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    Your Elvenar Team

Information Window

Palavyn

Well-Known Member
As your city size gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult to manage. Getting information to make decisions involves mousing over different buildings and trying to find things on the city map. This makes the game more and more cumbersome. An information window can help players focus on the more enjoyable aspects of the game.

The information window would be a new window. It would include the following:
1) A list of temporary boosts along with their expiration timers.
2) List of pet buildings and whether they are active and any timers, plus the ability to feed pets
3) A list of bonuses from Ancient Wonders
4) List of buildings that have expiration timers and these timers, with the ability to delete expired buildings
5) List of troop types (light melee, archers, mages, heavy melee, and heavy ranged) with a list of their boosts(along with any timers on temporary boosts) and the cumulative boost totals for each.
6) A list of what is being produced along with each item's timer, with the ability to sort this alphabetically or according to timer.
7) Tournament and Spire timers and progress
8) A list of recent neighborly help and the ability to give neighborly help from this list
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Good idea. You're right about the large cities. What bothers me is when I go to a neighbor or FS member with a large city for the first time, they have a B in their name so I know they want builder, but I can't find the builder. I sometimes look for 5 full minutes before I give up and give them coins. :(
 

Risen Malchiah

Well-Known Member
This would be incredibly helpful, especially if it's accessible from the world map and Spire. Often I'm racing to complete tournament encounters while my Fire Phoenix is running out and I keep having to check it. And some expiring buildings can get lost behind other buildings and I don't notice them right away.
 

JeanFritz

Member
Clicking on expired expiring buildings clearly shows when they have expired--no complaints there! :)
However, the float-over pop-up could be a little more obvious. I don't make a habit of clicking on every building every time I check--that's what float-overs are for--and when tired or in a hurry, it's easy to miss the absence of the "Expires in ..." text at the bottom.
So, instead of having expiring buildings simply stop showing their expiring benefits (in the float-overs), it'd be really helpful to have the "Expires in ..." text replaced with "Expired". It doesn't need to send me an email, or flash "EXPIRED!!!!" across the screen, but having the simple word "Expired" (in boldface, or dare I say, in red letters) in the building info would make life a lot easier--and it would certainly help new players who perhaps don't get the mechanics of expiring buildings, yet. :)
 

DeletedUser25004

Guest
if you play with city graphic quality on high, then each expiring building have an ongoing moving animation. this animation is only active while your building is still in effect. After it expires the animation stops, So knowing the buildings two looks can help you greatly in spotting such things.
 

JeanFritz

Member
Thank you, that's helpful--but only if you play with graphic quality on high. Depending on players' connection speed (and quite often, tbh, the Inno server slow-downs), it wastes more time to wait for the city to load (on high graphic quality) than it would take to check each expiring building carefully. :)
 

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
It is also difficult to notice when they stop moving if they are tucked behind large buildings (which happens a LOT when you get into the high chapters and everything is HUUUUGE). An icon floating above would be great, akin to when your building is disconnected or something. Or even a notification in the notification list.
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
In addition to buildings being hidden, some buildings' animation is very subtle (like the Carting Library or the Ice Lindworm) and it's not at all obvious that they have turned off.
 

Vergazi

Well-Known Member
The animations work on Medium graphic settings on a pc.

I would like to add that if say the expiring bldg has 27 hrs left on it and the last production is not picked up in time, then it doesn't formally expire until the last collection is collected. It is just plain wrong to have enough hours left in it's life for a full production, but then be denied it because of a timer. I can accept that if it only has 3 hours left it will expire and die, but having enough time for a cycle and then having it go "poof" is a big fat turdburger.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
Thank you, that's helpful--but only if you play with graphic quality on high. Depending on players' connection speed (and quite often, tbh, the Inno server slow-downs), it wastes more time to wait for the city to load (on high graphic quality) than it would take to check each expiring building carefully. :)
Local drawing speed, yes, but little to do with server delivery. While it can affect the download speed initially, all the graphics are downloaded once as required, then rendered from the cache by the client.

When you are visiting lots of cities on the web, it matters. For working in your own city, it shouldn't matter unless your hardware is older or under-powered.
 

JeanFritz

Member
Local drawing speed, yes, but little to do with server delivery. While it can affect the download speed initially, all the graphics are downloaded once as required, then rendered from the cache by the client.

