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Ingame User Interface
Submitted by Cortex 7/8/2012 1:45:00 AM {time} ago in Community Feedback
Apparently we are using seperate threads for different subjects which I didnt relaize until now so let me create one. I actually have the opinion the Ingame User Interface, which is the UI you see when you join a game, is the critical part of rebirthing EverNight. I posted something concerning this UI in the EN General NG a year ago. I will copy paste it into this post. ------------------------------------------------- Hello all, Years ago I was toying with the idea to code a new game-world environment for EverNight using current web-technologies. Something came up and I had to bury that intention due to lack of free time. Presently I have acquired even more experience and Im more confident it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. Still, it's a daunting task. It could easily get very complicated. If certain of my assumptions of the present inner-workings of the game-world are proven incorect I might need a decade to get it done. The game-world is an interaction of a multitude of web-technologies, Im not fluent in all of them, so if anyone is intrested in lending me a hand, be it with advice or/and actual coding, that would be greatly appreciated. What follows next is the concept I have in mind or the 'how' and what technologies I believe should be used. The new game-world has to run on his own web-server and application server. I wish to code the game-world environment on the application server ASP.NET. The current server uses old ASP and that server, I could be wrong, cannot host ASP.net at the same. And im not versed in ASP so why bother. Actually, the fact that EverNight uses ASP and only dinosaurs know how to set it up, and they are few and far between, is in my opinion the main reason why EverNight didnt evolve in time. A programmer who is skilled at ASP and knows how to convert the codebase to ASP.NET can easily ask 2500 USD a month for his services, but I digress. The Language to be used within the ASP.net framework would be C# and VB.Net. And you can not have a website without a boatload of Javascript, CSS and HTML. Oh yeah, I would be paying and hosting the servers. A programming project has to have boundaries. Without it you could be coding for eternity and never see an endproduct. Specifically, the game will always be 'For Fun' (or until someone with alot of money decides to rewrite EverNight entirely). It has to be For Fun because a Points Game requires programmatic interaction with the legacy database. Instead I prefer to create a new database on the new server and implement a simple leaderboard that uses that new database. The game will use distinct preferences (such as ELIM, STG, NTBB...etc) limiting them to only a few. A full fledged game requires the old admin-interface to be connected to new game-world which would require ASP knowledge. I prefer to code a new and simple admin-interface from scratch and if done right could allow for brand-new options (such as for example winning a game by most players killed or inserting a new Form 'on the fly'). Im not going to use the old legacy database except for login info. Major headache will be the map creation, generation and displaying it, if only I could use the old map logic but it doesnt allow for rapid custom map creation, it looks outdated and again it is run by very old ASP (javascript under the hood). I could use some advice concerning the map logic, if it has to be new, how todo it and how not todo it. As for specific game-world options Im currently considering the following ; - the map will load entirely when joining the game. No more refreshes needed to display a new portion of the map. You would also be able to grab the map with the mouse and pull it to a new location - scrolling with the mouse will zoom in and zoom out instantly (without refreshes) - alot more information when hovering the mouse over the map (such as health of a form, short battlereport,...) to reduce clicking actions - a new Deployment and Order interface accesible without having to click on a region name. One feature would be to able to disperse lessers through a 'pie-chart' representing percentages. (for example 75% of lessers to the North, 10% to the East and 15% to the South). Heavily implementing scrollbars and sliders to increase and decrease amounts of lessers. Ordering new lessers should be possible by just hovering over a fortress and setting the amount by adjusting a slider - more overall dynamic feel with much less refreshes. (for example ordering a fort should show the fort instantly without a refresh) - left click possibilty on a region with a popup menu containing standard actions - Drap and Drop a form into an adjacent region ...and dozens of other functions and features suggested by You. If you have a suggestion of your own please let me know. Thats it for now. Cortex. PS: This project is entirely conceptual. I havent coded anything yet. Wether or not I will go ahead with this endeavour is still up for personal debate. Oh, I almost forgot, I also need permission ---------------------------------------------------- Note that the above post is old and the person that I needed permission from was The Imp. Currently there are probably more competent persons around who could manage to code what I suggested, uhm, more competently :) A question to the new owners, recoding the ingame UI with canvas element of HTML5 + Jquery + ASP.NET MVC 3.0, would that be doable? Cortex
What would the reasons be to convert the ingame UI to new web standards?
