UI 2.0 Update Thread

[Mimsy for President]

Seriously Aiz, nobody plays with 1280x800 and 1600x900 resolutions xD

[iNcog]

a few people actually do

it also helps people with strange resolutions (say 1680x1050) in that they can downscale to 900p and use the UI correctly.

[Mimsy for President]

Yes, I agree.
I'm quite sure most people play with 1366x768 and 1920x1080. Like 90% (out of my a$$). The other resolutions are totally marginal.

[_NiceKING_]

I and some of my friends do play with 1600x900.

[_NiceKING_]

lol

btw, the UI shows that villagers gather food on rice paddies even if you switch them to gold.

[Aizamk]

Heads up that I am still working on this, albeit rather slowly. The Rice Paddy gatherers 'bug' above has been somewhat fixed.

[spoiler=2.1 Changes so far]IMPORTANT: 2.1 is incompatible with earlier versions.

-Pre-researched techs at the start of the game will no longer appear in the UI, e.g. saloon techs, India's wood gathering upgrades
-Observing computers will start off as resigned (already done in 2.062 but a bit buggy there, now fixed)
-Changed the way TPs are calculated so as to ease access of copypasta
-A note on copypasta: set IDesignRMS to a value of 1 to check that the code works (and enable a bunch of other stuff)
-Removed some of the unused relics of code from early versions of UI 2.0
-Created a MusicOverAesthetics option which removes some functionality in exchange for allowing music to play (for jp community)
-Deciding whether the framework for viewlock is set up or not is now processed at the higher RMS level rather than xs level.
-Some aesthetic changes to how the lower UI displays a player's name when they have resigned
-UI now supports 3v3 games
-Player colours now display behind their shipment progress bars [MAY CHANGE]
-Shipment pop-ups now display as chats instead of a black pop-up if an observer does not have the UI installed
-Fixed some problems with the camera movement in recorded games. A few others do not appear to be fixable due to issues with how camera commands are processed in recorded game mode.
-Fixed a bug with the lower display being spaced incorrectly when a player reaches age IV
-Added a framework for loading custom configurations as in 1.7 (still not yet fully implemented)
-Fixed a problem with images not being correctly displayed for certain unit shipments in the UI.
-Certain techs which were not meant to be visible in the UI have now been removed.
-Implemented a framework to deal with for e.g. AbstractVillager and AbstractFishingBoat incorrectly showing certain market upgrades for fishing boats caused by an overlap of unit types.
-Added support for Silk Road style TPs in the UI
-Fixed a bug where having no observers on a UI 2.062+ map would cause the UI script to explode and then not hide bats because of a double minus :O
-Completed a logical method of determining if a rice paddy is set to food or gold to assist in the gatherers per resource calculation. It has failed under stress-testing, but is unlikely to pose much of an issue.

Currently working on: Extension of the unit upgrades feature for more units than just villagers. See below.

[/spoiler]

[iNcog]

Aiz you're nuts lol.

So much work put into this. <3

[Aizamk]

Aiz you're nuts lol.

So much work put into this. <3

It is comments like these which give me the required motivation, so keep it up

I also work fastest on the UI when I'm procrastinating. My exams are in 2 weeks so this is the perfect time to actually get things done.

[iNcog]

well if you're still taking exams at all it means that you're smart enough to get away with procrastinating in the first place.

also, we get more UIs.

life is good in aoe3. hot damn x)

[momuuu]

Exams are the best way to get shit done.

[iNcog]

We shall commence operation "thank the aiz" aka "aiz senpai best senpai".

I am your host @iNcog

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joining me here today is my co-host, @Jerom

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.

Aiz is amazing, is he not, Jerom?

[momuuu]

I have theories that Aiz might always be high. But otherwise he is indeed amazing.

[iNcog]

Would you agree that he may be considered "highly amazing", in which case?

[purplesquid]

I would most certainly agree with that. . .

[iNcog]

Ah, a surprise guest. Please warmly welcome @purplesquid

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!

