UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Riotcoke »

TPS banks etc are absolute though, like the mil pop obviously matters but it's a much worse gauge of army strength than eco pop is of economic strength. Examples are heavy cannons being worth far more than their 7 pop and age 2 strelets not being 1 pop worth, so I really don't see the change in having vet musk show as 1.2 or whatever as worth it, as again it just skews the mil pop graph more than it's already skewed
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Interjection »

My suggestion actually has nothing to do with population, I think you've read it wrong

It's functionally the units resource cost (converted to score for simplicity) multiplied by upgrades

This actually represents strelets way better. But yes, there are still issues for units you can't train e.g., Heavies, Mamelukes, etc. But that's always been the case.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Riotcoke »

Oh i did read it wrong, i thought you meant to multiply the pop on the graph by 1.2 with vet, my mistake. It would make a lot of sense with unit cost
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Post by Interjection »

Ideas Based on How I Use the UI:

The UI ‘tab’ I display most often is ‘Shipments Sent’. It’s a really useful tool for anyone tuning into a stream halfway through a game. It immediately tells them the story of how the game has played out which makes joining late more accessible. This is important as viewers which aren’t interested or don’t know what’s going on will quickly leave.

The next most useful tabs are ‘Techs Being Researched’, ‘Techs Complete’ & ‘Units in Queue’ which I’d like to see all combined into one (as I switch between them so often). The image below shows how Capture Age handles it (a 3rd party obs UI for AoE2). It displays units in queue (top left), techs being researched (top right) and techs complete (bottom right). Techs complete is clever because (in AoE3 terms), once steel traps is complete, it would cover up the icon for hunting dogs to conserve space on the UI.

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Of course though in AoE3, we’re used to the visual representation below. Currently, we can see techs being researched in this format but nothing else. Seeing what the player sees in their global queue would be a dream come true:
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Another tab I frequently use during combat is ‘Military Units’, which I combine with zooming in on the fighting units to better show the micro happening. Very occasionally, I will rotate the camera if all of the units don’t fit on screen. You will notice in Capture Age, the caster has 9 xbows selected and their HP is autosummed in the panel next to ‘Techs Complete’. The caster can select these units because the UI is more similar to watching a recorded game
 obviously we can’t do this (yet) in AoE3, but if it’s possible to do something similar e.g., count the number of units visible on screen
 that would be an improved version of how I use the ‘Military Units’ tab as it would be a better representation of each players army. [NOTE: Just to be clear, something like this would be quite low priority for me, but I wanted to mention it as the request was for features that may not be possible right now].

When I occasionally check the ‘unit lost’ tab, it’s usually to see how many villagers have died or how a fight went. It’s really only useful for the ‘first fight’ though as during the next one all the deaths get lumped together and it’s hard to know what died when. Being able to see what died in a ‘fight-by-fight’ way would be handy. [Again, not super high priority, especially with improved military graphs suggested earlier]

Finally, the last tab I want to talk about is ‘All Units’. I tend to use this tab for the majority of Age 1 before any shipments are sent. It’s really useful to tracking livestock found and shows the viewers who might have me muted what the player decided to do in age (e.g., TP, Market, what treasure guardians they converted, etc). I rarely use this tab after age 1 though. Whilst I do think it’s very useful, I’d rather show ‘Shipments Sent’ for the reasons mentioned earlier. When I do occasionally go back to check it, it’s almost always to see how many military buildings, mills & plantations the players have. Sometimes it also reveals a church & arsenal. Knowing when the players start constructing these buildings is just as interesting & useful as seeing which techs they go for and feel very similar. I’d like to be able to see these on the UI at all times (probably where you would show ‘Techs being Researched’ & ‘Techs Completed’.

