Logo Platform
logo amplifiers simplified

Improve the notification and pop-up system

Notification systemGUI

Reply
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 3:06:33 PM

This idea encompasses a number of changes to the notification and pop-up system. The main intent behind this idea is to reduce turn times and to improve QoL.


The specific suggestions to address that are as follows:
1. Instead of having notifications pop up, assign a different color to important notifications, or something of that caliber. Players could still via the current pop-up menu decide which notifications are to be marked or not. That way no immediate turn actions get prevented by invasive pop-ups, but the player will still notice them.

(As far as I know many people have turned off these pop-ups because they lead to missing fleets etc, kind of already defeating their purpose)


2. Disable animations in information windows (probe discoveries etc), or at least make them optional and turned-off by default. Though the snappy animations may only hide information for a second or two, there's a lot of them throughout a game. Especially in multiplayer this often leads to frantic clicking to skip past all animations, and without clicking animations away these seconds easily pile up and make a game take many minutes longer than it has to.


3. Implement more unique symbols. There's a lot of messages that can be conveyed through a single symbol such as the discovery of luxury resources. Right now neither the according symbol nor the tooltip shows which resource was discovered, forcing the player to open the big window for essentially a single word.


4. Condense info where possible into the side bar. Especially for event effects or curiosities this could save players a serious amount of time. Here's a mock-up which describes the idea better than words can:


This should be the gist of my suggested revamp. If this could become a thing I could of course bring forth more details, such as which symbols could be used to make small notifications better.

Updated a month ago.
0Send private message

Comments

Reply
Copied to clipboard!
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 4:49:25 PM

Agree points 1, 3 & 4.


Understand about point 2, specially for MP, but the thing is that I mostly play SP and like some animations too, I agree giving the option to disable them, but not by default. Add to this that IMO new players should at least see in first game, or are informed that the option is there in case animations are off by default, just in case people who will like it can notice its in the game.


And yes, pop ups bombing at turn start preventing immediate clicking to i.e. move fleets is very annoying, as it was yet in EL. Thinking about EL, it has different colours for notifications (battles were in red...), so same should be possible for ES2.

0Send private message
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 5:34:26 PM

I agree, some eye candy is nice but something should be switched up. The more possible solution suggestions we have the better that'd be. Another idea would be to only disable the window animations in MP games, but not in SP games.

0Send private message
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 8:34:33 PM

I have no idea how difficult changing the animations, using different icons for different resources, or adding more information to the sidebar would be, but I hope that we can at least get some different colors for different types of events. For example, a different color for all events that require your input, like diplomatic offers, quest choices, etc, so we're less likely to default to a choice when we did not mean to.

0Send private message
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 9:00:32 PM
XorUnison wrote:

I agree, some eye candy is nice but something should be switched up. The more possible solution suggestions we have the better that'd be. Another idea would be to only disable the window animations in MP games, but not in SP games.

Think it should always be an option. This way everyone is happy.

Updated 6 years ago.
0Send private message
6 years ago
Oct 2, 2018, 9:07:13 PM

For what it's worth, I'm only playing my second game, but I already have all pop-ups disabled, and review them manually after I'm done watching what I wanted to be watching at turn's end.

Updated 6 years ago.
0Send private message
?

Click here to login

Reply
Comment