AGEOD Forums

Hi folks, just getting into my first campaign and I think this will be one of the top 5 games I have played in past 20 years - but....

I have a hard time with games that look so 'busy' around the cursor. Everywhere you move it the regions change colour and unit info is displayed right next to the cursor. I had the same problem with Gary Grigsby's World at War. I would much rather have a nice neat fixed info box that shows this info
at the bottom or side of the screen.

A very minor point - just wondering if I am alone in this?
If so - ignore me

Chris

There has been some talk about making this pop up window optional at some level. I suspect you might see this in the future.

Now, that is an interesting option of having a separate display area as opposed to have it trailing the mouse whereever it moves.

Okay, I just fired up Paradox's Victoria, since I know their games make heavy use of roll-over text. I wanted to take a quick look, since I know that I have found it less distracting in their games. After this little test, here is why:

They implement two rollover text displays for most objects. The instantaneous rollover tends to be very small and terse. After a 2-3 second delay of the mouse being stationary, the rollover displays a much more extensive amount of information on the object beneath the mouse cursor.

I think its not really the rollover text which is objectionable or distracting about BoA, but rather the sheer size of the rollover text. This is probably more of an issue at lower resolutions too - I am at 1024x768. Okay, I just ran the game at 1600x1200 and the rollovers are completely unobtrusive at that resolution. Of course, I cannot read them, but that's another issue.

I think the Paradox approach might be the best, since I think having to glance back and forth is perhaps less ergonomic than having it at the mouse cursor. The 2-3 second delay shouldn't be a problem, since to really absorb the import of the information you are going to have to give it a few seconds anyway.

MarkShot wrote:I think the Paradox approach might be the best, since I think having to glance back and forth is perhaps less ergonomic than having it at the mouse cursor. The 2-3 second delay shouldn't be a problem, since to really absorb the import of the information you are going to have to give it a few seconds anyway.

As another Paradox afficionado, I agree with this wholeheartedly. The detailed information is there if you want it, but otherwise does not occupy screen space. The slight downside to the P'dox tooltips sometimes is knowing that they're there at all - Paradox manuals have famously not been their strong point, at least in the past.

The idea of a separate screen with the messages doesn't appeal. The BoA UI is nice in that the information is available to you relatively directly - I seem to recall Pocus saying that this was a design decision - *but* it means that there are a lot of active areas around the edge of the screen: any more and I think the screen will start to feel cluttered.

I like it the way it is but I play at 1600 x 1200. I could certainly understand it being an issue if you had to play at a lower resolution.

My max is 1024 x 768 so I suppose that's one of the reasons I find it gets in the way.

I can set a delayed tooltip option easily, but this will be far more time consuming to have a double level tooltip (display some things, and if mouse don't move after x seconds, display additional infos).

Well since I finally made an account to complain about my performance problems, I guess I can post here lol.
I would really appreciate an option to only have a popup display if I hold the cursor over a territory for about one second or so. If I'm scrolling around the map I really don't need a pop up.

The more options we have the better!

I had asked about the possibility of a tooltip option early in March. At the time, the reply stated it had always been planned but they hadn't had time to implement it. Hopefully it will manifest itself in some form...soon.

delayed tooltip option is in the incoming 1.06.

no time to implement a double tooltip as in Paradox games for now though...