When you are visiting lots of cities on the web, it matters. For working in your own city, it shouldn't matter unless your hardware is older or under-powered.
Well, that's assuming you allow your browser to store lots of crap in the cache. ;) Regardless, I've almost always had a HUGE slow-down with high-quality (even mid-quality) graphics, both in my town and out, and my hardware is decent enough, so Elvenar is always low-quality for me. So, again, this would be a helpful improvement (and not too hard to make). :)
 

JeanFritz

Member
This is one of the main reasons I proposed an information window. From the information window, you would see a list of expiring buildings with timers as well as all expired buildings and have the option of deleting any of them. Refer to the following link:

Honestly, I don't think I'd want to use an information window--but I'm not saying you shouldn't have one, just that it's not what I'd want. I like how Elvenar is different from most city sims; I only play one Elvenar city, because I'm not interested in needing to keep track of what all the different cities are up to. I play 4X games too, and that's where I appreciate situation reports (and information windows); with Elvenar, I enjoy that the city is much more "personal". I don't mind searching for all the different buildings--it's part of the fun--however, having found what I'm looking for, I'd appreciate the same key information being available on the float-over as is already available on the click. So... thanks, but I don't think an information window is the solution, for me. :)
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Honestly, I don't think I'd want to use an information window--but I'm not saying you shouldn't have one, just that it's not what I'd want. I like how Elvenar is different from most city sims; I only play one Elvenar city, because I'm not interested in needing to keep track of what all the different cities are up to. I play 4X games too, and that's where I appreciate situation reports (and information windows); with Elvenar, I enjoy that the city is much more "personal". I don't mind searching for all the different buildings--it's part of the fun--however, having found what I'm looking for, I'd appreciate the same key information being available on the float-over as is already available on the click. So... thanks, but I don't think an information window is the solution, for me. :)
I hate searching for builder's huts in neighbors' cities. It's frustrating and tedious to me, and sometimes impossible if they have huge buildings in front of it. But if they ask for B I try to accommodate. I'll be so glad when they eliminate that hassle.
 

JeanFritz

Member
I hate searching for builder's huts in neighbors' cities. It's frustrating and tedious to me, and sometimes impossible if they have huge buildings in front of it. But if they ask for B I try to accommodate. I'll be so glad when they eliminate that hassle.

I figure if neighbours can't be bothered to locate their builder near the MH or at least tell me where their builder is, then if I can't find it in a few seconds, I don't worry about it. However, in my own town (what this thread is about), I don't mind a bit of hide-and-seek; it's good mental exercise, if nothing else--sort of like practice in the "where did I put my keys?" game. ;)
 

AtaguS

Well-Known Member
I don't mind a bit of hide-and-seek; it's good mental exercise,
Not to mention the joy of jumping on Elven Architect after some time and discovering there are x amount of unused squares sitting there for the taking...it's like finding a forgotten $20 in your pocket :)
 

JeanFritz

Member
To whoever merged my thread with this one:
Next time, please read and understand the thread, first. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the idea of a new information window--but that's not what I am asking for. I don't want one more window to click open and click closed. My thread was specifically about the FLOAT-OVER information.

"Clicking on expired expiring buildings clearly shows when they have expired--no complaints there! :)
However, the float-over pop-up could be a little more obvious. I don't make a habit of clicking on every building every time I check--that's what float-overs are for--and when tired or in a hurry, it's easy to miss the absence of the "Expires in ..." text at the bottom.
So, instead of having expiring buildings simply stop showing their expiring benefits (in the float-overs), it'd be really helpful to have the "Expires in ..." text replaced with "Expired". It doesn't need to send me an email, or flash "EXPIRED!!!!" across the screen, but having the simple word "Expired" (in boldface, or dare I say, in red letters) in the building info would make life a lot easier--and it would certainly help new players who perhaps don't get the mechanics of expiring buildings, yet. "


My fix would be simple and easy to implement--it's a matter of *changing* one line of text instead of deleting it, when a building expires. A whole new information window is a whole lot more work, and much less likely to be added to the "to-do" list. I explicitly stated how my suggestion is NOT the same as the new information window:

"Palavyn said:
This is one of the main reasons I proposed an information window. From the information window, you would see a list of expiring buildings with timers as well as all expired buildings and have the option of deleting any of them. Refer to the following link:
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/information-window.21960/
Honestly, I don't think I'd want to use an information window--but I'm not saying you shouldn't have one, just that it's not what I'd want. I like how Elvenar is different from most city sims; I only play one Elvenar city, because I'm not interested in needing to keep track of what all the different cities are up to. I play 4X games too, and that's where I appreciate situation reports (and information windows); with Elvenar, I enjoy that the city is much more "personal". I don't mind searching for all the different buildings--it's part of the fun--however, having found what I'm looking for, I'd appreciate the same key information being available on the float-over as is already available on the click. So... thanks, but I don't think an information window is the solution, for me. :)"

So... I don't know if it's possible to "un-merge" threads--I don't spend a lot of time on forums, sorry--but I would hope that next time the thread would at least be read more carefully first--and if you don't understand what somebody is saying, maybe ask first before merging two unrelated threads.
 
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