Imperator DD #106 - UI rework part 2

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jiroro

UX designer
Paradox Staff
Dec 17, 2019
7
663
twitter.com
Good day, Jiroro here!

The UI rework is moving along nicely. We still have things to do before we can call it finished but it’s starting to come together. Since the last time I posted, we’ve polished and refined the UIs and their components, so if you look closely you'll notice some differences from last time. Personally, I have a pet peeve about alignment and spacing in UIs - or lack thereof - so I’m trying to set aside some time for polish too. It’s been really cool to read your comments on my previous Dev diary (#102) because it turns out most of your feedback matches well with what’s currently on my to-do list.

Sooo, today I’m back again to share some UIs.
First up we have some new additions to the Nation Overview.

nation-overview-01.PNG


You’ve seen this UI before, but what’s new here is that you can enable or disable the alerts for individual Nation Decisions now! This is something I wanted to add for quite some time now, so it’s great to have it in. Some of the decisions you simply care a little bit less about ;) Now you can toggle them on or off as you please.

nation-overview-02.PNG


Previously you’ve seen the Nation Overview with Provinces as a list at the bottom of the view. We made it into its own tab, called “Management” for now. More space for Provinces was definitely needed. In the Province Management tab, you might notice there are two ways of viewing your Provinces now: The regular Provinces list as well as grouped by Governorships. Grouping by governorship makes a lot of sense, but one problem is that you wouldn’t be able to sort as freely on Province level this way. We are exploring how it feels. For now, we have both lists available.

Next up is a little something in the Macro Builder:

macro_builder_destroy_building.PNG


Now, you can cancel or destroy buildings from the Macro Builder, just right-click on the territory on the map in this mode. It makes a lot of sense to be able to do that here.

Final peek for today is Religion view. Here’s how it looks:

religion-view-01.PNG


religion-view-02.PNG


We are letting the descriptions for treasures and Deities take up more space, which makes me so happy. More of that flavor! We're also adding different images depending on the tier of Holy Site (tier is based on Territory rank just like before) and place them as background images in the UI. The close ups are one of the tier 1 as well as tier 3. Our artists have some serious talent, all this gorgeous art really makes the UI come alive!

holy-site-meadow.png

roman_temple_tier3.jpg


That's all from me for this time around. Have a great week everyone and talk to you soon!

/Jiroro
 
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Nice for the eyes, especially the artwork

But I still hope for much more game changing stuff, real new content.

Hope for the best.
 
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This looks great. But for nation overiew, somebody will not like pie charts, since they are practicly useless. But if you'd add different color shades to every specific culture, it will become MUCH more practical.
 
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I hope that there'll be artwork for all the different religions/cultures in the future, as it seems odd to have a Greek temple as a Germanic tribe or as an Indian.

Also different artwork for different deity types (economy, war, fertility, eloquency) would be great.
 
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Good work you really brought up the flavor and visuals of the game! Very very nice!

Destroying things from the macro'builder is AWESOME!

Finally I can get rid of the Tribal settlements without searching for them manually
 
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A suggestion: make the buttons with locks in the Religion view have a gray background, so it's more obvious that this slot is unused.
 
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This looks good. Though a two questions.

1.) in the nation over view: would there be a way to see number/percentage of the culture and religion of pops?
2.) Why isn't the statue for the temple of Alexander painted? Can the statues of the Gods and Goddesses be painted?
 
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Can you please please make the circle graphs a little thicker please, they are hard to read.
 
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I am loving what the UI looks like, but I have 2 major gripes still.

1604331159922.png

This is a bad way of showing this information. Pie charts, especially these hollow ones, are simply not good enough.
We're playing as the Antigonid Kingdom in this image, so how much of that pie is Macedonian? It looks to be *around* 15-20% right? Well.. no, because the Antigonid Kingdom has more Hellenic cultured pops than just Macedonians... so how much is it? And *around* is not good enough even if every Hellenic culture pop in your nation was Macedonian.

Somewhere in this UI, we *need* a number. Not a pie or other chart, a number, that tells us what the % of our nation follows our primary Culture. Same for religion.

Similarly, for this UI here;
1604331354613.png


I assume the culture and religion breakdown is in the Provinces tab instead? In that case, same story, % of pops that follow primary (or integrated) culture, and % of pops that follow your state religion are imo a necessity.

Other than that, lovely job, I love the aesthetic :)
 
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Amazing the macro-builder and the new UI even if I would have like to see some kind of teasers of the next weekly diaries about new tweaks to old mechanics, but an outstanding job with the new portraits to holy sites, really look gorgeous and immersive to the players, beside barbarian/Hellenic religions, Hindu, Iranians and Egypts will have new portraits too??
 
Can you please please make the circle graphs a little thicker please, they are hard to read.
I really like how these look, but agree. Make the central icon a tiny bit smaller if you need to. Or perhaps it might be more readable if the circles had a dark outline to make them pop a little more?
 
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