*round of applause*

Mr Squid, do you believe that there is a senpai out there, somewhere, who might be half as good a senpai as aizamk?

[purplesquid]

Probably not. Most certainly not one as it pertains to AOE3 UI's. . .

[iNcog]

That was the correct answer

*more applause*

What a show

[Aizamk]

So... I've partially completed one of the new features for 2.1. Been working on it on and off for quite a few days. 2.1 is still nowhere near completion, but I just wanted to post an update to bask a little in the glory of it so far.

Basically in the bottom right of the above image you will be able to see that the feature that showed market upgrades on villagers has been extended to apply to pretty much every relevant upgrade and unit in the game. For those interested, about 2000 short lines of code in the map file were needed to make this possible . And several hours of finetuning machine output.

It works in the same way as before: you click on a unit and the upgrades on it pop up. As is visible in the screenshot, it will also show any upgrades that are currently being researched. They are separated into two rows: the row in the screenshot shows the Technologies, while the row above it (not currently visible) shows the Shipments applicable to that unit. You can of course hover each image to get the tech name as before. What's also new is that hovering over the top area will describe the tech. These descriptions are fairly non-informative, however. For example, Circular Saw has: "Villagers gather Wood extremely fast.". For the most part, no exact stats are displayed.

As I've said, it's only partially complete. I have yet to restructure some things in a way so as to reduce frame drops due to UI elements being continually shown/hidden every second. I also haven't yet figured out how scrolling is going to work in this mini UI thing.

Also there's been a slight redesign in that the unit info panel has been shifted down slightly so that only the speed/units contained line is visible. Hopefully that makes it look a bit cleaner. Don't really want to do too much redesigning of that at the moment. Of course, it's also clearly visible in the screenshot how the design is currently looking for 3v3 games.

The current build only works for 1920x1080 and is still too incomplete to be released for public testing, however I do intend to release a test version at some point.

But before that, I probably need to stop all this and study for my exams . I really wanted to have this done by now in time for the next jpcommunity tournament, but it's taken a bit longer than I thought it would.

Comments on the current design are welcome.

[iNcog]

Ridiculous. I am your biggest fanboy, ok?

The new "upgrades on units" thing is going to be the coolest thing ever, definitely going to help commentators be more clear about which upgrades are on which unit. Just excellent.

The current design overall gives a nice overview of the situation of the game at any given point: population count, resources, score and TPs are all accounted for. Just looks good. Especially with the population graph (not in your screen-shot) which gives military and economic population.

Nope, nothing to say, it all looks good!

PS: nice difficulty level, is that the easiest or the hardest?

[Aizamk]

Thanks incog

Mitoe=Expert difficulty >:)

Still figuring out how to best condense the population graph, but I'll figure it out when I get to it.

[iNcog]

Yeah, I agree to that.

If I had to make like ONE remark about the UI because someone put a gun to my head and forced me to find something I to criticize, I would probably say something about the clarity of a few things (but only if there were a gun to my head).

Something along the lines of making population count (xx/xx) and resources being a little bigger and standing out more (slightly bigger font? idk.. similarly to how EAGLEMUT did it: http://imgur.com/a/E86l2 ).

That said, they're perfectly visible as they are right now, everything is readable, accessible and looks good. So that's really just nitpicking.

Keep it up, also gl with those exams.

[Aizamk]

The thing about the current design is everything changes with resolution. If you go back and look at the first image in this thread, which is pretty much how it looks like for 1280x800:



Clearly the text is larger relative to the screen, but at the same time there's fewer icons visible per row.

It can still be done for 1920x1080 if I mess around with the font sizes a little, I reckon. It is something I do intend to eventually do once all the features are finalized.

Also ty, will need that luck

[iNcog]

Yep, makes sense. ^_^

PS: we should all collectively thanks aiz for taking exams in the first place, otherwise he would not procrastinate and make the UI instead.

[Atomiswave]

Great work Aiz, more functionality is always appreciated. It would be nice if you could eventually add support for lower res.

[n0el]

Looks great. Can't wait to test it out.