In a non-duel non-blitz game the current UI works quite well. Major downside is how the map has to be reset in length and width. Zooming is also very archaic, only allowing you to zoom to a fixed set of views.
The problems of the old UI become apparent when you play a blitz or a duel. With the old UI playing a duel (except for the Island type duel) is cumbersome and atrociously repetitive. Each and evry region which contains lessers have to be clicked and micro-managed. Lessers within your empire, which you want to use as reinforcements at your borders, have to be manually pushed forward evry tick.
More to follow.
Cortex
Mainly because the very thought of trying to work with, update, change, edit, manage and debug the spaghetti web of vbscript and classic asp files makes me throw up in the back of my mouth a little bit.
But seriously, working with, testing, managing, changing, updating, and debugging a vbscript/classic asp project the size of evernight is well, at best, a nightmare compared to a structured asp.net project.
Plus working with asp.net is the bulk of our experience and background. We are very comfortable and fluent in working the the asp.net web development framework.
-------Original Message-------
Cortex wrote: What would the reasons be to convert the ingame UI to new web standards?
In a non-duel non-blitz game the current UI works quite well. Major downside is how the map has to be reset in length and width. Zooming is also very archaic, only allowing you to zoom to a fixed set of views.
The problems of the old UI become apparent when you play a blitz or a duel. With the old UI playing a duel (except for the Island type duel) is cumbersome and atrociously repetitive. Each and evry region which contains lessers have to be clicked and micro-managed. Lessers within your empire, which you want to use as reinforcements at your borders, have to be manually pushed forward evry tick.
More to follow.
Cortex
Features Thread.
- the map will load entirely when joining the game. No more refreshes needed to display a new portion of the map. You would also be able to grab the map with the mouse and pull it to a new location
- scrolling with the mouse will zoom in and zoom out instantly (without refreshes)
- alot more information when hovering the mouse over the map (such as health of a form, short battlereport,...) to reduce clicking actions
- a new Deployment and Order interface accesible without having to click on a region name. One feature would be to able to disperse lessers through a 'pie-chart' representing percentages. (for example 75% of lessers to the North, 10% to the East and 15% to the South). Heavily implementing scrollbars and sliders to increase and decrease amounts of lessers. Ordering new lessers should be possible by just hovering over a fortress and setting the amount by adjusting a slider
- more overall dynamic feel with much less refreshes. (for example ordering a fort should show the fort instantly without a refresh)
- left click possibilty on a region with a popup menu containing standard actions
- Drap and Drop a form into an adjacent region
More to come later on my part.
Cortex
- A battle interface where you can micro-manage evry region you own. Accessible by clicking a button 'Battle Interface'. Opens up a panel, without using popups, with a list of your regions. To avoid clicking actions just hovering your mouse over a region name displays his neighbours and highlights the region on the map (maybe including an automatic jump to that region). Sliders allow you to set the amounts and including a textbox for immediate and accurate setting of amounts. This panel will show the contents of the regions. When the region contains forms the stats of the forms will be shown.
- Possibilty of setting the movement of lessers and forms by more then one tick. If you want a form to move 3 regions further away you can set this and the game will remember to move that form by 1 region each tick. On the map such longterm movements could be shown by a different color.
Adding suggestions made by cpl.gilly and old_ugly n a different thread. I kind of started the same thread here.
Subject Maps From cpl.gilly Date Posted 07/04/2012 Thread Maps
I for one would like to see world map feature either repaired or replaced,also more sizing options,would like to have ability to full screen it.Even perhaps some added region types such as a frozen tundra(which could possibly adversely affect dragons)or having the swamp decrease a Iron Hulks power, jungles which lower lessers abilities somewhat.Just a few thoughts.
