What's the lump of cheese under my troops, and other minor UI points?

[Taillebois]

1. It looks like they are stuck on a lump of cheese. Not very appetizing cheese either.

2. To set a posture now requires two clicks, not one. How is this an improvement?

3. Ditto attack stance.

4. Map overlay change requires two clicks not one.

5. Stop those bloody flags waving. How?



Of course I could read the manual, but it's in the post - I specially paid extra for you guys so I can treasure the full colour printed manual. Please don't disappoint!

[Taillebois]

Almost a hundred views and no replies. Is it out of embarrassment that I am not miles off or is the forum becoming like Combat Mission or Apple here and anything but praise is heresy?

Another couple of points -

6. The Confederate flags look like some Canadian military flag. Reddish bit in top left corner, rest white.

7. Railway lines used to have two tracks but now have only one and look more like surgical stitches on a zombie Halloween mask.


The game plays OK and I got a quick win on the Elephant. So that is good.

[moni kerr]

Like, OMG two clicks!

[Ebbingford]

1 I guess you mean the entrenchment indicator, level one is just a pile of dirt, this changes as the level of entrenchment rises, sandbags and guns will appear.
2,3,4 Yes, not an improvement but a step back IMHO. However the devs explained that it was done to declutter the map. The thinking being that all the buttons etc on display put off new players.
5 You are not the first to bring this up.
6 I think there is a mod somewhere that replaces flags, but I'm not sure which flags. If you dig around you will find it.
7 Has also been mentioned before.

[Taillebois]

@OMG - yes that's 100% more clicks for no significant benefit. At least the famous "Three Wolf Moon" T-shirt had 50% more wolves on it than the earlier Two Wolf Moon T-shirt.

@Ebbingford. Thanks for that, will look for the mod. Glad to know I'm not the only one who got irked.

[Ol' Choctaw]

As for the multiple clicks, there are shortcuts for those.

The overlays are the number keys, I don’t recall the others.

[jack54]

I think 'nesting' options under 1 button allows for more options to be added in the future without cluttering the screen. As of now it seems like it's only 'an extra click' but that may change.

[Taillebois]

Well I lined up four computers and had screen by screen:

AACW 1
BOR/AJE
PON
AACW2

What a pig's ear you've made of it. Even the generals pop up on the left now instead of the right. At least the map is better than PON - whoever did that one must have really hated geography at school. All straight lines and jagged edges.

Overall:

Most charming - AACW 1
Best - BOR/AJE

[Frosty_MooseHead]

#6- look in the folders for AACW1 you will find a Confederate battle flag file, simply copy that to AACW2 where u want it.
that's what I did.

[Taillebois]

Thanks Frosty. Found file in AACW1 but my AACW2 files seem to be hidden in MyGames or some other dreadful Win8 folder which I can't see (and I managed to hide one I could see but can't unhide it!).

Can I do a complete re-install where I can see the files without buggering the registry thingy or anything else?

[Taillebois]

There's an article on UI here, if the link works (posting links is pretty advanced stuff for me)

http://tleaves.com/2010/12/31/a-battle-lost-through-attrition/

It's mostly about Advance Tactics, The Operational Art of War, and War in The East. I have the first two.

Irrespective of my gripes on this thread, AGEOD games are the most attractive I've got and by jingo have I bought a lot of games. Owner of many games, master of none.

[Pocus]

Hey,

I for one was not answering because we had some meetings about the future

Back to your questions, believe me, there is a purpose about the UI changes. You mention the leader outliner moved from right to left. At first, you can believe it has been moved just for the fun of it. But then you might recall that we have now these big round icons showing the most important messages of the turn, so that nobody miss them. And ... yes, they are on the right, because they are tied to the messages panel. So it explains why the outliner had to be moved

As for the 2-steps clicks, indeed it is because it declutter the interface plus allows adding some new buttons without having to redo the panels, as they are 'nested' as jack54 aptly says. You'll notice that the nested buttons have shortcuts though, and that for the map filters, they even stay 'opened' until you close them. Try A O D P for the 4 postures or shift A O D P for the ROEs.

[Taillebois]

Thanks for the reply Pocus. It must really annoy you that you spend hours designing and coding a UI and a grumpy old sod comes along and says it's no good.

Those of us aged 60 or so need three times as much light as a twenty year old to see clearly; I also believe we get irritated three times as much as twenty year olds - especially by flickering flashing stuff - like flags !

[Pocus]

25 years ago I had 20, so I'm 45/60 as grumpy as you, but if you factor the French influence, this more than compensate

[sorta]

French influence - that explains the cheese then...