Requests:
-Shipments sent ‘tab’ always on screen
-To see everything in queue on the UI: units, shipments, minutemen and whatever else each player has in their global queue (maybe replace green progress indicator with the colour of the corresponding player colours like Capture Age)
-To see buildings in que on the UI (where the techs are shown... a second rax is kind of a tech choice? Right??)
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-To always see what buildings each player has on the UI
-Ability to click on buildings and see what’s in queue inside (similar to how I can currently click a unit to see what upgrades are in progress/done).
-Functionality that ‘counts’ visible units on screen (not important)
-Functionality to see ‘Units Lost’ in a fight-by-fight basis (not important)
-Would much prefer the suggestions I mentioned in my previous 'Military Graphs' post than the above two
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Post by Interjection »

New QoL Features:

Functionality for ‘Community Games’
If the UI worked for FFAs or lopsided team games, I’m sure Escape would have hosted more of them. Also, I know the community over at SamuraiRevolution would love this functionality. I think it’s worth developing just for them. If you want to be cynical about it though, maybe players who enjoy non-competitive games will become interested in competitive through an improved UI.

Obs Delay
One of the only things we disliked about streaming AoE3 at Escape was that we had to turn on stream delay which makes talking to chat difficult. Watching a delayed game fixes this.

Hotkeys to switch ‘tabs’
Currently, it’s a bit fiddly to switch to different UI elements. I’d appreciate hotkeys, and as an ex-professional caster I’d probably use them quite a bit to improve the viewing experience.

Make score more prominent
I’d like to turn the score (f4) off as it takes up a lot of space and is ugly. But I don’t because people would complain they don’t know what the score is. Yes, it is shown in the UI, but it’s really small and I doubt most people know it’s there.

Treasures gathered summary
A button or something which auto sums the value of each players treasures or lists them in an easy to read way. It might also add up all the treasures into one single total or list the value in food, wood, coin & XP separately. For units found, I imagine it saying P1 found ‘3 units’ rather than listing what they are. Really, it’s just to jog the casters memory so they can talk about it

Visual hunt roaming radius
Animals have a maximum distance they can be ‘herded’ before they will ‘backherd’. I’d like to visually see this. When I click on a bison, it will show the ‘center point of origin’ and generate a large circle around it showing the maximum radius the hunt can be herded before it will backherd.

Treasure guardian radius
Basically the same as above, except when I click on a treasure it will show the maximum radius guardians will chase your explorer before resetting.

Autosum how many starting hunts/mines a player has
With the current UI, it’s possible already for it to tell you how much coin, food & wood is nearby your town centre. I experimented with using this feature for ensuring map balance in an objective way for NWC but we ran out of time to determine what radius was acceptable on each map (with so many other things to do). It would nice to select a TC, click a button on the UI and have it report how many resources are nearby. Ideally it would show a visual indicator of the radius it’s counting inside.

Individual Fog of War
Currently, we can only see combined fog
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France Kao
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Kao »

Thanks a lot for all those very detailed suggestions. That was a pleasure to read.
Quick answer about the delayed stuff, I really don't think this is possible to achieve.
All the remaining stuff sounds doable. Maybe not for the herd radius and etc, will have to check where this data could be stored, I think it would be one of the hardest thing to achieve, at least for me, dunno about kev.

Make the UI work in FFA is something I have in mind, but pretty sure it will require to send new stuff over network, so I'll have to ask kev here too haha.

Some of you propositions were already imagined by Aiz or me, we were mostly wondering how they should be displayed, your detailed answers will help a lot.

I also thanks previous people who answered and suggested stuff, will help us a lot to improve the UI.

I'd like all people who want to suggest stuff to do it before Saturday though. By Saturday I will make a first recap of all suggestions in order to work with something concrete and clean, so what will be suggested after may take time before being added to the food list haha.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Post by EAGLEMUT »

One of the only things we disliked about streaming AoE3 at Escape was that we had to turn on stream delay which makes talking to chat difficult. Watching a delayed game fixes this.
... while introducing other, probably bigger issues. How could you pause the game or talk to the players about map spawn and such? Even ignoring that this is the most impossible request listed, I'd also say it's a bad change.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by EAGLEMUT »

