if you forget to built sufficiently.
This need arises when building the US Navy for example, and you want to reach 4 or 5 for the gearing limit in ships in ND to be able to build the 5-6 CV arriving next turn.

One thing I also do while playing WiF is : "I want to built all the ARM before that date", or "I want to build as many SUBs per turn (or spend 2 BP on SUBs every turn)".

The program could be able to emulate that behavior too.

[Mziln]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Mziln

OPPORTUNITIES

Oil and Other resources sitting on the docks for lack of convoys. Especialy Burma and Netherland East Indies if your the Commonwealth.

What number of resources (Oil and Other) are using what ports.

Would you want to know about the convoy routing as well? Or is that unimportant during production?

I thought about convoy routes when I made the post. This could be solved by a A/B entry ont the existing convoy route. Where A would equal avalable convoys and B loaded convoys.

This could also be done with resources at ports A would be available resources (oil and other) and B cargo being shipped.

This is just a quick and dirty idea.

[Greyshaft]

PLANNING
I would be able to save and load my Scenario Start production sequence so after I built it I could use it in other games. I could swap my “perfect” plan with other players for them to laugh and offer suggestions. I could swap out plans halfway through the game so I can switch from the “Conquer the World” plan to the “Festung Europa” build plan whenever I wanted.

I could specify that I wanted a particular force (say 2 CV, 3 SCS, 2 AMPH, 1 MAR, 1 INF + 2 dive bombers + 2 pilot available) in a defined port by turn ‘x’ and the units would be built and deployed there by that time. They would be flagged in some way so I didn’t inadvertently move the early arrivers out for some other operation – I could if I wanted to but it shouldn’t happen by accident. I could also specify the force and ask the system to tell me the earliest date it could be produced.

This kind of production could be allocated a % or fixed amount of my production. Say in the last three turns I made 14,15 & 14 PP and I figure that number won’t change much for the foreseeable future. I could allocate 10 PP to this fixed production and I would use the rest of the PP on whatever seemed good at the time.

ADVISOR
If I didn’t have a fixed plan the system would look at my available PP and offer 3-4 alternative builds (carrier heavy v. air heavy v. land heavy v. sub heavy v. whatever) and I could select one of them for this turn and tweak it as desired.

GEARING
Production should advise re: gearing limits so that if I produce 2 SUBS this turn the system would advise that I can keep that production going for ‘y’ turns. System should auto-advise if there will be a production drop up to (say) 3 turns in future eg. “if you build 4 ARM this turn, then in two turns you will waste ‘z’ PP because you will only have 1 ARM left to build and no other unit type can pick up the production slack’. This logic obviously can’t account for future battle casualties so it would be merely advisory.

ANALYSIS
Even with FOW I could analyse the enemy production. Eg. as an allied player I would auto count his units in contact with allied forces (therefore visible to me) and realise that last turn I counted 8 ARM but this turn I can only count 3… better get ready to defend against his next offensive. Or maybe as the CW I encountered 4 subs this turn and I know I’ve sunk 6 since the war begun so if I add that to the other units I have encountered then I’m still missing 12 PP from his plans. Maybe he did lay down the other battleship?

Important to be able to map all unit categories with losses against launches so at any point I can compare my current total on-map forces with my forces at start of game/ 1 month ago/3 months ago and see trends (INF up 3, SUBs up 2, FTR down 2, CV up 1)

On the note of FOW (I know you won’t like this one) how about revealing units which have been overflown by my units on any air missions “Hey… is that a Panzer down there?”

I'm not looking to get into the movable toolbar debate in a big way but if you do decide to do it then have a look at the way Lotus implemented their Properties Box. It's movable around the screen and comes in two sizes for when you still want it there but want to shrink it. The tabbed interface allows a lot of information (and action buttons) within a small space. I think its overkill for MWiF but you may as well see it before you dicard the idea.

[Froonp]

If you're interested, I did make a PDF file containing most of the dialogs from Steve's post. It is here : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/froon/Transfert ... ialogs.zip
Best Regards

I've updated the file with nearly all the missing dialog boxes from CWiF for your perusal in attempting to make the Game Interface better.
It is quite complete now, and I think I'll let it this way. I either not found the dialogs that are not in the file, or I've not understood what they were.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

PLANNING
I would be able to save and load my Scenario Start production sequence so after I built it I could use it in other games. I could swap my “perfect” plan with other players for them to laugh and offer suggestions. I could swap out plans halfway through the game so I can switch from the “Conquer the World” plan to the “Festung Europa” build plan whenever I wanted.

