Display Room Occupants

[Dizzi]

I'm playing DK1 at the moment and currently I get a problem when I have a set of creatures all working but I'm not sure if they are doing what I wanted them to do.

Purpose:
Managing creatures better

Example:
I want all Biles to be training but the only information given is that they are busy doing something.


Possible solutions:
1) Click somewhere (portrait) for detailed view of that type of creature where it will show where they are.

Example:
Bile Demon
Training Room Icon -- Count
Workshop Room Icon -- Count
Lair Room Icon -- Count

2) Have room icons dispaying creature count and click for detailed view.

Training Room= 5 Creatures
3 Bile
1 Warlock
1 Dark Mistress

Workshop= 4 Creatures
2 Bile
2 Trolls

Prison= 2 Creatures
1 Imp
1 Spider

This could work well with imps if you could display what type of jobs they are doing.

Share your thoughts!

[jomalin]

I think more than 3 icons (idle, working, fighting) will be more confusing to see by a quick look what they are doing. Maybe an alternative solution... For example, showing a message box in each room you left the mouse over 2 seconds showing something like:

Creatures in XXX ROOM:
4/8 Bile Demons
2/4 Dragons
6/9 Spiders
...

[jomalin]

Well as showing a message box in each room you left the mouse over, I think it can be also possible to show a message box in the "Working" column in creatures panel, so if you let the mouse over the troll row in Working column, it can show:

3 in Training room
2 in Workshop room
...

So we 2 ways of viewing this info: in rooms and in the creatures panel.
- In creatures panel: info only for the pointed current creature
- In rooms: info is for all creatures that are in that room (or creatures in all rooms of that kind)

[Jack]

I think both could prove to be a bit confusing. For example in the MP when you'll have like 10 types of rooms or 10 types of creature showing a box displaying each room or each type of creature could prove to be quite annoying... Like a veeeery long message box. If we can find a way to put everything in like....5 or 6 rows maximum could be great and useful imo

[Dizzi]

i was thinking like a drop down open up type of ui feature for detailed report. either for creature or room. wouldnt be confusing. it will just open a new ui page. right click room icon and it displays whos in that room. and you can do this on the room flag as well as the ui icon.

[Jack]

Okay so an entire "menu" for it. Like that.

[Dizzi]

Just so you know, dk2 actually does this in a basic form. If you can remember, you can see everyones happiness or if they are fighting/working/idle etc.

What if you can double click a room (with your hand over the visual room) and it will bring up a UI that gives details on the room (only the connected room not all) as well as another UI at the bottom displaying only the units in that room.

I think in dk2 highest levels are always selected first but i'm not even sure. might be coincidence for me. We can make it highest levels are always selected when clicking their portrait and having a CTRL+mouse-click to select the lowest.

Another thing I think would be relevent to talk about here is the battle UI that was in DK1 and not in DK2. I found it very useful to do buffs or selecting dieing units. I think we should bring this back!!!!

[Metal Gear Rex]

Well here's something DK2 did right... almost.

If we want to know if a specific creature is doing something you told him to, then his job should be in red. In DK2, when you highlighted a creature, you saw his information at the top in text. Normally it is white, but it would be in red if there's something you told him to do. I like this idea. I think we should go with something similar to thought bubbles like in DK1. Perhaps when you highlight the creature, there will be a red thought bubble coming out of that thought bubble. That red thought bubble would be displaying the job you told the creature to do.

Though I'm not sure this is exactly what you're talking about. This is what I thought you were talking about at first. Something more directly related to what you actually were saying, I do have another idea.

In DK2, you could select multiple little tabs in the Creature Tab that would display different information. One thing you could do was display work, it would show you what creatures were working and what creatures were idle, etc. Thing is, that's the same information DK1 displays. I say we show the same info DK1 offers by default. Then, we have a little tab you can select that shows more details of what creature is doing what. They could be represented by icons, probably the same icons that are used for displaying the thoughts.

Perhaps I should make some pictures to show off more what I mean.

[Airandius]

I disliked the UI of DK2, the idea was good yes, but it looked horrible with the giant pictures and overall it was just cluttered.

[Dizzi]

ye lets make pictures! but i liked the ideas.