Command Panel Fork

I've decided to fork this new command panel, if for no other reason than I hate it.

There are things that it does well, for example:
-When you select a factory the 'units' menu always appears by default, even when spectating.
-Empty tabs are now hidden and the remaining tabs fill the entire tab-bar space.
-It now disappears when nothing is selected, freeing up unused screen space.
-It no longer resets if you hit some random key such as control, alt, shift, space, and arrow keys.

But at the same time there are some changes which, imo, are completely unjustified in the context of ZK. These include:
-Adding hotkeys for constructing units.

ZK never, ever needed hotkeys for units for several reasons. First is that you rarely ever need to change your fac queue except infrequently when you're changing you unit composition. In fact the most time consuming part of factory management in zk is that, in case you do want to change your unit composition it takes many clicks to remove items that are already on the queue. Clearing it is slow but everything else is nearly zero hassle.

Also, you change your rally points more frequently than your unit composition, and doing that often does require hotkeys, with which the unit hotkeys conflict. Moving the unit hotkeys to the right on the keyboard may fix that, but then the unit hotkeys will in general no longer be as consistent or convenient to reach, which defeats the (already dubious) original purpose of having them.

-Rearranging the unit ordering for no good reason.

The old unit ordering was left to right, top to bottom, raiders, assaulty stuff, arty, and then special units, with each category internally sorted by unit price. It was easy to learn, made good sense and made things easy to find between facs. The new ordering is arbitrary and often puts units that would normally go together in awkward positions. Given that the people making the changes still believe that there is something that needs to be "fixed" it is obvious that there will never be an agreement between sides on the issue.

-Hiding the tab bar when only the 'orders' tab is available.

This is a minor issue but, if your layout looks like mine this sometimes causes an ugly hole in the layout, and is inconsistent.

Another thing is that, in the future apparently there are plans to merge the integral (command panel) menu with the selected units panel, thus forcing everyone to use the new shitty layout. It will also be horizontal and eat up your screen space in awkward ways. Forking the command panel early is a defense against this arbitrary bad UI design, and I plan to tackle it before the escape route from this nonsense is cut off. I plan to keep all of the 'good' features from the list above, while eliminating all of the items from the 'bad' list below it.

I also plan on including a new feature where stop commands issued to factories will clear their build queue instead of clearing the rally point. My reasoning is that resetting the rally point is so trivially easy that it would not create any hassle if stop no longer cleared it, but clearing the command queue is a serious pain so turning it into a one-click operation would be a serious reduction in hassle.

Does anyone else have any requests or objections for this?

quote: Point of order: ZK has always had hotkeys for constructing units. By default you need to hold space to enable them, and there's an option to show them all the time, but they've always been there. I would also argue that ZK benefits from them, since changing queue or alt+ building is still something that should be done as rapidly as possible, in order to set up or change up one's production strategy while not neglecting your units in the field too long. This is especially true of alt+ building. Having N as a way to switch between units and orders seems like an ideal compromise to keep us both happy, and I might actually start using special rally points now.

That's interesting. In that case it may make more sense to add more options to the existing panel than to completely replace it. Also I think that separate hotkeys for the orders (o) and units (n) tabs would be better. It always annoyed me that those two didn't have dedicated hotkeys, and for units that aren't factories toggling between the two with one key really doesn't make sense.

quote: I do like the idea of stop (or a dedicated queue clear order) clearing the queue, and if you add that to your fork, please PR it upstream.

I'll probably make it an option where you can either have stop clear either the rally point or the build queue, depending on what you prefer. A dedicated command has advantages, but it'd also be more to remember and I'm not sure if there's a good hotkey that could be used for it.

quote: As for unit ordering, I'm not sure what I think. The ordering, at least the top row, makes some sense, though I'm not sure why it goes "worker, raider, riot, artillery" without skirmishers. It's a bit cleaner, but I could see the argument of having an option to order by cost vs. by role.

The old system was more of a hybrid between role and cost ordering. From what I've heard from the discussions I'm not sure whether the new ordering leans more towards cost or towards role, or if it will end up turning into a unit soup. I think an option to switch between the new and old ordering would be good.

(Note, this post sort of leads on from here http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/23229 and I'll try not to repeat parts)

quote: I've decided to fork this new command panel, if for no other reason than I hate it.

Anyone can make widgets, I am not sure why you are announcing it like this though. What is your aim?

Are you trying to make an alternate default UI? If so, you need to shift the direction of your arguments to relate more to the experience of new players and the UI standards that exist across many RTS games. The expectations and 'skills' of new players are different from people who have been around for a while and are used to the current UI. If you're advertising your widgets for the hardcore crowd then I don't see why an argument is required.

quote: -Adding hotkeys for constructing units. ZK never, ever needed hotkeys for units for several reasons. First is that you rarely ever need to change your fac queue except infrequently when you're changing you unit composition. In fact the most time consuming part of factory management in zk is that, in case you do want to change your unit composition it takes many clicks to remove items that are already on the queue. Clearing it is slow but everything else is nearly zero hassle. Also, you change your rally points more frequently than your unit composition, and doing that often does require hotkeys, with which the unit hotkeys conflict. Moving the unit hotkeys to the right on the keyboard may fix that, but then the unit hotkeys will in general no longer be as consistent or convenient to reach, which defeats the (already dubious) original purpose of having them.

I would be fine without factory hotkeys, for the reasons you outlined. This will be, in part, due to our skill and familiarity with the current UI. But it is also because we have a much more functional queue system than other games. That said, I'm trying out the hotkeys and they seem to work reasonably well.

