Recognized O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W. and control of docked entities - RELOADED

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    New version, completely redone!

    Currently it's very hard to keep an overview of a ship or a station and all docked entities. It's also a big hassle to enter a specific entity's core or to access a specific Bobby AI module. Additionally, it's impossible to make an entity stop draining power from its host or to stop shield recharging to conserve power. What we need is an O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W.:

    OverView: Extremely Responsive and Very Informative Entity Window

    Overview - Neutral.png (click to enlarge)
    This is an overview window of the complete docking tree which the enitity housing the player is part of. It also let's the player control many different things. On the top right there are 5 icons - we'll get to them in a minute. Right underneath them is 'BigShip', the topmost entity in the docking tree. Below it are all other entities that are directly or indirectly docked to 'BigShip' (from left to right):
    • A large number of drones plus a scroll bar since there are too many of them to fit on the screen at once
    • Four fighters, each with a tiny turrret
    • A corvette with several turrets in different sizes
    • 12 point defense turrets
    • 8 small missile turrets
    • 4 medium cannon turrets
    • 2 large main turrets, each docked to a modular reactor
    • 6 modular armor plates
    • 10 internal rail based doors
    • 5 rail based hangar doors
    • 2 cargo modules
    • 4 modular reactors
    Left-click on an entity shows its details in the info box on the left (including a rotatable 3d view). Several entities can be selected by drawing a frame around them or by clicking on them while holding 'Ctrl'. Clicking on the header of a group selects the whole group. Selected entities can be moved to another group or between two neighbouring groups to place them in a new group. Entire groups can be moved to change their order by moving their header. Double-clicking on an entity brings the player into its core. Double-clicking on a group of turrets activates a third person camera and allows to simultaneously control all turrets of that group.


    The top of the info box displays the entity's name, which can also be edited here. At the bottom of the info box are buttons to control the AI. Buttons are greyed out if the selected entity doesn't have a Bobby block or if several entities with differing settings are selected. Changes are applied to all entities within the selection that have a Bobby block.
    • 'AI' switches the AI on or off (turning green/red).
    • The second button changes between 'ship' and 'turret'.
    • Button three cycles between the available target types.
    • 'Reset' resets a turret's orientation (greyed out if not docked to turret axis).
    • 'Undock' must be double clicked as a safety measure.

    All stats (power, shields, etc.) from all entities can be copied from the info box to the box in the top left corner via drag&drop, and they can be removed by a simple right-click. The name of the respective entity is added automatically, right-clicking it removes all stats from that entity. Whatever is inside this box is displayed in the GUI, this way you can keep track of information like your turrets' health whithout having to keep the O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W. open.

    Saving the configuration of the O.V.E.R.V.I.E.W. including all the entities' names with the blueprint/design should definitely be possible!


    Now to the 5 icons at the top of the screen.
    Clicking on of them switches to the respective display mode. A click on the selected icon switches back to normal mode.

    Shield: Adds blue backgrounds to entities that have own shield generators and hatched blue backgrounds to enities have shields through shield sharing. If there's a difference between a turret's base and barrel shield state the display is split (example see armor). Right-click shuts shields off (and back on) to save energy. The corvette's shields are deactivated and the shields of the first modular armor plate are damaged.
    Overview - Shield.png

    Armor: Adds green backgrounds to all entities with armor HP and grey ones to those without to distinguish between depleted an non-existant armor HP. Turrets' HP is split since they are actually two entities. Right-click reboots an entity. The first main turret is damaged, the barrel more than the base.
    Overview - Armor.png

    Structue: Adds red backgrounds to display structure HP, works like armor.

    Power: Adds yellow backgrounds to show how full the capacitors are. Right-click stops entities from drawing energy from their host, red icons are displayed to indicate that. The first main turret and all PD turrets don't get power, and the modular reactors are currently half full due to the way their cycles work.
    Overview - Power.png

    Cargo: Adds brown backgrounds to indicate how full the cargo spaces are. Arrow icons appear where appropriate, clicking one of them activates cargo transfer in that direction and changes that arrow's color to green. Cargo is tranferred from the corvette to the mothership.
    Overview - Cargo.png


    Edit: About the icons: The icons are saved together with each entity. An icon can be selected in build mode. There's an 'other/undefined' icon in case no other icon is selected. Optional: Ability to import PNGs to create custom icons.

