Oolite Bulletins

I find the latest arrangement quite confusing to be honest. If I may make a proposal: Reduce size of all icons to say 65-75%, then have everything on the right side of the planet, as it has always been. I am quite sure that there will not be any icon readability issues.

another_commander wrote:

I find the latest arrangement quite confusing to be honest.

Ditto..

What I find a little unsatisfying is the different apparent size of the icons. In fact, the species icons are the only ones with an equal size. All the others differ from each other, but most of them are smaller than the species icons. Only the "rich industrial" icon is bigger. This makes the species icons look too big next to let's say the "poor industrial" TL 4 (top left corner of the last screen shot), and just about right next to the "democracy" "rich industrial" TL 13 (left), perhaps also because the yellow human looks optically bigger than the green frog.

Commander McLane wrote:

What I find a little unsatisfying is the different apparent size of the icons. In fact, the species icons are the only ones with an equal size. All the others differ from each other, but most of them are smaller than the species icons. Only the "rich industrial" icon is bigger. This makes the species icons look too big next to let's say the "poor industrial" TL 4 (top left corner of the last screen shot), and just about right next to the "democracy" "rich industrial" TL 13 (left), perhaps also because the yellow human looks optically bigger than the green frog.

The reason I used size I did (i.e. used most of the space available for a character) is because of the fine detail in some of the icons. I am currently not going to look at this as I am concentrating on flexible code. When you see what I am planning then these details can be looked at.

Phantor

One row of icons, all to the right of the star, would definitely be my preference.

How about erasing the circle encompassing the icon?

I didn't say that. You cannot prove that I did. Move along... Move along.

<shuffles by - thinks 'that's a good idea' - moves along>

A small, nagging question: er, what’s the point? Economy, government and tech level are relevant factors when you’re planning where to go. Species isn’t, and it’s not like there’s a lot of space to spare.

JensAyton wrote:

A small, nagging question: er, what’s the point? Economy, government and tech level are relevant factors when you’re planning where to go. Species isn’t, and it’s not like there’s a lot of space to spare.

There is no real point - just a fun detail .

JensAyton wrote:

A small, nagging question: er, what’s the point? Economy, government and tech level are relevant factors when you’re planning where to go. Species isn’t, and it’s not like there’s a lot of space to spare.

I've been thinking about that and my suggestion (that would make species relevant) would possibly require a code change to the core game, unless there was a clever scripting way of tracking cargo.

If you buy "Food" from a poor agri planet that it populated by (green slimy (for example)) frogs, it would be nice to trade at a premium with a Rich Industrial planet (above the standard) that is also populated by (blue horned (for example)) frogs.

Dis bird.. fulla good ideas, he is..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Dis bird.. fulla good ideas, he is..

I'm fulla something... little bits are good ideas - like tasty crispy croutons floating on a bowl of thin and watery soup...

I too find this quite a bit interesting and immersive, although gameplay-wise I don't see it making a difference. Yet.
It definitely could benefit gameplay-wise if variables were used to calculate trading prices in a future release. I imagine that an OXP like BlOomberg Markets could change what the different species in general would crave. For one month the general hype for humanoids would be feline products, in another month they would crave reptile products. It could even change so that price changes would only slightly increase as the month went on, peaking in the middle of the month as the hype and fashion was on the highest and then slowly declining until the end of the month, where a new hyped up racial type of product would become the new thing.
In the trader news network on the F4 screen it could look something like this:

Peak trends:
- For humanoids, furs, computers and gem stones from reptiles are the new craze!
- Felines are nuts about gold in general!
- Lobsters really crave human made machinery (must have something to do with the easily operatable levers and switches...)!

Rumoured trends:
- It is rumoured that reptiles are beginning to want humanoid food and garments!

Declining trends:
- Lobsters are slowly tiring of human foods

It would also create a more dynamic trading environment rather than the good ol' "buy computers, sell computers" method.

I do prefer having all icons to the right of the planet as this makes it easier to read when several systems are bunched up on top of each other.
It's like showing a bulleted list: you wouldn't put information on both side of the bullets, would you?

JeX wrote:

...
It's like showing a bulleted list: you wouldn't put information on both side of the bullets, would you?

Well, WHY NOT? If you had a list with two correlating informations and put it on the left and right sides of the bullets, it could work quite well, maybe. I have to try that...
But for the short range map I would prefer the one sided version, anyhow...

Sorry, I have been so quiet on this for a while. I am still working on it. My aim is not just make inhabitant icons appear in the F6+i screen but to add a property to the SystemInfo JS object for an inhabitants number. Also I am trying to make relative position, size, symbol choice and colour all OXPable. The default will be the same as it is currently (all to the right and slightly up) but then this can be altered as per the user's wishes. In doing this I am running into some technical difficulties stopping me using Regular Expressions to do pattern matching to map description to number. I am doing this to support translations and other features. It can't be based on the procedural generated value as the inhabitants can be altered by OXP.

JeX wrote:

I too find this quite a bit interesting and immersive, although gameplay-wise I don't see it making a difference. Yet.
It definitely could benefit gameplay-wise if variables were used to calculate trading prices in a future release. I imagine that an OXP like BlOomberg Markets could change what the different species in general would crave. For one month the general hype for humanoids would be feline products, in another month they would crave reptile products. It could even change so that price changes would only slightly increase as the month went on, peaking in the middle of the month as the hype and fashion was on the highest and then slowly declining until the end of the month, where a new hyped up racial type of product would become the new thing.
In the trader news network on the F4 screen it could look something like this:

Peak trends:
- For humanoids, furs, computers and gem stones from reptiles are the new craze!
- Felines are nuts about gold in general!
- Lobsters really crave human made machinery (must have something to do with the easily operatable levers and switches...)!

Rumoured trends:
- It is rumoured that reptiles are beginning to want humanoid food and garments!

Declining trends:
- Lobsters are slowly tiring of human foods

It would also create a more dynamic trading environment rather than the good ol' "buy computers, sell computers" method.

Though not exactly the same thing, Frame was working on an OXP that made trade in certain goods illegal in places depending on the inhabitants. See here. I don't know what came of it.

JeX wrote:

I do prefer having all icons to the right of the planet as this makes it easier to read when several systems are bunched up on top of each other.
It's like showing a bulleted list: you wouldn't put information on both side of the bullets, would you?

I am perfectly fine with it the way it is, myself, but it is a personal preference. I did the examples with other positions to let people see what it would like if positioned differently. I hope once I get the main part of the code changes done to see if I can make the closest system to the mouse (within a certain distance) become highlighted like the currently selected system is. (i.e. make a rectangle behind the symbols dim the symbols for other systems). That should make reading them when they overlap a bit easier.

Regards,

Phantor