Think about it from the outside. If you're reasonably familiar with other RTS games, but not with ZK, then the lack of unit hotkeys looks like a glaring oversight. So many games have hotkeys for everything. A lack of hotkeys looks like a lack of support for any competitive play. There will definitely be people who will want to use hotkeys for everything, look at Shadowfury333. (there is still a problem here with removing things from the queue)

The feedback in your second paragraph surprised me. I can't remember the last time I used a command aside from move in factory waypoints. I've noticed circle guard used but its surely rare enough that switching to the orders tab is no big hassle. New players won't expect to be able to make arbitrary waypoint queues, you can't in other games, and in practice I'm not so sure that they need to. However, I hear that fight is most commonly used in queues so I changed the layout slightly to allow the default UI to issue fight commands while in the factory panel. So we've almost got the best of both worlds.

If you want to issue many different orders all the time then your playstyle is better supported by no hotkeys for units. In that case you can disable the units tab hotkeys in the settings. Now you can even disable all the hotkeys for if you never used any of them.

quote: -Rearranging the unit ordering for no good reason.

This just sounds like pure familiarity. You know the old order so its better for you. The new order is more informative though and after some fiddling I think we've come up with a good layout that communicates what to build.

quote: -Hiding the tab bar when only the 'orders' tab is available. This is a minor issue but, if your layout looks like mine this sometimes causes an ugly hole in the layout, and is inconsistent.

This was always going to be a problem. My eventual solution is not to use a layout which suffers from the hole.

quote: Another thing is that, in the future apparently there are plans to merge the integral (command panel) menu with the selected units panel, thus forcing everyone to use the new shitty layout. It will also be horizontal and eat up your screen space in awkward ways. Forking the command panel early is a defense against this arbitrary bad UI design, and I plan to tackle it before the escape route from this nonsense is cut off. I plan to keep all of the 'good' features from the list above, while eliminating all of the items from the 'bad' list below it.

This is a pretty angry paragraph and the facts here are just false. I'm not sure what you mean by merge but I think you misinterpreted a screenshot. Part of it might be true for some interpretations of 'merge' but, whatever happens, it won't force a particular layout. You can use whatever widgets you like. It's bizarre because you're arguing for you ability to use custom widgets but your arguments are about how much you dislike the defaults. You're not prevented from using custom widgets in the first place.

quote: I also plan on including a new feature where stop commands issued to factories will clear their build queue instead of clearing the rally point. My reasoning is that resetting the rally point is so trivially easy that it would not create any hassle if stop no longer cleared it, but clearing the command queue is a serious pain so turning it into a one-click operation would be a serious reduction in hassle.

Nice idea! You probably spent more time on your post than I spent implementing it.

quote: That's interesting. In that case it may make more sense to add more options to the existing panel than to completely replace it. Also I think that separate hotkeys for the orders (o) and units (n) tabs would be better. It always annoyed me that those two didn't have dedicated hotkeys, and for units that aren't factories toggling between the two with one key really doesn't make sense.

The old code was write-only. The "add more options" mentality seemed to be going strong for a few years until it became completely unreadable.

You make decent contributions and this feedback has been useful in a roundabout way. I hope you get over your "evil default UI" outlook and give more constructive (specific and useful) criticism and contributions. You could probably find a bit of UI that needs to be improved for the default UI which you would also like to use for your UI, with some appropriate configuration options. I've already tried to prevent you from wasting your time.

tbh after figuring out how to configure it and with the added queue-stopping command I'm not particularly offended enough to bother making a separate widget anymore. Also, technically speaking it isn't necessary.

The only thing that would be nice is an option to use the old unit layout.

Another issue with the new player/old player split is that old players do not use 'a' for fight move, they use 'f', and no amount of shifting the layout to the right can uncover f properly. I guess that only matters if you're using hotkeys for unit production.

I actually use move and fight orders about equally often for my fac rallies, depending on circumstances. On that note, perhaps rally points should be covered in one of the basic tutorials since using them is different in zk than it is in most games.

This:

quote: The only thing that would be nice is an option to use the old unit layout.

Read the commits.

quote: Another issue with the new player/old player split is that old players do not use 'a' for fight move, they use 'f', and no amount of shifting the layout to the right can uncover f properly. I guess that only matters if you're using hotkeys for unit production.

I thought about having an option to move the units SDF -> ASD but decided against it as the hotkeys and positions would be inconsistent between players. It's useful to have experienced players share the new player hotkeys/UI if it can be done. I figure that everyone who uses F for fight will just disable the panel hotkeys. They weren't using them before so should be fine not using them now.

quote: I actually use move and fight orders about equally often for my fac rallies, depending on circumstances. On that note, perhaps rally points should be covered in one of the basic tutorials since using them is different in zk than it is in most games.

This isn't what new players initially need. The way to introduce new players is to teach them only what is necessary to play the game and avoid frustration. If we tried to introduce them to all the UI tricks they would leave before they reached the end of the basic tutorials.

quote: I know it's likely to be in vain, but dude, USrankaeonios could you please stop wording your feedback like somebody just spat on your lunch? I get it, understanding the motivations others have behind their actions is harder than just condemning them, but it's so sad to see someone with your technical knowledge and experience apparently being driven solely by frustration...

Unfortunately that's not too far from the truth. And while it really has nothing to do with Zero-K or development there's really nothing I can do about it except to direct my anger and frustration towards productive ends as much as possible. As it stands it's a considerable miracle that I even manage to get anything productive done at all.

quote: Link is broken unfortunately..

Does it work now?

N toggles between units and orders, at least for factories.