Centering on the screen

from Elemental Forums

GalCiv2 bugs me no end when it tells me about events somewhere.  First it centers the map on the event, then it puts the message in the middle of the screen so I can't see where the event occurred anyway.  So far EWoM seems similar.

How about putting the message on the left side of the screen, and centering the event on the map in the right side, so we can see what its talking about?

54,144 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I love this idea.  Simple, yet overlooked way too often!

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental has a real problem with being unintuitive on the UI right now.  I much prefer the Civ IV or even GC2 model to what Stardock does right now with Elemental.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Amen to that!

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Hail! (ie. agreed)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top


GalCiv2 bugs me no end when it tells me about events somewhere.  First it centers the map on the event, then it puts the message in the middle of the screen so I can't see where the event occurred anyway.  So far EWoM seems similar.

How about putting the message on the left side of the screen, and centering the event on the map in the right side, so we can see what its talking about?

Amen!

Or, alternatively, allow us to move the window around, while also putting the information in some kind of "turn summary tab" so we can see the events we missed by clicking on them too quickly.

This was always a source of frustration for me in GalCiv2, since so many of the events never made it into the 'event summary'

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Indeed great idea. Small things like that bug the crap out of me as well.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental has a real problem with being unintuitive on the UI right now. I much prefer the Civ IV or even GC2 model to what Stardock does right now with Elemental.

What sort of things do you think need improved? We can't fix them without specifics.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

@kryo  --  Can't speak for what Arstal meant, but you could do worse than follow GalCiv 2 except...

(A) more readable fonts (and make lower-case NOT look like smaller upper-case)

(B) my suggestion in the original post.

(C) whatever I think of 10 seconds after I post this  :)

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Kryo -

Specifics for improving the interface:

If there is a pop-up notification, don't let it block relevent information behind it.  Possible solutions: 

  • Have the screen camera center on the event, but have the pop-up notification appear on the left-hand side of the screen so we can see what's going on.
  • Allow pop-up notifactions to be draggable windows - allow us to move the windows out of the way to see
  • Allow pop-up notifications to be minimized or docked: For example:
    • Begining of turn:  A pop-up turn summary (GNN or whatever) is displayed.  User sees a list of 5 items in his/her turn report.
    • User Minimizes or docks the pop-up to take action regarding the first item on the list.
    • User can restore or undock the turn-summary after taking action to make sure nothing has been missed.

 

I'll see if I can't doctor up some images to convey what I'm thinking, but hopefully this gets the idea across, I can never seem to get my Jing images to finish uploading to their hosting site - maybe I need a paid subscription? >:(

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Here's a mock-up, I wasn't able to get Jing to host the image, so I'm doing it the old-fashioned way: