Which style?

Command Ops: Battles From The Bulge takes the highly acclaimed Airborne Assault engine back to the West Front for the crucial engagements during the Ardennes Offensive. Test your command skills in the fiery crucible of Airborne Assault’s “pausable continuous time” uber-realistic game engine. It's up to you to develop the strategy, issue the orders, set the pace, and try to win the laurels of victory in the cold, shadowy Ardennes.
Command Ops: Highway to the Reich brings us to the setting of one of the most epic and controversial battles of World War II: Operation Market-Garden, covering every major engagement along Hell’s Highway, from the surprise capture of Joe’s Bridge by the Irish Guards a week before the offensive to the final battles on “The Island” south of Arnhem.

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Arjuna
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RE: Which style?

Post by Arjuna »

daz,

Eventually I would like to support the NATO standard 2525B which is more like your icon layout. But it would require a bigger icon.
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RE: Which style?

Post by Arjuna »

ORIGINAL: wodin

hmm...Have to go bottom left or right then.

Dave what do you think of the new UI idea of Daz? Like the screenie further up?
Well I'm still trying to work out how this concept is to work in practice. Do these views appear when you select a unit on the map?
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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

I believe so I think Daz is saying this is what it would look at if you clicked all the tabs on the side bar and kept them on..closing a tab if you need or want to, so you click E&S and the pic window will appear aswell..if you don't want to see it just close it down, thats how I imagine it would work rather than all of them come up as soon as you click a unit...I def like all the pics coming up when you go to look at the E&S tab...


I suppose click E&S tab the windows with the pics and ammo open..click commander and the commander and on map boss would open. The tabs can stay up so if you want you can see all the info as in the screenie. Closing them down if not needed. This way your not blocking the whole screen, you could even have it that the game knows what you want to see when you click a tab through some settings you might want the pic info to come up all the time but not worry about say the ammo \supply info coming up when you click depot. Make it fully customizable.

The info new info on the sidebar will give you a quick round up of all the current states the unit is in, which is a great way to see everything going on with the unit...

The pic window really adds to immersion I feel and helps visualise the unit and vehicles in it. It also makes use of that feature which is a great addition but buried down in the UI.
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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

What would be cool is if the colour of the unit I.D matched all units within that regiment say..so the 1.1 would be say cyan..so would all units in the regiment..another regiment would be yellow etc etc..Would have to work out a system so it wasn't to confusing but helped in recognise the units formations..maybe say you had a regiment that was cyan...then the battalion regiment number would be cyan..but maybe the battalion number yellow..so a coy belonging would have a yellow battalion number but say a blue coy number.


Could get complicated and would have to be seen on screen to see if it does make out recognizing formations easy on screen or just become confusing..above all the coys of that battalion would have a yellow and blue number..the battalions a cyan and yellow number..the regiment a colour corresponding to it's division and a cyan number, another regiment say in that division would have the division colour and and different colour. So you can recognize all regiment from a division as the first number will have the same colour, same thing with regiments\battalions and coys the first number colour corresponds to the higher HQ's colour, the second number colour the actual units colour....

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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

This is the size it will need to be in relation to the original counters.

I am trying to match the font type for the originals. Does anyone happen to know the name of it?



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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

ORIGINAL: wodin

hmm...Have to go bottom left or right then.

Dave what do you think of the new UI idea of Daz? Like the screenie further up?
Well I'm still trying to work out how this concept is to work in practice. Do these views appear when you select a unit on the map?

Thanks for your interest Dave

The way I imagine my top bar concept working is its independent of the original interface.
I.e you will be able to play the game exactly as before by using what's on the left hand side, if you wanted.

The equipment list that everyone seems quite keen on, would indeed be populated with the equipment of the unit currently selected. If you where to click and drag then all the equipment in the selection would be shown in the E&S list with the numbers incremented, and extra equipment appended to the bottom of the list, with the scroll bar coming into play as needed.
This might cause a bit of a strain on less powerful systems. I know nothing of computer programming so that's something you will need to sort out I guess.

The list will be independent of anything in the original interface, so you could have the E&S top bar open, but say the OB in the original, thus giving you far more flexibility in what you see on screen.

The same goes for the other tabs on the bar. They can be opened and closed as you wish independently of what's in the other tabs, but will only show what's in the currently selected units just as the current interface does.

Except for the Depot, and the ON Map Boss tab.
These will be a direct link to the on map boss, and the Depot currently supplying the selected unit, so you don't even need to search for where they are on map.
The important info will be permanently displayed on the top bar. You can see what I have chosen as important info to me in my screenshot, but its open for debate.

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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

ORIGINAL: dazkaz15

This is the size it will need to be in relation to the original counters.

I am trying to match the font type for the originals. Does anyone happen to know the name of it?



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OK the font your using is very hard to read at the moment. I'd have a white band along the bottom with the unit power etc on. Maybe clip the edges abit more think it would make them abit "cooler looking". Maybe abit more 3D feel, the counters I redid for Squad battles I jazzed them up abit..gave them a more 3D high quality card look. Maybe some experimentation with a slight gloss effect to make them look like they are either plastic or again high quality wargame counters. I think if your going to try and redo the counter it needs to obviously practical and also more jazzy otherwise it will be a pointless exercise. Again experiment with different effects etc and you'll get it and think BINGO!! Anothe rissue is making them bigger you need to make that bit extra loss of map worth it. I do know though that size is an issue. With SB I couldn't increase the size so it really hindered what I could do.

Below is a screenshot of my SB mod..it was tweaked abit more afterwards..new colour coded UI and new map.




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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

Just thought using this design..would it give you more room if you put the power numbers either side of the unit symbol..then the unit ID underneath.

You could then find room somehwere for the unit activity box I'm sure.
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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

I'm putting the counter re-vamp on hold for now. Thanks for your support wodin.
I'm back at work now so time is a precious commodity again :(

I have started work on my AAR for Elsenborn Ridge, but it's going to be a long time before I actually start to play. I will probably start once the beta testing is complete, or until we have one that feels like it's about there.
In the mean time there is plenty of prep work to do in the evenings for AAR, although as it was my first day back at work today I'm so tired I will probably go to bed [:'(].

I just wanted a little feedback on whether to use the coloured arrows based on the counter colour, for unit movement, or stick with the friendly blue?


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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

I like the coloured arrow idea.
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RE: Which style?

Post by ewilkie »

Really like your top control bar. It would be nice if the info and command boxes could be rearranged as desired for a "user preferred" workspace and moved to a second monitor so as to leave the map uncluttered - pretty standard in most graphics programs. Might also be nice to be able to open small map windows that might reside over objectives or follow a specified unit at different zoom levels - like in Harpoon 3. That way you might keep the full map on one monitor and view several key areas at higher zoom on a 2nd monitor.
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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

ORIGINAL: ewilkie

Really like your top control bar. It would be nice if the info and command boxes could be rearranged as desired for a "user preferred" workspace and moved to a second monitor so as to leave the map uncluttered - pretty standard in most graphics programs. Might also be nice to be able to open small map windows that might reside over objectives or follow a specified unit at different zoom levels - like in Harpoon 3. That way you might keep the full map on one monitor and view several key areas at higher zoom on a 2nd monitor.

There are some amazing things that can be done, and I love all your ideas, and have thought of many more myself, but...I wanted to keep things simple, so as not to scare Panther Games/Dave off the ideas to much [:D]
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RE: Which style?

Post by Arjuna »

ORIGINAL: ewilkie

Really like your top control bar. It would be nice if the info and command boxes could be rearranged as desired for a "user preferred" workspace and moved to a second monitor so as to leave the map uncluttered - pretty standard in most graphics programs. Might also be nice to be able to open small map windows that might reside over objectives or follow a specified unit at different zoom levels - like in Harpoon 3. That way you might keep the full map on one monitor and view several key areas at higher zoom on a 2nd monitor.
To support this we would have to run the app within a window and this incurs a 15% hit in performance. Well it did when we last looked at this concept. That's a big hit.
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RE: Which style?

Post by Templer_12 »

ORIGINAL: wodin

First is my fav. Not keen on the drawings\mini's...rather have just drawings say osprey publishing style would be cool. The third looks OK but to general..if you could get the actual unit represented cool..but appears some are used as placeholders and aren't giving a proper impression of what the unit looked like now if you could get them to look how they should then that would be OK aswell.

So for me either B&W photo's or Drawings using the same style like Osprey publishing or find some side on drawings of tanks by the same artist etc. I don't like seeing a mish mash of styles like in the middle one.
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RE: Which style?

Post by wodin »

????
ORIGINAL: Templer
ORIGINAL: wodin

First is my fav. Not keen on the drawings\mini's...rather have just drawings say osprey publishing style would be cool. The third looks OK but to general..if you could get the actual unit represented cool..but appears some are used as placeholders and aren't giving a proper impression of what the unit looked like now if you could get them to look how they should then that would be OK aswell.

So for me either B&W photo's or Drawings using the same style like Osprey publishing or find some side on drawings of tanks by the same artist etc. I don't like seeing a mish mash of styles like in the middle one.
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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

He is saying he agrees with all you said wodin.
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RE: Which style?

Post by Templer_12 »

@ dazkaz15,

I find the counters that are included in the game quite well.
So for me, no need to change on this.

But I like your work on the equipment images very much.
Now we need to persuade Panthers Games to enlarge the 'stamps'-images in the game.
.... and include images of the commanders.
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RE: Which style?

Post by Alchenar »

I think the counters in the game are actually fine, albeit under the understanding that I spend 99% of the time with the soft value being 'combat power' and the other options being wasted.

There are two broad issues with the UI I'd like to see improve. The first is that it isn't immediately apparent what the actual footprint of units on the battlefield are. Yes you can drag select everything to see, but that's clumsy and means it takes extra clicks to actually do anything. I think there would be some merit in exploring being able to toggle having outline boxes on all the time and even having shaded boxes around the unit counter.

With regards to how information is displayed to the player, I'm not a fan of drop down boxes cutting into the main map area. It's clumsy and I guarantee will be irritating. As I've put it in the other thread what really needs to happen is the 'General' info screen needs to have 'decision crucial' information pushed to the front and less crucial information pushed to the sub-tabs: Experience, Training, Fitness, Aggression, Stubborn, all of you can get off the front page - that alone frees up several lines for other things.
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RE: Which style?

Post by dazkaz15 »

Thanks for the feedback.

All of the critical info you have just mentioned can be permanently displayed on the top bar, thus freeing up the general info tab for other tabs like OOB.

The dropdown tabs on the top bar would be entirely optional in use.

The tabs we have on the left as they are at the moment in game, would still work just as it does now, so you would have the option of using just that, or getting extra info from the drop downs on the permanently displayed top bar if you wished.

I like your idea about the shaded footprints. Maybe they can be shaded to represent the formation that the unit is currently in as well.

The problem I see in doing this though is when you have very small units like a mortar team or, a Coy platoon that has taken a lot of casualties. Its footprint would be smaller than the counter, and to prevent obstruction of the counter the shading would need to go underneath, so you wouldn't see it.

I guess once the footprint is small enough to fit into the size of the counter though it hardly makes any difference.
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RE: Which style?

Post by Perturabo »

My eyes are bleeding. The screens in this thread make me appreciate the GUI and counter design of BftB.
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