Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Errr, I'll start then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

1. It would be nice if when you are composing a message, at the top it would say "Message TO XXXXX", currently it says "Message FROM XXXXX", which makes me want to cry, as I already know what nation I am from..... but if you misclick on the list, you are SOL.


(There's 100 that are more important than this one, but I thought I'd bring it up since it's hopefully actually an easy one to deal with.) <3

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Personally, I agree that massaging via the user interface does lack basic editing functionality.

Also, as we found out in the Kingmaker game, there is a message cap. If that cap is reached, which it clearly can, then all other messages are lost and scouting information, such as the strength and type of nearby indy provinces, is lost with it. Everyone in the Kingmaker is diving blindly into provinces with no information available all because over 21 nations in a 60 player game made a prophet.

Apparently each nation was informed about the declaration of the prophets individually and so individual message was created for each nation for each time this happened. I would be grateful if this feature could be removed with a fix somehow. Reevaluating world-wide messages as a single message rather then a message copied a number of times equal to the nations playing would be ideal. Though I'm sure this is prohibited by a great deal of existing software design and code work.

That said I would settle for a simply consolidation of prophet declarations into one message for each nation. So if one nation declared a prophet in a turn, it would appear as normal, but if two or more declared a prophet, then simply say in a single message:

X is now a prophet of Y.
Q is now a prophet of P.
<so on and so forth>

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Now that we have a proper forum, there is one crucial thing that may not be easy to be fixed that really needs to be fixed.

And that is identification of the province and commander that is killed by a mind hunt. Presently, in the endgame of a 300 province game, i own 4 capitals and 50 or so provinces with many many commanders and scouts spread out all over the map.

When i lose a commander to a mind hunt i get a message that "Shal lie has been mentally attacked. He was slain by the attack." or words to this effect.

The game provides no mechanism for me to know who the heck shal lie was amongst my 100 plus commanders and scouts, or what province was targeted. It would be nice if the game could somehow capture Shal Lie's last moments, showing him sleeping on duty or whatever in province "x", so i can see who he was, what gear he may have had on him, gems he may have been carrying etc.

I am sure Dr. P and llamabeast between them could resolve this issue if they were entrusted with the project!

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

The prophet messages are not needed at all, you should simply get a message reminding you of who you made prophet and no messages at all who every other nation made there prophet.

An individual nations prophet should be a secret, only known to them.

I agree with Xieter about such an such as been slain with no visual record. It drives you mad when mind hunt/seeking arrow, murdering winter, flames from the sky/fires from afar hit you and you after spend ages figuring out what you lost.

A little battle replay showing the flaming bolts (or whatever) coming down on you killing your units would be excellent. Then you could click on goto province so you know where it is and view the units on the battlefield so know exactly what you lost.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I like the fact that prophet announcements are public. It's thematic in the case where you're in contact with the other nation. In other cases, well, I guess you get the information over PretenderNet just like you get the score graphs.

+1 to the Mind Hunt/Fires From Afar/etc. suggestion. A battle replay would indeed be ideal, although there are corner cases where that would be strange indeed (such as when a mage casts a spell that kills himself, like Banquet for the Dead).

-Max

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Remote site searching spells should take you to the province they searched when clicked, not the mage that cast them. That's a bit of a no brainer. They might also create problems with the 'message cap' if you're using too many of them per turn, though I can't see how they could be consolidated really.

This is a relatively minor fix which is the only type of fix I shall mention in this thread - there are so many improvements that could be made to to UI, but focusing on things that could at least conceivably be changed by the devs in a patch makes sense.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Small things, sorry if mentioned:

- ability to go to province we targeted with any spell [mostly site search and artillery and teleport (go to commander works only if he survived)]
- summaries for fort battles
- go to province for bad things that happen to our commanders [mind hunts, assassinations] + ability to check info about killed commander [I want to know who I lost with what items]
- copy/paste option everywhere [I like to show battle results, events etc to my friends; other thing is sending in-game messages]
- in-game messages should have more space to write
- spell-searching spells targeting provinces with 2-3 magic sites after going though other provinces
- when transfering item laboratory should be at top, not bottom, also we need confirmation for throwing away
- item count for things you are forging + display of free places in lab
- better management of unit selecting in garrison with huge number of units in province [few k]
- monthly forging
- limit of gems for commanders to use per battle
- blacklist for spellcasters
- highlighting friendly/enemy units on battlefield
- flagging province/commander as not available for gem pool [so when you take astral gems from your clam holders you don't have to give them back to all those mages set to antimagic, doom, returning etc etc]
- option to check commander ID to use for teleporting communions

I should have some more, when I know what they are I will write them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I really hope something can be done with that things and it won't be a Dom4 wishlist.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

This seems to me not to be so much a UI problem as a problem with all the seemingly arbitrary limits in Dom3.

