Odd artistic choice for dialogue boxes....

[Darwin00uk]

Is there anyway to change those awful 'windows' stylee blue dialogue boxes that pop up, they seem a very odd stylistic choice,one minute your in the distant future colonising a galaxy the next your staring at a windows xp dialogue box! any plans on sorting them in the new patch? or was there a reason for the choice?

[deanco2]

I'm sure it must have been easier to do, or built in to the programming language, or both.  Totally agree, it breaks immersion.

I've already added this to the master wish list thread.

[Keston]

Did you state the problem as immersion only?  Or also the serious problem that you can't do anything but answer the pop-up, so you can't check on the info you need to make a good decision before making a decision? 

Playing a democracy with the AI suggestions acting as the legislature, the suggestions pop up constantly with no ability to check things before vetoing or approving.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Keston

Did you state the problem as immersion only?  Or also the serious problem that you can't do anything but answer the pop-up, so you can't check on the info you need to make a good decision before making a decision? 

Playing a democracy with the AI suggestions acting as the legislature, the suggestions pop up constantly with no ability to check things before vetoing or approving.

That's why you should be a tin-pot dictator. [;)]

Although I do totally agree with the pop-ups not being minimizable. As is it, if you get to diplomacy alerts at the same, time, you never even get a chance to answer the first one that shows up, because the 2nd over-rides it.

[Dadekster]

Yep and I haven't figured a way to check what the first one was either even using the log.

[deanco2]

@ Keston: No, I just reported it as just an immersion/graphics 'problem'.  I think it cheapens the game, and makes it look less professional, to have Windows-style dialogue boxes in a game.  They just look out of place.  A minor gripe, but let's face it, the wishlist thread is 22 pages long, all the good stuff has already been wished for.

I do agree that having all the info before making decisions in those popups would be great, though.

[Habadacus]

Totally agree with this. Kills immersion and makes the game feel slapped together. Which it is, but still.

[Darwin00uk]

Don't think the game is 'slapped together' far from it but I do think if CodeForce and Matrix want the game to be taken more seriously this sort of thing should be addressed, after all that dialogue box is used a huge amount and it does give the game a very amateur feel. Surely it can't be a big deal to fix this I'd swap out that texture in 5 mins:)
Top of my list of issues at the moment!

[Yarasala]

Those dialogue boxes look like (and probably are) the standard .net message boxes that are a slim wrapper around the built in windows api message boxes. They are easy to program but can't be customized much and are modal (don't allow the program to progress while they are shown). They have to be replaced by custom modelled forms to enhance their appearance and allow the player to access other information. While the first task is not very complex the second will have a lot of logical implications which I don't know whether the programmers want to tackle ...

All other forms seem to me standard .net System.Windows.Forms forms which would account for their heavy flickering that is common behaviour for them if used with a lot of graphics. While that also doesn't look very professional in a game it doesn't bother me much.

[Darwin00uk]

ah ok, I imagined it was just a texture swap, fair enough if this is the case I guess there are more pressing gameplay related issues.

[deanco2]

ORIGINAL: Yarasala

They have to be replaced by custom modelled forms to enhance their appearance and allow the player to access other information. While the first task is not very complex the second will have a lot of logical implications which I don't know whether the programmers want to tackle ...

So, the first task is skinning the popups, and the second is to fix it so the game doesn't grind to a halt until you answer?

If that is the case, making those popups look more like a space game, and less like I'm emptying the Recycle Bin, might be worth spending a little time on, assuming it's as 'easy' as you say.