I could specify that I wanted a particular force (say 2 CV, 3 SCS, 2 AMPH, 1 MAR, 1 INF + 2 dive bombers + 2 pilot available) in a defined port by turn ‘x’ and the units would be built and deployed there by that time. They would be flagged in some way so I didn’t inadvertently move the early arrivers out for some other operation – I could if I wanted to but it shouldn’t happen by accident. I could also specify the force and ask the system to tell me the earliest date it could be produced.

This kind of production could be allocated a % or fixed amount of my production. Say in the last three turns I made 14,15 & 14 PP and I figure that number won’t change much for the foreseeable future. I could allocate 10 PP to this fixed production and I would use the rest of the PP on whatever seemed good at the time.

ADVISOR
If I didn’t have a fixed plan the system would look at my available PP and offer 3-4 alternative builds (carrier heavy v. air heavy v. land heavy v. sub heavy v. whatever) and I could select one of them for this turn and tweak it as desired.

GEARING
Production should advise re: gearing limits so that if I produce 2 SUBS this turn the system would advise that I can keep that production going for ‘y’ turns. System should auto-advise if there will be a production drop up to (say) 3 turns in future eg. “if you build 4 ARM this turn, then in two turns you will waste ‘z’ PP because you will only have 1 ARM left to build and no other unit type can pick up the production slack’. This logic obviously can’t account for future battle casualties so it would be merely advisory.

ANALYSIS
Even with FOW I could analyse the enemy production. Eg. as an allied player I would auto count his units in contact with allied forces (therefore visible to me) and realise that last turn I counted 8 ARM but this turn I can only count 3… better get ready to defend against his next offensive. Or maybe as the CW I encountered 4 subs this turn and I know I’ve sunk 6 since the war begun so if I add that to the other units I have encountered then I’m still missing 12 PP from his plans. Maybe he did lay down the other battleship?

Important to be able to map all unit categories with losses against launches so at any point I can compare my current total on-map forces with my forces at start of game/ 1 month ago/3 months ago and see trends (INF up 3, SUBs up 2, FTR down 2, CV up 1)

On the note of FOW (I know you won’t like this one) how about revealing units which have been overflown by my units on any air missions “Hey… is that a Panzer down there?”

These are good ideas. It will take me some time to digest them.

I can comment that the fog of war you are envisioning is different from what I see for MWIF. This was discussed before somewhere but I can't seem to track down the discussion. As I understand it, you see fog of war as only being able to see enemy units in the front line (e.g., in a ZOC). I proposed this very early on (it was suggested to me by David Heath) and was chastised by several people who had very good reasons why it was inappropriate for WIF.

The alternative fog of war, that the forum members liked, was what Chris used in CWIF. You can see all the units on the map - their hex or sea box locations - but for enemy units you can only see their types, not their combat values. Essentially, all the numbers and names on enemy units are blank.

[doctormm]

Things that I think about when building (or would like to see in MWiF), that I haven't seen mentioned already -

Targetted gearing -
For instance, I want a gearing of 9 ships for J/F 1941. It would be nice to have something that reminds me in J/A 1940 that I need to build at least 6 ships.

ATR for PARA -
If I've got a PARA built, it would be nice to have a reminder to build an ATR.

Pilot indicator -
A count that sums the number of pilots on the pilot track and build spiral, and deducts the number of AC on the spiral (i.e., shows me how many pilots I need to build to crew the planes I've built).

Must builds -
I'd like to be able to tag units so that whenever they're in my force pools, they're highlighted for building (i.e, ENG, MAR, Essex class CVs).

[Froonp]

I also would like to have an indication about the average CP units I am losing each turn, and also about how many CP I have at sea, and how many I have in ports.

Best Regards

Patrice

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

I also would like to have an indication about the average CP units I am losing each turn, and also about how many CP I have at sea, and how many I have in ports.

Taking several posts as a group, I think I can state that we would like to know a history of our losses and current strengths for anything that we might want to build. (N'est ce pas?)

[Froonp]

Taking several posts as a group, I think I can state that we would like to know a history of our losses and current strengths for anything that we might want to build. (N'est ce pas?)

Exactement !

[VonLobo]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

PLANNING
I would be able to save and load my Scenario Start production sequence so after I built it I could use it in other games. I could swap my “perfect” plan with other players for them to laugh and offer suggestions. I could swap out plans halfway through the game so I can switch from the “Conquer the World” plan to the “Festung Europa” build plan whenever I wanted.

