Something should be done about the UI. Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Hello.

I would like to attract attention to the fact that the UI can quickly be too small on small resolution, especially for people with bad eyesight. This is actually a complaint I have seen quite often, so I do hope that Illwinter will find a solution, which could be :
* font and/or icon size modding in GUI modding
* a scale parameter for the UI (after all, the size of the commander can be increased, why not everything else who is not on the map ?)
* a fixed size in pixel for GUI elements (which prevent laptop from blurrying the police)

I know that it's fine for the majority, but something like one people on five I know have complained about that, some being unable to play at all because of that. That seem quite a lot.

My conclusion is that you know a lot of people who like to complain

It's actually a very real problem. I can hardly play the game on my laptop because of the small blurry font.

It seriously needs to be addressed. Many people have already brought it up and it's a common topic in the IRC channel.

Edited by: Fantomen

I agree. It is indeed a thing. It's just fine on my desktop but it strains the eyes to play it on my netbook.

Silvo wrote: My conclusion is that you know a lot of people who like to complain

My conclusion is that you are a prick.

I had Lasik surgery just over a year ago, so my eyes are about as good as they can get, and even I think the font is just too small and/or blurry as-is. If nothing else, simply go back to the dom3 standard, since AFAIK there were no complaints.

Edited by: Trumanator

Silvo wrote: My conclusion is that you know a lot of people who like to complain

I will say to them that if they have bad eyesight it's because they love to complaint. And I will also say to the police I can drive without glasses despite having bad long distance eyesight because I don't like to complain. I am sure they will understand.

It's also quite more visible in low resolution and small screen, which correspond to a lot of older laptop and netbook. For some reason people are not made of money and can't alway change them when they want. I suppose they would be richer if they didn't complain too I suppose.

Edited by: Ohlmann

While I admittedly do like to complain, the small font is a real problem for me. I'm currently strictly imposing a limit on myself of no more than an hour and a half per play session, as anything longer has been causing eyestrain and occasionally headaches.

Edited by: gothefungus

It depends on screen resolution and diagonal. Smaller monitors has this problem.

I'll echo the concerns.
While desktop is admittedly fine for me, playing on laptop is exhausting and it isn't worth playing it if I get a headache after half an hour.

I usually zoom coomander panels with "shift + >" at least twice, and would like to see all the fonts zoomed in the same way for my sight comfort.
Having to play in a laptop can be a pain. Some tweaking in the fonts woud be great, so yes please +1.

I also find some problems related to the way that paths are now shown in the commander pannel. If I don't zoom, it's easy for me to confuse certain paths/combos (specially randoms) with some items (having to go a lot to the stats screen). Maybe if the paths where shown in the short way (F1A2E3W4) like they appear in the stats screen could help. Not to say that mages with many magic paths, just can't be fully shown, so I have to go to stats anyway (and/or rename) to know what their paths are.

I'd like to see a tooltip in the army management screen, when hovering a commander. When scripting a fort with lot of commanders, that helps to know if the commander is building an item or casting (so i will not script) without needing to return to the main screen. The tooltip already exists in the main screen, if it could be added to the army screen...

That would really finish the need of renaming commanders (best tip ever I've seen to reduce constant stats-checking), if the tooltip also added the magic paths own...like "Ignacious E1D1N1 casting Reanimation (monthly)." So I will not script Ignacious without having to exit the army screen to check what is he doing. Same with forgers Albertous and Mcarious, but I will script Jantonious because I will see he is just researching and can send to war. All that without leaving army screen, renaming or rightclicking to stats.

I would like to be a bit insistent on the issue. It's a bit sad to see people unable to play on their laptop because of this.

Not that the game is bad, but at least knowing if it's considered for future patch would help.

Trumanator wrote: I had Lasik surgery just over a year ago, so my eyes are about as good as they can get, and even I think the font is just too small and/or blurry as-is. If nothing else, simply go back to the dom3 standard, since AFAIK there were no complaints.

Same deal. I have good eyesight as well and I'd also prefer larger UI and font in particular.

