Especially as we look ahead to growing our populations well beyond a few dozen, the UI for accessing your hearthlings will need to be as user-friendly as possible, rather than the current unsorted list we have. In my example, my hearthlings are organized by Class. From this menu, I would be able to see who’s doing what only in the job Class I care about in the moment. I could access their workbenches immediately from here by clicking on their status, their character sheets by clicking on their Class tags by their names, or simply lock the camera to them as they travel by clicking their name. I imagine that it will become a common goal to split a population into new townships, which would be another layer of organization if we could specify Town borders with a new zone feature, then assign Hearthlings to live and work only around those Towns. Thoughts?
Very nice design. Seeing all the tabs laid out in the picture, it made me realize something–we’re going to have a lot of blue tabs. Honestly, too many. Even with the different labels, going through all of them is likely to get confusing in future versions. (Note, this isn’t a criticism to your design, it’s just the game’s current layout.)
I might make a suggestion to split the “blue” banners up more, like assigning the farmer and trapper (two “producers” that don’t have a workshop) into yellow, brown, or some other color compared to the Carpenter, Mason, Weaver, and Blacksmith.
I would like to second the changing of their colors, but also would like to guesting it be more like the window we have now, just with the tabs across the bottom and still on the right side of the screen. Just feels like it’d be less intrusive that way.
That is a decent idea, but what about when we have about 15 classes done? It could get a bit crowded and complex. Maybe we could sort them by Military. Crafter, and Other…?
This was also what I was sort of thinking–having overall tabs for “laborers”, “crafters”, “military”, and (as I suggested above) “gatherers/collectors”. Just click the tab, and you can see the classes (and units) under the specific category you currently have in the game. Although, I assume you’re suggesting tying it in to groups/trees of classes (like the Trapper and Shepherd). Maybe that could be an even more specific tab within the main tab?
I figure some of the other planned classes we’ve seen mentioned, such as the Treasure Hunter, would also fit nicely in the new category (since this particular example doesn’t neatly fit either into a “laborer” or “craftsman”).
I wonder what other overall tabs we might need in the future, at least in regards to classes. Where would magic fit, especially geomancy, which we’ve been constantly told is more constructive in purpose than a military unit? Should magic in general get its own tab, partially because of how rare and unique it’s intended to be anyway?
Geomancy, personally, I would put under the farmer (with my idea) as it’s terrain manipulation. As for others, it would depend on what their magic is. A war mage or healer I would put under the soldier, ect.
I’m not sure…I’d classify the Miner as terrain manipulation before I would the farmer, they’re not physically changing the composition or shape of the ground (it’s still dirt). Plus, changing the state of dirt isn’t their main intended feature, it’s production of items (crops); that’s why I was considering the Farmer a “gatherer/collector”.
That does bring up an important point, though. Where does the Miner fit in? Technically, I suppose I’d call it a “gatherer/collector” too (looking for stone, metals, and ores underground), but should there be a tab for terrain manipulators (and should they go here)? The only other class I can truly see in it right now is the Geomancer, but I thought a general “magic” tab would be better since there’s more potential classes to group with it then. Maybe if there’s a ton more in the future, and that’s clearly their intended focus as classes?
Honestly, I’d really like group hotkeys, so I can just assign the Geomancer to a number for quick access. That way, you have easy access to any potential world-altering classes and wouldn’t have to get to a tab to reach them (unless again there’s a ton of these classes in the future).
As convenient as they are, I’ve never been a fan of them. So far the only hotkey I even have memorized for this game is the N key and that’s because there isn’t a menu key for it yet.
As for your generic grouping though, once we get resources more stabilized, and have populations of 50+, wouldn’t those get a bit crowded?
The general “function” tabs aren’t intended as a final system of categorization. Merely, at this point in development I’m only suggesting we add one more categorization beyond the green-blue-red system we currently have and put the Farmer, Trapper, and Shepherd in it since they function distinctly different than the other “blue banner” classes, which are all crafters with workshops. With the Carpenter being the first of the blue banner classes added, I figured it’d make sense to leave blue for the other crafters and give the gatherer/collectors a different color and category.
Eventually, the system would have to be expanded on when the games can go longer and more and more people are available to the player. For now, (building off of @Valnus 's concept art above) I could see a second box pop up when you click one of the four categories of units–Laborer, Crafter, Collector, and Military–wherein all the different icons for the classes would be found being satisfactory for quite a while, given some ways to organize the classes in that second box (like alphabetization).
I myself am not a huge fan of hotkeys either, but I find the customizable squad numbers to be quite helpful in locating special units (or groups of units). To avoid being too micro-manage-y, I’d recommend leaving the ability to assign numbers to:
Military squads, which can be already be manually ordered and directed
Future classes with unique interactions with the world, such as Treasure Hunters with manual exploration, searching/analyzing ruins, and collecting treasure (or so I assume at this point)
Units with special abilities outside of a station or workshop, such as the Geomancer and their access to terraforming options.
Plus, these number hotkeys could also be a fast way to locate these units in the world (in addition to getting to their commands and information without going through the menu and tabs).
But that’s a whole other suggestion question, so maybe I’ll look at that more later.
that was my initial thought for this whole idea, though you put it in much better words then i could have [quote=“Atralane, post:13, topic:11854”]
Laborer, Crafter, Collector, and Military
[/quote]i think those categories would make the most sense, at least for this stage of the game.
so i not sure if you guys are aware but the sign right next to the is the just crafters list so the blue banners would be found in there as well as the normal list but also as the game expanded the class will basically take over the screen if you were to this so the best way to do this would be by just doing banner color. so workers and anything else that they plan to be green in one tab, then blue, red, etc. but this would be unsorted because the game really would just have the screen filled with all the different classes and you would be able to see want you want to do with them but this is all up to RE
I’m having difficulty understanding your concept–isn’t this sort of what I was suggesting by using larger tabs based on the general function (represented by banner color) of the classes? And there are certainly ways the classes can be organized once put in these tabs, either in a pre-determined order, alphabetical order or “rank” of class and possibly even player’s choice.
Of course, this is just a hypothetical system, but even with a large amount of total classes in the future, I could see such a system adapting without too much problem. By then, we’ll probably have given Radiant plenty of feedback and suggestions on the systems so far.
[quote=“Atralane, post:13, topic:11854”]