Dominions 3 does not scale well at all. The game has a unit cap, a message cap, and who knows what else there are caps on. This is totally unnecessary from a programmer's point of view. Why are there caps? Sure, the size of the data is less controlled without these caps. But reaching the unit cap kills a game anyway, so it's not like the cap actually contributes anything besides killing the games it deems to be "too large to handle" just because they reached some arbitrary cap.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

That's probably a bit harsh being as we're able to play things like the megagame, which are _vastly_ larger than was ever envisioned, with only minor problems.

Still, it would be very nice if some limits could be removed or raised.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

that is true, of course. problems encountered in Kingmaker
are not universal issues with dominions III. Dominions III was not designed to play with 61 nations on 1 map.

That said, the issue with mind hunts killing commanders and not knowing who died or where-that happens in every dominions game, except maybe a small map blitz.

I would also like to add, lest we forget, that 99 percent of games sold that do not require a monthly fee, are not continually updated and improved.

The fact that KO, JK, and everyone involved with releasing new patches continue to do this for the fan base is greatly appreciated!

There is a fine line between making recommendations and *****ing, and since we all love KO we want to err on the side of making recommendations(though my love for KO is suspended if I catch sight of demons in my dominion!).

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I think KO is probably one of the most beloved game developers of all time.

If we could identify some UI tweaks that are universally popular and seem totally doable with minor code changes from this thread, well that would be helping out more than *****ing.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Ummm, and they actively communicate with the players, and even occasionally join games? These guys are, quite simply, the best. When I win the lottery, I'm definitely handing them a blank check to make Dom4. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

<3

So many games I have played, that had teams of 100, 200, maybe more people working on them..... Not half the game that Dom3 is, and many of them had at least as many issues.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Most useful improvement for me was the one previously mentioned - being able to go from the message list to the province where a magic site has been remotely discovered. Helps with my short term memory of trying to recall the province name, then scroll through the F1 list to find it.

I don't have any clue however about computer programming so my instincts tell me all these so-called easy fixes are probably a bit more painful to implement than one might imagine.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I'll second that, Don Corazon. I enjoy site searching much, much more now that it's not a pain to figure out where the site is (in case it produces some awesome indy mage).

-Max

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I'd love a way to sort a large garrison, especially when I'm playing Pangaea, and all the masses of small green units look alike. I mean, sure, picking out the elephants is easy. Finding the Mandragoras, though? Damn near impossible. Is it a royal pain to sort the garrison by unit type? I hope not, because that would be awesome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

A few points I'd like to suggest:
- the stealth move option. I've lost so many battles by having parts of my force go stealth without my intention (eg pangaea, Vanheim, some Jotun forces). It is extremely annoying to lsoe this way. Maybe when you hit 'move' it should kick into another choice - 'regular' or 'stealth' move when relevant.
- a better text editor for messages would be great;
- having the pretender creator on one window instead of over four (pretender, dominion, spells, awakening)
- displaying a date and/or more info (eg chasis/magic etc) next to your pretender in the list of builds so you can pick the correct one.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Wokeye:

Just hold ctrl when moving, all unis will move then, even stealthy ones.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Once you've found one of a unit type, <alt>-click will select all of that type in the squad/garrison.

Some way to select "all undead" would be nice, though. "Longdead with spear", "longdead with spear and armor", "longdead with broadsword", "longdead with broadsword and armor", etc., are all treated as different units by <alt>-click.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Double click does not work for me with a lot of units in province [not garrison].

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

In that case you have to triple click, and try several times, Zeldor.

I really would appreciate anything that makes the mechanics a little bit easier, although I really understand that JK, UI programming is boring and tedious.

The game is really fantastic and the deep content and sophisticated mechanics make up for UI problems by far. I must say it is the only game I bought for years.

That said, I must say the already mentioned items would really be a nice improvement to speed the micromanagement part of the turn.

- goto to assassinated commanders, site searched provinces
- monthly forge
- bigger lab
- remember position in F1 as in spell selection menu
- mark commanders done
- exclude provinces from gem pooling or enable pooling for one province only
- some improvement to the t/y menu that facilitates management of 50+ commanders. Some automatic spread of commanders. Make a place around commander checkbox.
- count of communion slaves in t/y screen; imagine that you have only 15 instead of 16 and then all die of fatigue because you miscounted ...
- t/y screen gets unresponsive if there are many troops.
- set a fill personal gems automatically to X for mages, from lab or non-caster.

These are just wishes, the game is great even with the UI as it is, although it takes hours to prepare the turn past turn 50.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Lots of mine have been mentioned here.
One big one that I've not seen is the ability to see national builds when designing a pretender. I know...I know... you get to a point where you don't need it, but it would be nice to see and make the learning curve just a bit less steep.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Hold down Alt and click on a unit to select all units of that type.

-Max

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Sure that's great for selecting large numbers of the mass troops. But when you're trying to pick out the handful of decent troops scattered among hundreds of chaff...
It doesn't work so well.