Kao wrote:All the remaining stuff sounds doable. Maybe not for the herd radius and etc, will have to check where this data could be stored, I think it would be one of the hardest thing to achieve, at least for me, dunno about kev.
Well, it's gotta be stored somewhere right now. Perhaps the harder part will be drawing a radius circle.
Make the UI work in FFA is something I have in mind, but pretty sure it will require to send new stuff over network, so I'll have to ask kev here too haha.
I assume this would be done by designating which slots are specifically observers in the game room UI. Ideally could use gameplayer1type and recognize a new value, though this will require some unhardcoding. Otherwise can utilize an unused setting like gameplayer1questid.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Dolan »

Riotcoke wrote:Something that might be nice to add onto that would be the ability to switch between a casting a normal config e.g I have different sound levels and scroll speed from when I'm playing, would also make sense in regards to changing hotkeys maybe?
The sound thing is definitely not possible. One of the reasons why I started making UIs for AOE3 some years ago was because I was trying to make that audio slider from the Options screen available as a separate UI gadget that you could use to customise the volume level, without having to open the whole Options thing. After a long time of research and experimentation, I realised that the sound slider is simply "baked in" in the Options mode and cannot be taken out or made available as an isolated gadget.

Changing config variables by running certain UI commands is definitely possible, but I'm not sure if scrolling speed is available as a configurable variable.

PS. - Ah wait, so this UHC thing can make some things that were previously not possible potentially possible.
Well then, I'd like the future UI version to fix everything that can cause lag in AOE3.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by EAGLEMUT »

Dolan wrote:PS. - Ah wait, so this UHC thing can make some things that were previously not possible potentially possible.
Well then, I'd like the future UI version to fix everything that can cause lag in AOE3.
You're probably joking, but this might effectively happen simply because the UI will be rewritten in more efficient C++ code.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Kao »

EAGLEMUT wrote:
Kao wrote:All the remaining stuff sounds doable. Maybe not for the herd radius and etc, will have to check where this data could be stored, I think it would be one of the hardest thing to achieve, at least for me, dunno about kev.
Well, it's gotta be stored somewhere right now. Perhaps the harder part will be drawing a radius circle.
Make the UI work in FFA is something I have in mind, but pretty sure it will require to send new stuff over network, so I'll have to ask kev here too haha.
I assume this would be done by designating which slots are specifically observers in the game room UI. Ideally could use gameplayer1type and recognize a new value, though this will require some unhardcoding. Otherwise can utilize an unused setting like gameplayer1questid.

I had in mind to add a checkbox for players to choose whether they observe or not. I thought it would need network changes, but using an unused var, even if it's an int, as a bool sounds also like a great idea, even simpler.
EAGLEMUT wrote: Well, it's gotta be stored somewhere right now. Perhaps the harder part will be drawing a radius circle.
Yeah sure it's stored somewhere, but drawing :grimacing:.
Dolan wrote: PS. - Ah wait, so this UHC thing can make some things that were previously not possible potentially possible.
Well then, I'd like the future UI version to fix everything that can cause lag in AOE3.
Well we can certainly get rid of lags caused by the obs ui, but fixing everything that can cause lag in AOE3 is a very sweet dream.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Mr_Bramboy »

EAGLEMUT wrote:
Dolan wrote:PS. - Ah wait, so this UHC thing can make some things that were previously not possible potentially possible.
Well then, I'd like the future UI version to fix everything that can cause lag in AOE3.
You're probably joking, but this might effectively happen simply because the UI will be rewritten in more efficient C++ code.
.. what?

Next you'll tell me this UI can bring us to the fucking moon.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Kao »

Mr_Bramboy wrote:
EAGLEMUT wrote:
Dolan wrote:PS. - Ah wait, so this UHC thing can make some things that were previously not possible potentially possible.
Well then, I'd like the future UI version to fix everything that can cause lag in AOE3.
You're probably joking, but this might effectively happen simply because the UI will be rewritten in more efficient C++ code.
.. what?

