CEAW UI

[metolius]

So... there have been some excellent changes to CEAW in the past few months, thanks in large part to the strenuous (not to say heroic) efforts of the GS development team. An enormous tip of the hat.

To a great degree, these changes have been to the 'content' of the game, and they haven't fussed with the user interface (UI) (with a few notable exceptions).

Just for fun, I thought I'd see if people had any ideas for ways to improve the UI. Let me hasten to add that I don't mean to imply that this is something that the GS team missed. This is probably more of a wish list for a v2 of the game.

Just to stay on topic, I'd like to suggest that this thread try to stick with USER INTERFACE only, not game play, scenarios, etc.

Let me throw a couple of ideas out there to start things off:

+ variable window size in windowed mode... would be very nice to be able to use all of a bigger screen.

+ improved stats and history. I'd LOVE to be able to see how my Axis old production and stores are doing over time, for example, without making a note in Excel every turn. Ditto PPs and manpower. Also, units constructed, and units destroyed, step constructed, steps lost, broken down by unit: the casualties number is interesting, but not as useful.

[timhicks]

I think it would be nice if each unit was given a unique name, e.g 57th Corp, and then the game could maintain a record of battle honours for each unit. For example France 1940, Russia 1941 ect.

A battle record which included the names of Cities would be nice, (e.g Moscow Dec 1941) but I guess would be more difficult to code.

[tetsuo]

I think it would be a good idea a minimizable Control Panel and I agree with metolius, Improved stats and history would be great too.

[bendamaster]

How about being able to access options from the main menu?

[bizmark]

I've always wished that, during a turn I could go back and view, whatever you call it, the intro screen at the beginning of the turn. As metolius stated a history of PPs and such would be nice, but haven't you ever forgot the progress of your lab research? I know you could figure it out if you went to your labs and studied it, but it would be faster if you could bring up the intro screen again.

Also, along the same vain, it would be nice to have a recap of important turn events such as who was conquered, who joined who, convoys, etc.

[bendamaster]

Another one I just thought of: How about being able to access the manpower levels of all the minor powers?

[trulster]

And a warning would be useful, whenever you are about to bring the manpower below a new threshold (ie when repairing or building a new unit).

[BuddyGrant]

How about being able to access the manpower levels of all the minor powers?

If there was a place for this I would love to have access to this vital info.

[bendamaster]

No-one wants to implement any of these?

[metolius]

Yes, I agree, it would be great to have some idea of what was going on the in minor countries. A graph that showed current and historical manpower levels for all the minor and major powers on your side would do the trick.

Same would be good for fuel, and PP production.

[metolius]

I like the feature that let's you use page-up and page-down to go to the next ready unit. Very handy to use at the end of the turn, for example, to make sure you don't miss anything.

It would be GREAT if it worked in the 'upgrade' and 'repair' modes. For example, if you were in the 'upgrade' mode, the page-up/down would take you to the next/last unit that could be upgraded (skipping over all units that couldn't be upgraded for whatever reason). Same in the 'repair' mode.

A more advanced filter could let you scroll through any sub-group that you could specify. For example, all fighter units. Or all German fighter units. Or all submarines. Or all Italian garrison units.