Day 97: Retro

Let's talk UI.

So I finished my new Builder dialog today. You have two columns; on the left are items that are currently in the thing you're building (i.e. cargo for sale on a planet, weapons on a ship, etc), and on the right are all the things you have to choose from (all possible cargo, all possible weapons, etc). It's beautiful and works great. The reason I worked on it was so that it could replace the old build dialog which did the same thing more slowly. The old build dialog had an offshoot called the MarketDialog which I also intend to replace with this. So on the left the player will see all the cargo on their ship, and on the right they'll see all the cargo for sale.

So far so good. I went through the effort in this milestone because I didn't want to write the "Mission Computer" dialog in the old style when I was going to transition to the new style.

But - upon completion - it occurred to me that this is a horrible UI for choosing missions. Everything else: Cargo, weapons, addons, details don't especially matter (well they do, but only to a limited extent). Whereas with Missions, they drive the plot along. I need a preview area to allow all this text that describes them. Also, "Have/available" is not that great a layout for missions. With weapons, it's important to know that you have a missile launcher before stocking up on missiles. For missions? Your current missions don't matter at all; every mission is independent.

What I needed for missions, in other words, was one list to display them all on the left, a large preview area, and buttons on the right to accept the mission with.

That is, of course, exactly what the old UI did. Hooray for diversions!