    Edit Nov.06.16 (post-recognition):
    • Remove the buttons for turret control from the lower left corner
    • Replace these buttons with buttons to
      • save the current configuration, including AI settings (shows popup for entering a name)
      • select a configuration (dropdown list)
      • delete currently selected configuration (shows confirmation popup)
    • Right-clicking an entity or header (if several entities are selected, all will be affected) shows a menu with
      • Enter core (of first entity, if multiple entities are selected)
      • Configure AI (shows AI settings)
      • Reset turret (if applicable)
      • Undock (shows confirmation popup)
    Edit Nov.07.16: Configuration saves should be saved with the blueprint.
     
    Last edited:

    NeonSturm

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    What if I hit a button accidentally?
    What if I need to disable the pull in a hurry?

    Don't get me wrong, it is nice (I liked your post ^^), but please also think about when and how you need to use each feature
    • Disabled things could be grey.
    • Red on power could also mean : no power regeneration? Is inconsistent with shields and confuses newbies.
     
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    What if I hit a button accidentally?
    You hit it again.
    What if I need to disable the pull in a hurry?
    Then you better hasten to click the button.

    Don't get me wrong, it is nice (I liked your post ^^), but please also think about when and how you need to use each feature
    • Disabled things could be grey.
    • Red on power could also mean : no power regeneration? Is inconsistent with shields and confuses newbies.
    Instead of "Pull -Stop" and "Regen - Stop" we could have "Pull - Don't Pull" and "Regen - Don't Regen". But these are details than can still be changed later.
     

    NeonSturm

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    What if I hit a button accidentally?
    You hit it again.
    Undock while getting pushed by a push-gun and re-dock again?
    Reset, undo reset?

    Then you better hasten to click the button.
    My mouse stuck/jumps lag delayed the mouse press and mouse presses are repeated …
    I will have to babysit and check if every action I did was accepted as I intended to issue it. Takes 1/3 second at least - under lag conditions.

    And all that in a hurry :(
     
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    My mouse stuck/jumps lag delayed the mouse press and mouse presses are repeated …
    I will have to babysit and check if every action I did was accepted as I intended to issue it. Takes 1/3 second at least - under lag conditions.
    and how long dose it take you to do this stuff the way it is now?
     

    NeonSturm

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    Without lag I can click 3-5 buttons a second randomly on the screen.
    With lag I get into a trance stance babysitting everything to apply before closing a window and forgetting it. then it can be 1 click every 2 seconds.
    That's why I can't play 8v8 games in SpringRTS for example.​

    Lag makes a huge difference.
    If I click a button twice or trice because I am not sure if the click got approved I undo what I want before it gets displayed.
    With LAG, your clicks and key-presses have a 50% chance to work.

    Still, you didn't answered what should happen if you press undock. Delay may cause torpedoes (undockables) to fail hitting a target or might be good because you have time to aim when exiting the window.
    But I can imagine it to be annoying when you accidentally undock a turret (and perhaps even disable AI)
     
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    I totally want some kind of screen like that. what would also be nice is a way to group the chains so I don't see all my pd and turrets and overly docked things all mixed together when I spawn a new ship (All entities docked spawn with the same name from blueprint, only number differ). Also that can be more handy to dismiss or show what is needed (pd, reactor, rail-docked-cannon, Idunno) in case that needs to be accessed quickly (please not one more list like we already have). And that'll help with the width too so it can be kept clean and handy
     
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    I totally want some kind of screen like that. what would also be nice is a way to group the chains so I don't see all my pd and turrets and overly docked things all mixed together when I spawn a new ship (All entities docked spawn with the same name from blueprint, only number differ). Also that can be more handy to dismiss or show what is needed (pd, reactor, rail-docked-cannon, Idunno) in case that needs to be accessed quickly (please not one more list like we already have). And that'll help with the width too so it can be kept clean and handy
    The possibility to change the order of the docking branches, so one can group them logically, is a good idea, I added that. I also includded buttons to collapse branches.
     
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    It's a neat idea. It would be more useful for setting up turret systems the way you want them, from one location, than in combat I believe, but could prove to be very useful in certain situations.
     

    NeonSturm

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    Against LAG double-click:
    Click = next option
    Leave-Button = allow another switch to another next or the previous option
    2nd Update = as Leave-Button –– Update here refers to whether a click got noticed AND feedback shows up. 2nd should be double the time for 1st after click.
    Leave-Box of settings with mouse = apply choices
    Not perfect, but better than nothing.
     