What I've had to do is assign the chaff to various commanders, just to get them out of the garrison to find the useful troops.
A pain especially because you often don't have a lot of high leadership commanders around.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I stopped trying to use double-click for that, because <alt>-click does the same thing more reliably. <ctrl>-click and <shift>-click also work to select/deselect individual units and groups of units, respectively. Also, <return> clears all current selections.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I have just realised that in my province with ~150 mages and ~3,5k troops when I browse it dom3.exe eats 90% of my processor power... that may be the reason that it has problems with unit selection.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

There was an ancient thread that discussed the double click issues and some UI alternative wishlists in the following thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...;Number=501912

I am still convinced that it is directly tied to the CPU.
(I think that my example images were hosted on Gandalf's now deceased server. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif)

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

What I would like to be able to assign a commander to start going to a Provence that is a few turns away. So I do not have to keep remembering where everyone is going.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Bump because I think that this thread is important. I've listed UI issued before, too. I think that the UI usability and the AI are the biggest factors for an evaluation of the game by a player, so issues about the UI should definitely be considered as important to fix.

If it wasn't listed before, some things I remember from the back of my head:
- in-game load/save editor of pretenders you've created before
- being able to cancel/backtrack from anywhere in the main menu UI, as far as I remember that's not always the case when you create a game, if it prompts you for a game name

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

My most desired UI changes:

1. Have province info show both resources left for the turn (in addition to the resource provided per turn currently shown), including in the Nation Overview. [Currently I need to click on the Recruit button to check if I have already done my recruiting for the time. By late game with more than 20 recruiting centres it is easy to miss some and time consuming to double check.]

2. The End Turn button should be placed well away from the other buttons. I have prematurely ended my turn in SP several times when I meant to click on the Options button (usually to save the turn when it is a very complex and critical - and interesting - turn and cannot be finished in one sitting). [This can be very devastating as I tend not to copy the saved turns to another folder - to prevent the temptation to "cheat" in SP and load from a previous turn when something nasty happens.]

3. Replace the Magic button with the National Overview button. The Magic button is identical to the Lab button anyway while National Overview is essential to me in late game and saves me much time in completing the turn. The font size of the National Overview table should be smaller as currently some info got cut out (eg. the number of turns remaining for completing a castle with a long name) due to lack of space. The Map filter button should be placed under options as it is not often used (by me at least).

The above changes, if implemented, will save the time I need to complete a game by at least 15% and probably do the same for other players too (pure guesswork). However, I am no programmer and have no idea how much work would be needed to implement.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

3) It took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about with the Magic and National overview buttons. As far as I'm concerned the National overview button is F1. I never use the mouse to get there.

2) Despite having an extra button to push, I much preferred the Dom2 version where "End Turn" took you to the host screen like it does when playing multiple nations. Especially since "e" does the same thing.

1) Not a criticism, but that probably means you're recruiting too many troops and not enough mages. Even in late game, I'll rarely be able to use up resources in more than 2-3 provinces. The capital if I'm still using capital only troops and one or two castles near the front. The bulk of the money goes into mages. So showing resources left wouldn't really help, what I want to know is where I haven't yet recruited mages.
And I know I'm done when there's no money left:)

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Thanks for your comments.

On 1) it is probably because you are thinking MP and I am playing SP. When ganged up by AI's in the late game I need to recruit locally (mages too) at or near the choke points to replace losses as it takes too long to get the troops from my main recruiting centres to all the frontlines. I guess in MP when one is fighting so many players at the same time one might as well give up! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

The colour of that recruit button switches from grey to gold when you have recruited unist in that province.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

I'd also like something like this, but for the hotkey version as well. End turn is right next to "r"ecruit, and "R"esearch. I use the others so often that it's easy to accidentally hit "e" instead and end the turn prematurely. It can be devastating in single player (or in mp if you happen to be playing while connected and are the last person to submit a turn). I think a confirmation box, or an option to show one would fix the issue for both situations.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

Zeldor,

Thanks. That is useful to know. Still, it would be mice to see it in the Nations Overview table instead of having to go from province to province to check it.

Another nice touch would be to have the Nations Overview screen remember where you were at when you last left it instead of having to scroll from the top every time.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

In regards to accidentally ending your turn in a single player game my solution was always to just close the program. This is made easier by keeping the game in window mode rather then full screen. The game will save all of your moves as the first part of turning and so when you return to the game you can pick up where you left off, as if you never pressed 'e' or hit the end turn button.

I have no work-a-round for being the last submitter in a multi-player game.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

If more programs in general would provide for simple human error, we'd live in a far better world.

I encounter this exact same curcumstance at work every day: You spend 15 minutes filling out information for a form, and to complete it you have to click on a button that's less than half a centimeter from another button that cancels everything out.

Re: Issues With: The User Interface (UI)
 

One thing that would really, really help in the ingame Map Editor:
Map +/- to hop to the next/previous province number.

Or any other type of key combinations, like >/< or ,/.

Since editing a map or starting it from scratch involves looking at all the provinces, you have to hit the # key all the time for every single province right now, to make sure that you didn't miss any. New hotkeys would help a lot here.