I could specify that I wanted a particular force (say 2 CV, 3 SCS, 2 AMPH, 1 MAR, 1 INF + 2 dive bombers + 2 pilot available) in a defined port by turn ‘x’ and the units would be built and deployed there by that time. They would be flagged in some way so I didn’t inadvertently move the early arrivers out for some other operation – I could if I wanted to but it shouldn’t happen by accident. I could also specify the force and ask the system to tell me the earliest date it could be produced.

This kind of production could be allocated a % or fixed amount of my production. Say in the last three turns I made 14,15 & 14 PP and I figure that number won’t change much for the foreseeable future. I could allocate 10 PP to this fixed production and I would use the rest of the PP on whatever seemed good at the time.

ADVISOR
If I didn’t have a fixed plan the system would look at my available PP and offer 3-4 alternative builds (carrier heavy v. air heavy v. land heavy v. sub heavy v. whatever) and I could select one of them for this turn and tweak it as desired.

GEARING
Production should advise re: gearing limits so that if I produce 2 SUBS this turn the system would advise that I can keep that production going for ‘y’ turns. System should auto-advise if there will be a production drop up to (say) 3 turns in future eg. “if you build 4 ARM this turn, then in two turns you will waste ‘z’ PP because you will only have 1 ARM left to build and no other unit type can pick up the production slack’. This logic obviously can’t account for future battle casualties so it would be merely advisory.

ANALYSIS
Even with FOW I could analyse the enemy production. Eg. as an allied player I would auto count his units in contact with allied forces (therefore visible to me) and realise that last turn I counted 8 ARM but this turn I can only count 3… better get ready to defend against his next offensive. Or maybe as the CW I encountered 4 subs this turn and I know I’ve sunk 6 since the war begun so if I add that to the other units I have encountered then I’m still missing 12 PP from his plans. Maybe he did lay down the other battleship?

Important to be able to map all unit categories with losses against launches so at any point I can compare my current total on-map forces with my forces at start of game/ 1 month ago/3 months ago and see trends (INF up 3, SUBs up 2, FTR down 2, CV up 1)

On the note of FOW (I know you won’t like this one) how about revealing units which have been overflown by my units on any air missions “Hey… is that a Panzer down there?”

I'm not looking to get into the movable toolbar debate in a big way but if you do decide to do it then have a look at the way Lotus implemented their Properties Box. It's movable around the screen and comes in two sizes for when you still want it there but want to shrink it. The tabbed interface allows a lot of information (and action buttons) within a small space. I think its overkill for MWiF but you may as well see it before you dicard the idea.

How about a Production Planning program outside the MWIF game itself that raeds the current Production from the game files and lets you play what if I do this..., and lets you preplan your production. It could do gearing forcast. Also let you post notes to yourself in the main MWIF program for your production phase as to what you would like to build and when.

Just a thought.

Vonlobo

[rtamesis]

Here's a little minor suggestion on the game interface. I'd like to see a little visual indicator that tells me at a glance which of my units have already been moved or initiated combat during my turn like a change in the tint or shading of the unit's counter, such as from dark gray to a lighter shade of gray or vice versa. That way, I won't forget to make it do something. When you're dealing with a lot of units, it's very easy to forget and not realize it until it's too late.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: rtamesis
Here's a little minor suggestion on the game interface. I'd like to see a little visual indicator that tells me at a glance which of my units have already been moved or initiated combat during my turn like a change in the tint or shading of the unit's counter, such as from dark gray to a lighter shade of gray or vice versa. That way, I won't forget to make it do something. When you're dealing with a lot of units, it's very easy to forget and not realize it until it's too late.

Yes, this is always a concern. The design of CWIF which I like and intend to keep (perhaps with some modification) is to have 6 small boxes above each unit. The boxes are 1/6 the width of the unit and half as high as they are wide - they are small! The colors of the 6 boxes indicate the unit's status. For instance, one box indicates when a unit is disrupted, others are for whether it has moved, has been committed to an attack, is out of supply, and so on. The boxes are maintain dynamically so if you move a HQ away from a unit such that the unit is out of supply, the unit's little box changes color. Move the HQ back and the unit's box for supply status changes color back again.

During each phase, the units that can do something in that phase are also given a light green frame. Those are the units you have left to move. If you have already moved a unit, then the color of its frame is changed. This not only lets you know which units you have moved, it also lets you know that you can undo those moves if you want to.

