Selection Circles option poll

[Sensuki]

It has been previously stated that Josh and Tim are going to go for Blue selection circles for Player controlled units in Project Eternity and Red for enemies due to the consideration of those that are color-blind (including themselves). This may be why ToEE had blue circles instead of the legacy green color.

 

I don't have a problem with the fact that they are doing that, but for me, the lack of legacy selection circles will just not attain the same 'feeling' to the game as the older Infinity Engine games. It's something that annoyed the hell out of me from the get-go in Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition as well (a game which I regret purchasing).

 

This might be a bit late to request seeming as though the selection circle code has already been written, but in the sake of keeping the nostalgic/familiar feel of the older isometric infinity engine games in Project Eternity, I was wondering whether it would be possible to allow players to have the choice of being able to revert back to the legacy selection circle colors.

 

I also believe that there would be those who would love the option to be able to pick the color of selection circles for player-controlled characters and NPCs (I believe enemies should always be red, and I assume most think the same).

 

Then there is the debate about whether selection circles should be always visible or only visible when the mouse cursor is hovering over the selectable area inside one.

 

Is it possible to be able to customize how selection circles are displayed among the "Feedback" settings in the options menu ? It's obviously something that you won't want to be worrying about at the moment since you're designing the game, but it would be something to think about during post-production if it's easy to implement and you have the time to do it.

 

So here is a poll, if it may be the most trivial poll ever.

[JFSOCC]

If it doesn't cost too much resources, sure.

[general_azure]

I don't really care myself which color those things have... but then, it's just 3 integers per circle type and a dropdown list in some menu, so I can't see any harm either. Hell, if they're really feeling lazy they can skip the menu and read it from the ini. Guess I'll vote yes just for the simplicity and because it might make someone happy after all =P

[Hassat Hunter]

The more options the better. Definitely true in this case.

 

I probably would play with green for my team, blue for neutral NPC's and red for enemies and keep them persistant. But I can understand why people would want to see them only when pressing a button or hovering over them like PS:T had.

[Karkarov]

My ability to not care could not be higher than it is.  If they want to give us custom selection circles that's cool but I won't care if they don't.  There is nothing else really worth talking about though.  If your selection circle color choices are going to make the game worse if you don't get what you want I only have three words.  Get over it.

Edited March 10, 2013 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

Hahah

Edited March 11, 2013 by Sensuki

[Janmanden]

I would like to be able to customize the colour, size and shape of 'circles' for each character. It would make it easier to assess the tactical layout..

[AGX-17]

I could not give less ****s.

 

If you want to go the "first year, first term graphic design student" route you could go blue and orange.

Edited March 11, 2013 by AGX-17

[Kevin Lynch]

The more options the better. Definitely true in this case.

 

I probably would play with green for my team, blue for neutral NPC's and red for enemies and keep them persistant. But I can understand why people would want to see them only when pressing a button or hovering over them like PS:T had.

This is essentially my opinion on this, although I don't have any trouble with the design choice the devs have made. I believe more options for the player improve the experience if they don't take too many resources away from more important aspects of the game.

[moridin84]

No offence but this seems entirely silly. 

 

And sure you can say "oh just put it in the options" but if you did that for every little thing you'd have tonnes of stupid little options.

[Ffordesoon]

@moridin84:

 

And why is that bothersome, exactly?

 

"AGH, DAMMIT, I HAVE TOO MANY OPTIONS!"

 

Really? You're gonna sit down to play PE, open the options menu, and whinge for fifteen minutes about a bunch of options that are helpful for some people even if you don't give a crap about them?

 

Or are you just going to change the options that are relevant to your interests real quick, start the game, and probably never think about them again?

[moridin84]

@moridin84:

 

And why is that bothersome, exactly?

 

"AGH, DAMMIT, I HAVE TOO MANY OPTIONS!"

 

Really? You're gonna sit down to play PE, open the options menu, and whinge for fifteen minutes about a bunch of options that are helpful for some people even if you don't give a crap about them?

 

Or are you just going to change the options that are relevant to your interests real quick, start the game, and probably never think about them again?

 

There are two separate issues I have with this.

 

The first is that I consider adding this to be feature creep, the addition of new, unnecessary features that complicate the product. 

 

The second is that I believe a clean simple interface is good and that having a 20-30 different options would look ugly and complicated for anyone who visits that screen. 

[Ffordesoon]

Sure, I get both of those issues. And if we were talking about implementing whole separate modes of play to accomodate every taste, I'd even agree with you.

 

But stuff like changing the color of the selection circles is presumably dead simple to implement, doesn't change the core of the product, and makes a difference for any players who want to use that feature. It's a pretty obvious win-win from where I'm sitting.

 

It's also worth noting that this is a PC game. PC gamers expect crazy amounts of options to customize their experience.

[Sensuki]

This has nothing to do with the interface really, just the options menu. Having a Legacy circles option isn't feature creep IMO, but "choose your own cirlces" is, but I thought I'd add it to the poll anyway.

[Amentep]

I want octagons instead of circles^*

 

In terms of color, I usually just adjust to the color the game chooses - no issue with TOEE colors or any of that.  As long as I can mentally adjust to ally - attacking me - not ally and not attacking me color scheme what it is doesn't matter too much to me.

 

If they can add it with no problem - I have no problem with it being added.  But if it'd take extra time to develop a solution I don't really see it as necessary.

 

*Not really

[Jarmo]

I might kind of want to turn the circles off, but probably would turn them right back after a while.

