I already told the solution to that...
People with a resolution of
-640x480: ORIGINAL PANEL
-1280x960: ENHANCED PANEL (having also the possibility to change to the original if they want, like and ON/OFF option)
Sorry, i think i will not have my new panel tonight, it is too late (and i must get up early tomorrow to work...). But i will have it very soon, i think you will like it a lot...
Last edited by jomalin; July 2nd, 2014 at 23:44.
On this time who will play DK in 640x480?
Yup, but with the redesign of jomalin it wont be a problem anymore. What do you think about adding a button on the launcher so we can choose if play with the original interface (for lower resolutions) or with the new of jomalin?
In my opinion it looks a lot better in higher resolutions, because pixeled sprites will be a lot smaller and will look smoother.
Last edited by Ecarus; July 3rd, 2014 at 17:49.
I know, that's the point, but both a redesign and the original sidebar made scalable will fix that. Like mentioned, I would love to see the UI in general improved upon, not just ingame but also the menus, longer creature list, being able to zoom out more, lots of things. And sure, if I can get the option to go for this sidebar, why not.
The thing is, there are so many things to improve, and currently just one developer working on the game as a hobby, and he is setting is own priorities, and it seems he prefers to prioritize rewriting the existing code over making improvements to the original game, so I'm expecting we won't see the a new sidebar, perhaps if we're lucky a scalable one with the current design.
Here it is:
PROS:
1. Bigger minimap: we can see more parts of the level now.
2. 17 creatures shown at the same time! This eliminates nearly all times that we need to click on the up/down arrows, it is rare to have more than 17 types of creatures (although it is possible).
3. All panels are shown at a glance, so we don't need to toggle through tabs
4. Preserves original Dungeon Keeper style: it has all the original sprites/icons. Any of them has been deleted. Even the structure of icons has been preserved (grid of 4x4).
5. Corrected misaligned research time bar in the info panel (2 pixels displaced to the left)
CONS:
1. The panel occupies 140 pixels more of width. But this doesn't matter with the current modern screens (remember that the original game was 320x200 or 640x480, and now we can have 1280x960, so we still have more ingame screen than the original)
2. We must think what to do with the "Sell" button, it is repeated twice.
To not force users with a resolution of 1280x960 or more to have this enhanced panel, an option like "Show enhanced panel: ON/OFF" can solve that.
NOTES:
1. There are repeated creature icons because this is only a draft
2. The empty blocks in the info panel many of you have said, can be not shown if there is no more enemy/allied keeper info. This must be done BY CODE.
3. I don't like the idea of deleting empty blocks in the workshop/spells panel. It is problematic:
- the user remember the spells fastly because they are always at the same position. If we group and join only the available traps/spells, the position of them will change in every level (every level has different combination of available spells/traps).
- this needs modifying the code to achieve this (to group them).
Last edited by jomalin; July 4th, 2014 at 16:26.
I would put the Spells panel where the ? panel is, the trap panel where the Spells panel is, and the ? Panel where the traps panel is now. Or simply swap the ? with the traps panel.
I didnt say we need to delete all the empty blocks, only the traps/doors panel, because we almost use like 60% of this panel. Also I didnt say that we need to erase a empty block if in such there is not a trap/door available in a level. I said erase the Traps/doors panel's empty block that never haves a trap/door.