Working towards stacked messages

[Krom]

Recently I was working on a stacked messages. The idea is to group messages of same kind into stacks and show only one icon for them with a label showing the messages count. Repeated clicking on a message icon would loop through messages. Deleting message would open next message of same kind or close it if there are no more messages of that kind left. That allows to quickly delete many messages of same kind (e.g. house unoccupied).

k_stacks.PNG

[Nayot]

That looks great!
Also would be good if the numbers will be red and after open yellow.
Because I very often left the messages when mine is excavated to don't forget to build another one and delete it. Also I very often wait after the serfs let all the resources out of the building.

[Krom]

I'm still thinking on how to adjoin duplicate messages (in this case house reminders are duplicate for the only one quarry I've built). Also some way to add read/unread status.

[pawel95]

Its ok, but i would add this in option menu as an extra. Because the messages are alyways the same(nearly always):

House is empty. However when you have grouped your messages and i must loop betwwen all, it will be hard to find,what i want,for example. So i would add it only, if someone hates it,that his complete screen is full with messages, really good idea for small resolutions!

[Bo_]

Also what about automaticly delete a message when the citizen is available and you've ordered your troops to be feeded?

[Ben]

Hmmm. I must say that I would prefer to not include this in the Remake. True, it is annoying to have messages pile up so very often. Personally, I would rather just have the option to disable certain messages being sent (namely "This house is not occupied" because that is the most annoying one), or to have a button to disable the "This house is not occupied" for an individual building.

[pawel95]

Also what about automaticly delete a message when the citizen is available and you've ordered your troops to be feeded?

Oh this would be great, specially in Towers, when i spam recruits before PT and i have 20 towers and message after message come to me

I think this should work, i think when you order food,before the message comes, you also won´t get a message,will you?!

[Krom]

@Ben: What is the reason behind not including it as a new system? Messages pile up in both ways, this new one is just more compact and less annoying. You still have access to all the messages in top-down order. When you click on a message icon for the first time - you see the most recent message, consecutive clicks open older messages of that kind.

Maybe it's good to add Fwd/Bwd arrows into the message header to allow to navigate from there like so:

  Code:

< Previous .. Message 5/10 .. Next > Message text goes here. [go to] Message text goes here. [delete] Message text goes here. [close]

[Ben]

I just think the numbers above the messages look messy It's definitely more efficient and a good idea, but I just think it looks weird

[Krom]

Thinking more about the problem, maybe stacked messages are not theway to go.

Whats the idea of the whole thing - to tell the player, "Hey, there's something you need to know, so you can act about it!", be it a mission text, or an alert, or something else. Some messages are naturally more important than others (player does not need to be informed about each gold chest made) - less important ones are just not issued. So, there are things that need player attention because otherwise he would presumably miss them: for example coal/iron/gold/fish run out, unoccupied houses, and there's other kind of messages that really need a response: citizens under attack, army is hungry, cos skipping those will not just slow down players pace, but will actually put player back. It seems natural, that first kind of messages is closer to a state, rather than an alert. While thinking about it - they are indeed a state that something has entered.

What I'm trying to suggest, is that states can be displayed differently than alerts ans probably should be removed from messages queue altogether.

[Gradius]

You can not edit posts such as "this building is not occupied" with a personal message for each empty building? for example, "your stable has a breeder's dream", "your quarry needs a scapellino" so that every time you see the message there is no need to go to press the "Go to" ..
As additional idea would be cute to put messages when attacking enemies such as defensive towers

[Krom]

I don't understand your ideas, are you sure they are on topic? )

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

I don't understand your ideas, are you sure they are on topic? )

He means that messages say "Your quarry doesn't have a stone mason!" or "Your farm doesn't have a farmer!" instead of "This house isn't occupied". If the message is "This house isn't occupied" you have to press 'Go to' to see which house isn't occupied, and that even works very bad, since the edge of the map often makes it impossible to center the corresponding building. With the first two messages, you don't have to go look for the house, but you just select the school and train a stonemason or farmer.

[Krom]

Making of individual messages requires more effort (cos in different locales the tenses and word coupling works differently, we can't just do "your %s is not occupied"). However I'm working on a house highlight feature, that will highlight a house that is mentioned in messgae for 3-4 seconds.

[Gradius]

I don't understand your ideas, are you sure they are on topic? )

He means that messages say "Your quarry doesn't have a stone mason!" or "Your farm doesn't have a farmer!" instead of "This house isn't occupied". If the message is "This house isn't occupied" you have to press 'Go to' to see which house isn't occupied, and that even works very bad, since the edge of the map often makes it impossible to center the corresponding building. With the first two messages, you don't have to go look for the house, but you just select the school and train a stonemason or farmer.

Thanks, i used google translate for post in english xD