Next you'll tell me this UI can bring us to the fucking moon.
Read my answer about this.
:hmm:
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Riotcoke »

I know it's not a suggestion, but how much lag does the UI actually bring?
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Aizamk »

Riotcoke wrote:I know it's not a suggestion, but how much lag does the UI actually bring?
It would depend on how much lag the trigger system for aoe3 brings. After startup, calculation is only ever done observer-side and not player-side, but I think there is probably still some syncing of triggers involved. It's also split up so that the heavier calculations are performed much less frequently than the simple stat retrievals like for resources. At any rate the 2.x versions should cause a lot less lag than the 1.x versions because they were designed with the past experience of what causes lag/oos and what doesn't.

3.0 should work independently from the trigger system, just like your usual unit selection/unit stats panel UIs, and that also means it should in theory be possible to navigate the UI even after the game has ended.
oranges.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Post by Kaiserklein »

Ah that's sweet. Haven't read all suggestions so I might be repeating what some people said.

- when clicking on a building, have it show units in queue, just like when you click on a unit currently it shows the upgrades in queue
- military population graph could be military cost maybe? So that you can compare armies in terms of resources invested, which is often more accurate than pop
- economic pop graph could take into accounts TPs, market upgrades, eco cards, wonders, etc
- show the kill/death ratio maybe?
- be able to switch to each player's point of view
- show shipments in queue
- units in queue in the ui tab could show in the same way as "techs being researched", with the rotating stuff that represents the % until the units pop
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Interjection »

Before I forget, just wanted to mention I'm almost certain holding alt to show HP bars causes lag & the lock button that makes the camera follow a particular unit around also causes lag too

You may have noticed I almost never use those features anymore :(
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Interjection »

I would also be down for slightly more zoom if we can get away with it without causing lag
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by spanky4ever »

:huh: NO LAG, please :love:
Lag is the biggest issue now, should solve that first, before entering new "tools" that could produce even more lag. If you can solve that @EAGLEMUT and @zoom - then you are even more super dudes, than I had imagined before :love:
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by lemmings121 »

some of this ideas were already discussed in a similar way, but just giving my imput, based mostly in what we currently see in sc obs ui that could be relevant here.

-"militar value", shows the current militar power in the form of total resources they would cost. Just one number for each player.
-"income/s", in sc2 they have it as a graph in real time. Maybe thats a bit too hard to implement here. one good aproximation would just be having this tab show as a number for each player updated every few seconds. The equation should be something simple like "=total res gathered in the last 10s/10". Usefull to see if the economic population is actually provinding a good income or not (all vills garisoned? walking arround searching for hunts?)
-"units lost", also only a number in the form of total resources worth of those units. (quick way to see who traded better so far)
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by gamevideo113 »

Showing military score would be a lot easier than the total of resources invested in military i think.
I guess just displaying a split score between military, eco (and other?) would be the best option.
Military pop is also honestly fine since roughly units cost 1 pop for every 100 resources of cost.
Maybe show k/d ratio?
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

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Post by Kao »

iwillspankyou wrote::huh: NO LAG, please :love:
Lag is the biggest issue now, should solve that first, before entering new "tools" that could produce even more lag. If you can solve that @EAGLEMUT and @zoom - then you are even more super dudes, than I had imagined before :love:
I mean, most of the lags come from internet itself and the p2p protocol. Not much we can do about this.
Obs UI is not a new tool, that's just new iteration of an existing tool, and this should reduce lag that could be created by obs ui in casted games :hehe:
But don't worry, when we do stuff we check as most as possible the impact it has on the game. We don't want a game full of features that can't be played. Do not worry about this.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by spanky4ever »

that is reassuring @Kao :love:
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by [TLDT]Amsterda »

Can't really think of anything that wasn't already said except please bring back preset lighting 3 from obs UI 1.7.
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Re: UI 3.0 Design Suggestions

Post by Riotcoke »

@spanky4ever Most of the lag comes from players rather than casters assuming you have someone casting with a decent net/pc
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