    Keptick

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    Just going to bump this, because OMG YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The structure tab functionality is absolutely cancerous when it comes to docked entities.
     

    nightrune

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    There are a lot of uses for something like this.
     
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    Yes yes yes yes yes

    First off amazingly overcomplicated acronym (I love those)
    and second off this would be so nice...
     

    therimmer96

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    y mouse stuck/jumps lag delayed the mouse press and mouse presses are repeated …
    I will have to babysit and check if every action I did was accepted as I intended to issue it. Takes 1/3 second at least - under lag conditions.

    And all that in a hurry :(
    Wait... are you saying we shouldn't have a mouse based UI because your mouse sucks? o_O
     

    Lancake

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    I'm not convinced by all the features on the overview. Some of them would be hard(/impossible?) to implement and add little functionality.

    Some criteria would be that this wouldn't be a great overview if you had 50+ turrets/docks in use... Yes you can hide them, but hiding them also hides their name and any way to see what entity you're looking at.
    If you need to enable 20 PD turrets it will take a while for you to find each one of them, and press that "activate AI" button 20 times.

    This also assumes the name saves in your blueprint, it doesn't though. If you spawn it in all your docks will be named like "shipname_l12" etc, good luck renaming them through this overview if you don't know which one you're looking at.

    An improvement for me would be to ditch most of these buttons per entity, and add them to a custom branch. Then you can drag&drop or assign those to that custom group for example "Point defense turrets". Enabling AI for that custom group enables it for all entities in it.
    This would need to save properly in a blueprint name unless you want to constantly do it yourself.
    The names of the entities wouldn't matter too much if they ended up in their correct custom group, unless you want to do modify the group.
     
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    I'm not convinced by all the features on the overview. Some of them would be hard(/impossible?) to implement and add little functionality.

    Some criteria would be that this wouldn't be a great overview if you had 50+ turrets/docks in use... Yes you can hide them, but hiding them also hides their name and any way to see what entity you're looking at.
    If you need to enable 20 PD turrets it will take a while for you to find each one of them, and press that "activate AI" button 20 times.

    This also assumes the name saves in your blueprint, it doesn't though. If you spawn it in all your docks will be named like "shipname_l12" etc, good luck renaming them through this overview if you don't know which one you're looking at.

    An improvement for me would be to ditch most of these buttons per entity, and add them to a custom branch. Then you can drag&drop or assign those to that custom group for example "Point defense turrets". Enabling AI for that custom group enables it for all entities in it.
    This would need to save properly in a blueprint name unless you want to constantly do it yourself.
    The names of the entities wouldn't matter too much if they ended up in their correct custom group, unless you want to do modify the group.
    If its going to be hard, better get on it then and while you are there please fix the server instabilities
     
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    I'm not convinced by all the features on the overview. Some of them would be hard(/impossible?) to implement and add little functionality.

    Some criteria would be that this wouldn't be a great overview if you had 50+ turrets/docks in use... Yes you can hide them, but hiding them also hides their name and any way to see what entity you're looking at.
    If you need to enable 20 PD turrets it will take a while for you to find each one of them, and press that "activate AI" button 20 times.

    This also assumes the name saves in your blueprint, it doesn't though. If you spawn it in all your docks will be named like "shipname_l12" etc, good luck renaming them through this overview if you don't know which one you're looking at.

    An improvement for me would be to ditch most of these buttons per entity, and add them to a custom branch. Then you can drag&drop or assign those to that custom group for example "Point defense turrets". Enabling AI for that custom group enables it for all entities in it.
    This would need to save properly in a blueprint name unless you want to constantly do it yourself.
    The names of the entities wouldn't matter too much if they ended up in their correct custom group, unless you want to do modify the group.
    You have some good points. I completely reworked it, there are far less buttons now, and I removed some of the hard to implent things.
     

    Lancake

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    You have some good points. I completely reworked it, there are far less buttons now, and I removed some of the hard to implent things.
    Yes, it does look better now, the 5 filter buttons at the top are a nice thing to have.
    That 3D rotatable view would be a great tool to figure out which one is what, I'm not sure how long it would take to program but I think it would be a necessity to have anyway ^^
    If you're planning to clean it up some more, please do so and I'll talk to the council/schine about it.
     
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