Regards,gilly
------------------------------------------------ Subject re: Maps From old_ugly Date Posted 07/07/2012 Thread Maps
Not sure I can add anything new to the map discussion, but my observations: - I can only zoom out to level 3 (4 and 5 create errors) - No world overview map - some phantom, unnamed regions seem to appear in just about every game - Limited color choice. I'd like to use a primarily gray scale map and assign colors according to battle regions. - The finding neighbors function is nice, but sometimes hard to see. What I am mostly looking for is the number of neighbors so I can calculate the optic terror results. Occasionally, it's to find the hiding neighbor. - The map size should be a game setting. For one-on-one games, a smaller map would be nice. - Sub-games would be interesting - two players fight it out for a sub-set of the map. After some number of ticks, two sub-sets can start fighting it out, and so on.
Ok - exhausted what I can remember in less than 5 minutes.
OldUgly
Im not sure wether this is already the case but the STG feature should be automatically checked for inactive players.
C.
I believe it is already... On the second tick of inactivity...
-------Original Message-------
Cortex wrote: Im not sure wether this is already the case but the STG feature should be automatically checked for inactive players.
C.
On page 25 of this NG wyrm419 made a post that concerns the Ingame UI.
[technical alert, this one's gonna get bit geeky, skip if you're not interested in that kind of stuff]
The in-game map is a major issue.
For the time being we are hard constrained (for time and technical reasons) to keep the core system as is.
Right now, the in-game map image (a simple gif) is generated by a dll that takes several parameters as inputs (center point, height, width, playerID, gameID, etc), then it makes a call(s) to the database to get some additional information (detail level, show borders (or not), your color setting for the other players), then it draws the image and gives you back a gif file.
For now, our flexibility with the in-game map is hard contrained by the limits of the current functionality of the map dll.
Overall this dll seems to completely stable and reliable, but it gets cranky reqarding how big of an image (height & width) it's willing to draw depending on the logical size of the game map.
This is all just for the underlying base image of the map, the drawing of the regions and borders. All the other elements on the map (Structures, Forms, Region Names, Lessors, region selection indicators, clickable links, etc) are in the html markup as an overlay on the image.
An interesting idea we think is possible (but is off the table right now, mainly due to time constraints) would be when you enter a game, to generate the map not as a single currently visible image, but as a set of images (tiles) that encompass the entire map (and ultimately a set of tiles for each zoom level).
Then with a little clientside javascript magic, shuffling the logical relative positions of the tiles just outside of the viewable area, we get a clientside scrollable map.
There are basically two technical issues to be overcome to be able to make this happen. Both of which are doable, just not right now with our current timeline.
1) If you look closely around the edges of the map, you'll notice that there are a lot of little bits of the borders that are not drawn completely. In order to generate a set of tiles, we need to figure out the math to determine how many tiles are needed, heights, widths, center points, and where to crop the edges, so the edges of the tiles blend into one another seemlessly.
(we're thinking this issue is closely related to gtting the worldmap working again)
2) The second challenge is getting the overlays (structures, region names, forms, lessors, etc.) scrolling in sync with the image.
We will probably eventually do this, just not as part of the initial relaunch.
Ultimately, we'd like to move to a vector based map of some kind. At the moment we're thinking <canvas> with an <svg> fallback. And a last resort fallback to the existing gif image map. The potential for interactivity and level of detail would be phenomenal, but this is waaaay down the road.
Your ideas for better interactivity with the map, right in the map, are the kind ideas we're definitely interested in exploring.
We want to make entering your orders as easy and as intuitive as we can.
We also want to make the interactivity with the map friendly and easy to do for touch devices. Especially touch devices with small screens.
We don't expect people to make a habit of playing Evernight on their phone, but we want to be able to put their orders in when they need to in a pinch.
-------Original Message-------
Cortex wrote: Apparently we are using seperate threads for different subjects which I didnt relaize until now so let me create one.
I actually have the opinion the Ingame User Interface, which is the UI you see when you join a game, is the critical part of rebirthing EverNight.