Edited by: kimmokm

Solosol wrote: I'd like to see a tooltip in the army management screen, when hovering a commander. When scripting a fort with lot of commanders, that helps to know if the commander is building an item or casting (so i will not script) without needing to return to the main screen. The tooltip already exists in the main screen, if it could be added to the army screen...

One tip that may help: if you highlight a commander on the main screen, he is still highlighted on the army setup screen. So select all the commanders you're going to send into battle, then hit "t" to go to army setup, and script only mages who are highlighted.

+1 to the option to change UI + font size. It definitely can be too small at times, particularly on laptop resolutions.

Is this still a Linux game?
Those sound like options that are kindof automatic to the library that is used to build the game on.

I think the UI is problematic.
If I understand JK correctly: While font size can be altered, all boxes and all other UI stuff will not change with it and has to be resized in every instance of the game (boxes, popups, infoscreens etc). This is a major undertaking and will not happen at release at least. I hope you can stand the UI for the time being.

Kristoffer.Osterman wrote: This is a major undertaking and will not happen at release at least. I hope you can stand the UI for the time being.

I don't personally have a problem with font size since I have a very big screen, but I can understand how hard it could be on smaller screens, more so if you don't have a perfect vision.

If the GUI can't be scaled, maybe can you at least mod an alternative "big" GUI 1.5 or 2 time bigger.

Also appart from font size, there is a lot of improvement I can think of to increase the usability if the UI.
Any chance to get UI improvement in the near future?

I don't know. Bug-fixes and functionality has higher priority atm.

Glad you're responding. It's unfortunate that the problem is less than trivial for you to fix, so will it do for now? Yes, of course it will.

However, it's a simple fact that this is a serious problem for many people, to the point where they don't buy the game because they simply can't read the text. I have already quit playing many times on my laptop because it's too hard on the eyes. What I'm trying to say is that whether people can "stand it" or not (and they can usually), in the long run you don't want the UI to be a deciding factor in who "stands" the game or not. Functionality should take precedence over aesthetics in any UI design, so the current situation seems like a case of putting the cart before the horse.

If I may suggest a few simple improvements that doesn't involve resizing:

1. Look into the different resolutions and see which ones causes blur, and simply try to make the text crisper for those resolutions. Many people have said on irc that size isn't the main issue, and they can read smaller text in other applications without problems. So there is room for improvement within the current font sizes for sure.

2. Remove the transparency gradients, or make it optional. So you can have a flat background without setting opacity to 100%.

3. Make it possible to have black text on a light off-white background, many people find that (a lot) easier to read because the brain is more used to scanning black text on white backgrounds. This could simply be a switch for "light/dark interface"

None of these changes involves resizing, so maybe they would be more realistic now? This IS a functionality issue, basic one at that.

This is one of the most responsive and rewarding of the many beta processes I've been in btw, not many dev teams manage the barrage of critique this well while still responding, it's very nice.

Fantomen wrote:
This is one of the most responsive and rewarding of the many beta processes I've been in btw, not many dev teams manage the barrage of critique this well while still responding, it's very nice.

Thank you! Nice to hear.
Being a teacher I'm quite used to opinions presented at various levels of diplomacy
People rarely mean to be rude or mean, students or betatesters, but when one is opinionated it might be difficult not to express oneself a bit harsh.

Edited by: Kristoffer.Osterman

Trumanator wrote:

Silvo wrote: My conclusion is that you know a lot of people who like to complain

My conclusion is that you are a prick.

I had Lasik surgery just over a year ago, so my eyes are about as good as they can get, and even I think the font is just too small and/or blurry as-is. If nothing else, simply go back to the dom3 standard, since AFAIK there were no complaints.

Seconded, it's the main difference I immediately noticed upon launchind D4 ...
Hey, they made the UI and font waaay smaller ! Huh, their players are growing older, not sure it's a good idea ...

Thank you for looking into it! I agree with Fantomen that making lower resolutions' text less blurry is a great step.

I have found that just recolouring the UI image files to a Dom3 brown increases the legibility slightly. Unfortunately. only half the UI is moddable this way, and the remaining transluscent black bits kind of clash. The slightly-grey text also isn't quite as legible as the slightly-beige Dom3 text on the same background.

Same here, I'd love to increase font size. My poor eyes are struggling ...