If there were options to wiggle the colors about, I might try that as well.

 

Real, real low on my things I care about list.

 

But if it's a trivial thing to code in, like 15 minutes of work, I'd rather have the choices.

Believe or not, how cluttered and full the options menu is, is even lower on my things I care about list. 

 

But if it's a case of *sigh*, fans want to change the circle colors, better scrap the plans for the elven city, because it's either or.

Well then I'd kind of rather have more content than choices.

[moridin84]

I might kind of want to turn the circles off, but probably would turn them right back after a while.

If there were options to wiggle the colors about, I might try that as well.

 

Real, real low on my things I care about list.

 

But if it's a trivial thing to code in, like 15 minutes of work, I'd rather have the choices.

Believe or not, how cluttered and full the options menu is, is even lower on my things I care about list. 

 

But if it's a case of *sigh*, fans want to change the circle colors, better scrap the plans for the elven city, because it's either or.

Well then I'd kind of rather have more content than choices.

 

Hah, 15 minutes?

 

I figure there is a least 4 people required to make this change. The graphics designer, the ui designer, the project manager and the software developer. It will take more than 15 minutes to get them into a room and explain this. 

[Lephys]

Hah, 15 minutes?

 

I figure there is a least 4 people required to make this change. The graphics designer, the ui designer, the project manager and the software developer. It will take more than 15 minutes to get them into a room and explain this.

I believe he was exaggerating for effect with the "15 minutes" thing. But, I will say that you'd probably be surprised how quickly they can do such things. It might take a day or two, honestly. For something so simple. "This circle that's already programmed to display in all these instances simply gets a different color value in all occurring 'What is the color of this circle you're displaying?' fields throughout the code." They've already coded colored circles, at that point, and they've already coded menu options with checkboxes that already modify the already-coded code.

 

It's not like they have to break out their code lathe, and hand-sand some new circles to perfection, while a guy in the other room manually creates the font used for the menu option using popsicle sticks, while yet a third person arduously invents the checkbox.

[Jarmo]

Yah, slight exaggeration on both ends of the spectrum.

 

It's not like they'd need to drop everything and rush to emergency color circles meeting.

It's likely the required people will meet anyway during the development, on one week meeting or the other.

Then it's a case of "oh, btw, can we make this selectable"?

 

Likely the color is already a changeable variable, maybe CircCOL or something.

I'm now just guessing the graphics guy doesn't design several different circle types, but just one that stretches to fit whatever size the creature is,

then the circle takes a CircCOL depending on whether the creature is friendly, hostile, neutral or fleeing.

 

Ideally, it's pretty trivial.

Just put the CircCOL1, CircCOL2, CircCOL3 and CircCOL4, into options menu

and let the player use the pre-existing color picker to replace them with whatever color, or just put the rgb-values right there for changing.

 

Or there could be problems, it could be non-trivial for whatever silly programming reason.

If it actually takes a day or two or actual programming time, then I'd say scrap the idea.

[moridin84]

Yah, slight exaggeration on both ends of the spectrum.

 

It's not like they'd need to drop everything and rush to emergency color circles meeting.

It's likely the required people will meet anyway during the development, on one week meeting or the other.

Then it's a case of "oh, btw, can we make this selectable"?

 

Likely the color is already a changeable variable, maybe CircCOL or something.

I'm now just guessing the graphics guy doesn't design several different circle types, but just one that stretches to fit whatever size the creature is,

then the circle takes a CircCOL depending on whether the creature is friendly, hostile, neutral or fleeing.

 

Ideally, it's pretty trivial.

Just put the CircCOL1, CircCOL2, CircCOL3 and CircCOL4, into options menu

and let the player use the pre-existing color picker to replace them with whatever color, or just put the rgb-values right there for changing.

 

Or there could be problems, it could be non-trivial for whatever silly programming reason.

If it actually takes a day or two or actual programming time, then I'd say scrap the idea.

I don't know exactly how they would do it but if it was me I wouldn't have the selection colour as variable. I would have the colour as a "resource", called SELECTION_COLOUR_ENEMY or something. Other resources would be STANDARD_BUTTON (an image), INVENTORY_WINDOW_BORDER or MENU_BACKGROUND_COLOUR.

 

The difference between a resource and a configuration variable is that resources are defined when you build the application exe whereas a configuration variable has to be dynamically picked from a settings file.

Edited March 23, 2013 by moridin84

[Jarmo]

Don't take it too literally, I don't have a clue of the difference between variable and resource.

Point was basically, it's not like the programmer goes "oh noes, I already drew eleventy billion yellow rings and now you want more colors?!"

[Ffordesoon]

@moridin84:

 

Wouldn't that be a monstrously inefficient way to design the circles? I mean, I'm no programmer, but what if the circles, say, blend in with too many of the environments, or something? Wouldn't it be more efficient from a production perspective to have an easy way to switch colors?

[Tsuga C]

Yes, yes, and don't care.

[moridin84]

@moridin84:

 

Wouldn't that be a monstrously inefficient way to design the circles? I mean, I'm no programmer, but what if the circles, say, blend in with too many of the environments, or something? Wouldn't it be more efficient from a production perspective to have an easy way to switch colors?

Well if you need to switch colours then you can do it easily, you just need to change the SELECTION_COLOUR_ENEMY resource. This value will be stored in a single file so it's easy to change. 

[Ffordesoon]

Why not give the players control over that, then?