I posted something concerning this UI in the EN General NG a year ago. I will copy paste it into this post. ------------------------------------------ -------
Hello all,
Years ago I was toying with the idea to code a new game-world environment for EverNight using current web-technologies. Something came up and I had to bury that intention due to lack of free time. Presently I have acquired even more experience and Im more confident it can be done in a reasonable amount of time.
Still, it's a daunting task. It could easily get very complicated. If certain of my assumptions of the present inner-workings of the game-world are proven incorect I might need a decade to get it done. The game-world is an interaction of a multitude of web-technologies, Im not fluent in all of them, so if anyone is intrested in lending me a hand, be it with advice or/and actual coding, that would be greatly appreciated.
What follows next is the concept I have in mind or the 'how' and what technologies I believe should be used.
The new game-world has to run on his own web-server and application server. I wish to code the game-world environment on the application server ASP.NET. The current server uses old ASP and that server, I could be wrong, cannot host ASP.net at the same. And im not versed in ASP so why bother. Actually, the fact that EverNight uses ASP and only dinosaurs know how to set it up, and they are few and far between, is in my opinion the main reason why EverNight didnt evolve in time. A programmer who is skilled at ASP and knows how to convert the codebase to ASP.NET can easily ask 2500 USD a month for his services, but I digress. The Language to be used within the ASP.net framework would be C# and VB.Net. And you can not have a website without a boatload of Javascript, CSS and HTML. Oh yeah, I would be paying and hosting the servers.
A programming project has to have boundaries. Without it you could be coding for eternity and never see an endproduct. Specifically, the game will always be 'For Fun' (or until someone with alot of money decides to rewrite EverNight entirely). It has to be For Fun because a Points Game requires programmatic interaction with the legacy database. Instead I prefer to create a new database on the new server and implement a simple leaderboard that uses that new database. The game will use distinct preferences (such as ELIM, STG, NTBB...etc) limiting them to only a few. A full fledged game requires the old admin-interface to be connected to new game-world which would require ASP knowledge. I prefer to code a new and simple admin-interface from scratch and if done right could allow for brand-new options (such as for example winning a game by most players killed or inserting a new Form 'on the fly'). Im not going to use the old legacy database except for login info. Major headache will be the map creation, generation and displaying it, if only I could use the old map logic but it doesnt allow for rapid custom map creation, it looks outdated and again it is run by very old ASP (javascript under the hood). I could use some advice concerning the map logic, if it has to be new, how todo it and how not todo it.
As for specific game-world options Im currently considering the following ;
- the map will load entirely when joining the game. No more refreshes needed to display a new portion of the map. You would also be able to grab the map with the mouse and pull it to a new location
- scrolling with the mouse will zoom in and zoom out instantly (without refreshes)
- alot more information when hovering the mouse over the map (such as health of a form, short battlereport,...) to reduce clicking actions
- a new Deployment and Order interface accesible without having to click on a region name. One feature would be to able to disperse lessers through a 'pie-chart' representing percentages. (for example 75% of lessers to the North, 10% to the East and 15% to the South). Heavily implementing scrollbars and sliders to increase and decrease amounts of lessers. Ordering new lessers should be possible by just hovering over a fortress and setting the amount by adjusting a slider
- more overall dynamic feel with much less refreshes. (for example ordering a fort should show the fort instantly without a refresh)
- left click possibilty on a region with a popup menu containing standard actions
- Drap and Drop a form into an adjacent region
...and dozens of other functions and features suggested by You. If you have a suggestion of your own please let me know.
Thats it for now.
Cortex.
PS: This project is entirely conceptual. I havent coded anything yet. Wether or not I will go ahead with this endeavour is still up for personal debate. Oh, I almost forgot, I also need permission
------------------------------------------ ----------
Note that the above post is old and the person that I needed permission from was The Imp. Currently there are probably more competent persons around who could manage to code what I suggested, uhm, more competently :)
A question to the new owners, recoding the ingame UI with canvas element of HTML5 + Jquery + ASP.NET MVC 3.0, would that be doable?
Cortex
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