I intend to add the ability to filter which units are shown on the screen so that you only see those that can participate in the phase. For example, those that are capable of strategic bombing and can reach a viable enemy target. There are some details to this I have to think through. It isn't clear to me how best to display all the units you would want to see when you are planning ground support: your tactical bombers, enemy land unit targets, possible enemy interceptors, and your own fighters that can fly escort.

[Froonp]

Yes, this is always a concern. The design of CWIF which I like and intend to keep (perhaps with some modification) is to have 6 small boxes above each unit. The boxes are 1/6 the width of the unit and half as high as they are wide - they are small! The colors of the 6 boxes indicate the unit's status. For instance, one box indicates when a unit is disrupted, others are for whether it has moved, has been committed to an attack, is out of supply, and so on. The boxes are maintain dynamically so if you move a HQ away from a unit such that the unit is out of supply, the unit's little box changes color. Move the HQ back and the unit's box for supply status changes color back again.

Better a picture that a long speech.
Steve, if you feel it breaks the non disclosure agreement I signed on in 1998 for CWiF, tell me and I'll never do this again.
Cheers,

Patrice

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Patrice,

What you showed is fine. It is just a little out of date. CWIF now has 6 boxes at the top instead of 5. This makes it possible to reduce some of the potential confusion in the 4th and 5th rows of the layout you displayed.

I also want to review the choice of colors carefully. The statistics say that 10% of males are at least partially color blind and I don't want to cause them any difficulties understanding the colors in the boxes.

Ideally, each box will function as a binary (or at worst trinary) code for each unit type. The second row of the layout (disrupted/damaged) is the best example of what I mean:
Land units are either disrupted or not.
Air units either have pilots or not.
A naval unit on the production queue is either in its first cycle or its second.
A naval unit on map is either damaged or not.

These are nice and clean binary codes. When the second box from the left is colored in, the unit can not be used. I want to come as close to that with the other status flags. It shouldn't be too hard.

[Froonp]

What you showed is fine. It is just a little out of date. CWIF now has 6 boxes at the top instead of 5. This makes it possible to reduce some of the potential confusion in the 4th and 5th rows of the layout you displayed.

Yes, I noticed it was outdated. I couldn't find anything more current. I found this in the online help of the latest CWiF (0.7.71).

By the way, where will you resume the version number for MWiF ? 0.8.0 ? [:)] Or will you start from 0 ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

What you showed is fine. It is just a little out of date. CWIF now has 6 boxes at the top instead of 5. This makes it possible to reduce some of the potential confusion in the 4th and 5th rows of the layout you displayed.

Yes, I noticed it was outdated. I couldn't find anything more current. I found this in the online help of the latest CWiF (0.7.71).

By the way, where will you resume the version number for MWiF ? 0.8.0 ? [:)] Or will you start from 0 ?

Oh, I think I'll just pretend all the previous mileage never happened and reset the odometer to zero.

[Greyshaft]

Not sure what you've got planned for hover text over units, but a summary of the unit status graphic would be high on my list of suggestions "There's that light again but now its red !!! Does that mean that they need more Food in Flames or that they've just defected to the enemy... <checks manual yet again> "

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft
Not sure what you've got planned for hover text over units, but a summary of the unit status graphic would be high on my list of suggestions "There's that light again but now its red !!! Does that mean that they need more Food in Flames or that they've just defected to the enemy... <checks manual yet again> "

Good point.

CWIF dynamically maintains a large panel at the bottom of the screen that shows all the units in the hex and their total strength for attack and defense (among other things). I currently plan on doing away with that panel (or at least make it an optional part of the game interface). In its place I like the flyout display of the units in the hex that someone posted earlier in this thread. That needs to be supplemented with the total attack and defense factors for the hex.

What seems to me to be best for addressing your concern is to have a legend panel (not too large) that displays the meanings of the little colored boxes. It could be toggled on and off and repositioned by the players where ever they want on the screen. Indeed, this could be a standard solution to a bunch of questions. For instance, there could be a legend panel for hex and hexside terrain, and another for what the numbers mean. These would be of great help to players who are new to WIF. Are there others I haven't thought of? Oh yeah, movement costs by unit type and terrain and weather, and combat multipliers. I guess the list is long. If anyone can add others, here and now would be a good place and time.

[rtamesis]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

I also want to review the choice of colors carefully. The statistics say that 10% of males are at least partially color blind and I don't want to cause them any difficulties understanding the colors in the boxes.

Count me as one of those who are color blind. Actually, I am only partially color blind. I have difficulty distinguishing between lighter shades of green and red that have the same level of saturation, such as pale green and pale red.[:(]