Making it Work: World Map
Dee
Member Posts: 10,447
The discussion here pointed out that the World Map could use some love. Let's talk about that.
The key features at play here:
The key features at play here:
- The extra text under every area adds clutter to the screen, which can make it harder to see what the player needs to see.
- The world map screen is not as mod-friendly as it once was; it should be externalized so that modders can change how the screen looks and operates.
5
Comments
I'd like to suggest:
- Travel time should not be displayed on the map itself. It's crowding the map.
- Locations should change color when mousing over them, as a visual indicator.
- Locations should display the travel time in a tooltip when mousing over them.
- When doubleclicking a destination, you should immediately travel there.
- When singleclicking a destination, the travel time should be displayed somewhere. The user could then travel there by either pressing the travel button, or doubleclicking the destination.
Where and how to list the travel time when singleclicking, I'm not too sure. Perhaps a tooltip could pop up underneath the location (or above it for the bottom locations)?
Click once, a text box by the travel button (under, over, on, where ever) tells the player how long it will take to travel there. Maybe even display the name there as well. "Friendly Arm Inn - 12 hours"
Click travel, or click the same map again to travel to that location.
When you hover your mouse over each location you see a dotted line along the path your PC is going to take to get there
-Might help new players find out how things are connected
-If the path goes though a town you might then decide to stop at the town first
If you pick a location that you havnt been to yet and have not found the connected path. The remaining line is grey or a different colour
-That way people can kinda guess which map they need to travel from in order to get to the destination.
-Even now after playing 100s of hours I still sometimes forget what map im supposed to go to in order to find the connecting path. Also in some cases the obvious path or direction isnt apparent by looking at the map.
But if this feature can be implemented, I'd suggest to use different styles for the connecting paths based on the chances of an ambush (e.g. a small warning sign at the center of the connecting path).
I'll try to summarize the bigger changes that have been brought up, then offer my own thoughts:
Travel Times: On Selection
The suggestion is to show the travel times in a central location once a destination has been selected, instead of on the destinations themselves. This is a good idea; it would make the screen easier to read, and place the important information in one location rather than several.Another suggestion is to include the travel time and destination name in a tooltip when you hover over the location on the map. Again, this is a solid idea. But it also duplicates functionality from the On Selection suggestion above. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's worth paying attention to.
Initiating Travel
The suggestion here is to allow double-clicks to initiate travel times immediately, which would help eliminate the extra step of clicking "Travel".Destination Display
The suggestion here is to make destinations change color while hovering over them with the mouse. Hover effects are good UI design in general, since they communicate to the player what clicking will do.Destination Routes
This one is a bit more cumbersome, and runs the risk of communicating false information. Your current destination is marked on the map, and travel always takes place in a straight line; obfuscating that with roads and lines through other areas is probably a bad idea; it also doesn't work well for BGII:EE, where the world map destinations aren't necessarily going to fit on the screen all at once.It's a nice idea, but I don't think it would be appropriate for these games.
They might get confused by it and assume they have to visit each connected area in some way
Good point, I hadn’t thought about that. And they might assume that there is only one way to get there.
Maybe just keep it in mind for BG3
What's wrong with the way it is in 1.3?
One click on Travel icon brings up the map.
Hovering cursor over a destination tells you whether you can travel there or not (it changes colour if you can).
One click on destination and you arrive there (unless you're waylaid by bandits).
Two clicks, that's it, job done.
All that needs to be added is the travelling time to the selected destination, which surely can be displayed with the colour change when the cursor's hovering over it.
This also begs the question: Why do we need to know travel times anyway? It's fairly obvious from the map which areas are close and which are far away and it's not as if we need to know how many packed lunches to take. Besides, we soon learn the hard way trying cross the entire map with a single bound increase the chances of being waylaid and will leave you fatigued on arrival.
As for BG2, it's all fairly irrelevant because there's no sensation of 'travelling' anyway, you effectively just teleport.
It all starts with a discussion
Like you say, 1st click brings up the map, hovering over an area changes its colour if you can, and a final click takes you there.
The only thing I would add is that the 'travel time' and 'destination name' should appear in separate area away from the map during the hovering phase/mouseover so they are not tied directly on the map.
Edit: This is the thread i think? Was made by @Cerevant
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/16446/revised-world-map-test/p1
In ver. 1.3, the traveling hours do appear in a little scroll over your destination when you hover over it.
I said in a different area - both the 1.3 and 2.0 SOD interfaces have unused areas where the information could easily go:
The advantage is that it clears all the writing off the map in the second picture - that text only appears in the marked box when you mouse is hovering over a destination.
The advantage is that it clears all the writing off the map in the second picture - that text only appears in the marked box when you mouse is hovering over a destination.
How is this an advantage? The names of the towns belong there. Though it would be nice if the font matched the original better.
So - just to be explicitly clear, @Ravenslight
1st click brings up the map
Hovering over an area changes its colour if you can travel there - a dedicated space shows 'Travelling Time: X hours' (although I would prefer it say, for example, 'Nashkel - Travelling Time: X hours' but repeating the name is not essential).
2nd click takes you there
That way the map is nice and tidy and looks just like it did before.
Key differences between v2.0 and this one:
- An added checkbox to toggle One-Click Travel (which is how it worked in v1.3)
- Hovering over a destination causes it to pulse from black to blue (or to white, if it's somewhere you've already been)
- The travel time is displayed in the text field below the screen title, along with the name of the destination.
- The "Travel" button is located above the map instead of in the bottom right corner, and is disabled (but visible) if "One-Click Travel" is enabled.
Ignore my box art for the moment; is that what people were envisioning?Does your mock up of the tool tip hovering over the destination and bringing up a visual indicate that it would be an unfurling scroll, complete with sound?
We're getting off topic, though; this thread is about the World Map, not the tooltip animation.
How is it off topic if we are talking about how this feature will work with the new map screen? I don’t understand. There is a difference to how things will look if it is a plain scroll or an animated one.
If the question of the scroll animation needs to be brought up somewhere else, where should I do that?
The tooltip scroll not unfurling is a fairly straight-forward bug report; just submit a ticket on Redmine: http://support.baldursgate.com
---------
While not entirely related to GUI I'd like to ask if this problem should be reported on Redmine: SoD icons uses BAM v1 instead of BAM v2 format which caused color loss (BAM v1 is limited to 256 color palette) and transparency problems. Example:
Color loss here is obvious. And those empty pixels are typical result of saving image with transparency into BAM v1 which doesn't support it.