Improving UI.. again

[serprex]

First of all it's been suggested that cards in hand should be rendered with the same mechanism as used for creatures. This would make the interface more mobile friendly

Now then, with that out of the way, let's get to UI that matters: keyboard. Currently we have 0-8 & space. This is inadequate because there's creatures & perms & stuff

I've been using vim lately. 0-8 really isn't the best way to interface with one's cards even. What'd be useful is a way to say something like "Play all pillars" with 'pp'

That said 0-8 _could_ be expanded with contexts. ASD for your creature rows, ZXC for opponent's, FG for your perm rows, VB for your opponents, QW for your weapon/shield, ER for your opponents. HJKL for navigating the cursor cardinally. Hitting a number shouldn't automatically play the target, that'd be done with <CR>

The latter would be more feasible than implementing multiselecting commands. But here we get the good part: modes. 0-8 mode would be "Single select mode" & some day we can make a "Multi select mode" that one can toggle into or something

Additionally 0-8 could be aliased on qwertyui. ESC should bind onto resign

edit: https://github.com/serprex/openEtG/commit/ed1bdc1337c451b34b86ae3a2158878627ec1167

[timpa]

I tried using this to give some feedback and I just couldn't figure out how it is supposed to work.

[serprex]

This isn't in-game yet, it'll be in 12-10 patch

The controls ended up being implemented to work with the current control layout of W/S/0-8/space

QA Click shield
WS Click player
ED Click weapon
RF Select hand
(1st character is opponent, 2nd is own)

ZXC Select 1st, 2nd, or 3rd row of creatures. Chord shift for opponent's rows
VB Select 1st or 2nd row of permanents. Chord shift for opponent's rows
N Reset cursor (default is that selected row is your own hand)
1-8 Select nth instance of a row
` or Enter Click selected instance
Esc Resign
Space End Turn

Selected instance has a blue rectangle. this rectangle is rendered thinly & on top of the red targeting boxes

I still need to work out HJKL controls to be meaningful, but essentially if you select 2 to the left of the desired instance you can correct your selection by typing LL HL moves left/right along currently selected row, wrapping at 1/8, while JK cycle between rows

It could be useful to include a T-row which allows 0-8 to select the Nth potential target of targeting. When there's more than 8 viable targets one would have to use the existing methods

[timpa]

It may be useful to add numbers to the various targets so that the user knows in a glance which key to press instead of having to count. Also, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 would map better with the keyboard layout.

I tested it a bit. It seems mostly useful to play when your mouse is misbehaving or broken (I had that issue once with a mouse double clicking at random), otherwise the interface is extremelly more cumbersome than just picking your mouse and clicking it.

[serprex]

I mistyped, 0 does nothing. HJKL is pivotal for usability. R/F are bugged, they need to be switched. Seeing some issue with hand cursor floating off

[serprex]

Alternative mobile-friendly card images in development

Also after discussing with CG, am meditating on revising keyboard shortcuts to thread commands (Essentially, instead of saying "Select A, execute, Select B, shift left, execute" one would say "Select A, execute & Select B, shift left, execute" tho it'd be neat to have "execute after shifting left" for that last command which SHIFT+HJKL could offer)

Unsure how much such a control scheme should rely on modifier keys

[timpa]

Looks good for a tablet. Might be still hard to click in a phone (easy to missclick, more precisely).

If there is a way to figure the resolution of the display this could be easy to solve (requiring a double click in small resolutions and an easy way to cancel missclicks)

[serprex]

Now that we have art for everything the nametag can be removed from instance boxes. I feel there's quite a bit of vertical space to be saved

[timpa]

I've played a bit with the new hand design and have some suggestions

* Make the cards that you don't have the quanta to play brighter (that is, reduce the difference between playable and non-playable). Ideally it should be obvious that the card can't be played, but you should also be able to tell what the card is by its art. Also, when the difference between playable and non-playable is so large, cards switching between the 2 states because you are either playing cards or playing quanta (nova, immo or upped pends/towers/marks) is a bit distracting.

* Only move the cards to their new positions when there is a draw effect or when the turn ends. It's extremelly distracting trying to click the cards and have to pay attention to where the next card you want to play has moved to.

Otherwise it looks good.

[kirbylover314]

What if I liked it before

Can I toggle it

[Fippe94]

Agree with timpa's suggestion. Also the hand overlay images (like singularity) needs to be fixed, they cover the two top cards so you can't see what they are, and are in the way for most of the rest of the hand too.

[serprex]

@kirby nope

[timpa]

Did some testing in my tablet today. The UI works fine, the only problem is that the game gets too heavy when there are too many cards in play and things get way too slow, with lots of lag.