UI enhancement idea

Tooltips?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello,

One thing I like in Paradox's strategy games (Hearths of Iron 1/2, Europa Universalis 1/2, Victoria etc.) are excellent tooltips which pop up almost everywhere in the user interface. Some of these are just explaining the function of different buttons, but the most useful of these in my opinion are the tooltips for different resources. For example when hovering mouse over oil resource indicator, the tooltip tells the different factors which affect the oil production.

Would these kind of tooltips be a good addition to GC2 interface? For example in colony management screen, tooltips would tell where from exactly the different values come from, eg. tooltip for planet quality would tell the base quality + techs and improvements which have possibly made the quality better. Similarly for other values which change during the game and for other screens.

I think these would be extremely helpful especially for new players. Also, an option to turn these off could be implemented if somebody doesn't like these.

Just my thoughts.

ideas
8,975 views 9 replies
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was kinda surprised they were not in already, I was hoping this was just an implementation issue and was slated for down the road.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the GC1 beta they were put in at a later beta level.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the GC1 beta they were put in at a later beta level.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the GC1 beta they were put in at a later beta level.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
triple post!

But yeah, it's a good idea as long as it doesn't become annoying. Ideally people wouldn't want to turn it off once they become familiar with how things work.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Tooltips were one of the last things that we did in GC1 and it will probably be the same here. There's so much that changes on the interface from the beginning of the beta until the release version that makes it easier to wait until closer to release to do tooltips. 

That being said, the Society team is currently working on getting tooltips into their alpha of Society.  Once they have it working, I could easily plug it into GC2. If one or more of you would like to volunteer to work on the tooltips data file for GC2, it would save us a lot of time.  All you need is a version of DesktopX (even the free version will work) and a text editor.

This is what you would do:

1) Run DesktopX. When the little popup comes up, choose Create so that it starts in build mode.

2) Double click on one of the dxpacks from the GC2 screens folder to open it.

3) Right click on the DesktopX icon and choose List Objects.  This lists all the objects in the screen. 

4) Apart from fonts, tabs, and listboxentries, which are all just for information, you can make a tooltip for any of the objects in the dxpack.  I suggest sticking with the static strings and buttons for tooltips.  You will not be actually editing the dxpack.  You just need to be get the OBJIDs for the controls that need tooltips.

5) Create a text file with the same name as the dxpack and give it the extension .tip and open it in a text editor.  This is the format for the tooltip tables:

[TABLEALIAS MainWnd]

[TurnButton] Hit this button to advance to the next turn

[TABLEEND]

The word that comes after the keyword TABLEALIAS is the name of the dxpack without the extension.  The OBJID for the control you are assigning the tooltip to goes in [], like [TurnButton].  [TABLELEND] closes the table and if you forget it, the parser will be unhappy and quite possibly mess up all the rest of the tables it reads in too.

If you're interested in helping, use this forum and #galciv on irc.stardock.net to coordinate your efforts.  If you're not, no big deal, but thanks a bunch if you are.

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm not completely sure if you got my suggestion right:

I wasn't actually talking about the "basic" tooltips which explain the function of different buttons and user interface, but instead of "advanced" tooltips. These are dynamic in the sense that the description changes during the gameplay. For example tooltip for planet quality in the beginning of the game displays only the base quality but later on when pq has raised it shows for example: "Base planet quality: 16, modifiers: Soil enhancement +2, Terraforming +1, Total: 19" and so on... These could be implemented for values which are not static when the game progresses.

Now I'm not sure if this kind of dynamic behaviour of tooltips is possible with UI engine used, but as I said, Paradox has implemented this kind of scheme in their games and it helps a lot.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
triple post!


Yipes. How did that happen. I don't remember what was going on then, but I don't remember anything unusual.

"Base planet quality: 16, modifiers: Soil enhancement +2, Terraforming +1, Total: 19"


This sounds like data for the planet detail window (which has not yet been provided to us). On GC1, the planet detail did not show the initial planet quality, but it did provide the social improvements that had been completed and the total improvement of planet quality (in percent, alas). I missed not knowing what the planet quality had been before it had been colonized. Could it be included in the planet detail on GC2?