Pop-ups shmopups!

Sarxis · October 13, 2001, 00:01

'At E3, you describe a slimmed down interface with significantly less information screens to view. How has this changed Civ III? Is it inspire quicker or easier play? Will the stat buffs be satisfied?

Jeff: The interface has been streamlined to keep players immersed in the beautiful world we’ve created in the game and cut down on game interruptions - like the popups in previous Civs. We broke all popups into three categories. Those localized to an area, but require no user input, now appear on the map itself, near the area of focus. Those that were not localized to an area, but still didn't require user interaction became advisor messages. The last kind, those that require some user interaction (such as a picking a new advance to research), still stop the game. The boon of this system is that approximately 2/3rds of the game stopping information windows no longer stop the game. It'll be appreciated immediately by anyone familiar with the series.'

[More from the German site interview of Firaxis team.]

I can't tell you how appreciative I am of this. I for one had to shut down ALL pop-up options in CivII and Alpha Centauri becuase of their annoyingness. But now it looks I and others like me will be able to take advantage of these critical messages without critically annoying pop-ups.

Good work F-team

d_dudy · October 13, 2001, 01:13

at first i thought f was for fu** up team but i get it now. it's late here

anyway this is good news, sounds like another positive change in the game

go f-team yee haw

Rasputin · October 13, 2001, 09:13

a definant time saver especially for MP games where lots of times the game halted just to tell you what you had built.... Now the MPer can have his turn without interuyptions and do micromanaging between turns as he should ...

Akron · October 13, 2001, 09:38

Civ 2 was especially annoying with the pop-ups in the late game. You would have to go to more than half your cities every turn to change their production orders. That was tedious.

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS · October 13, 2001, 10:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Akron
Civ 2 was especially annoying with the pop-ups in the late game. You would have to go to more than half your cities every turn to change their production orders. That was tedious.

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

Fiil · October 13, 2001, 10:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

Wow, I think I'm gonna like this!

Footie Mad · October 13, 2001, 10:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

That's a real time saver, well done

Skanky Burns · October 13, 2001, 20:32

It just gets better and better

d_dudy · October 13, 2001, 20:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

would you know if this can be achieved by control-clicking on the mac?

dainbramaged13 · October 13, 2001, 22:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

what about from city overview screen? you know, whatever screen it is in civ3 where you can see a listing of all your cities and their status? can u right-click to change production fromt that?

Laszlo · October 13, 2001, 23:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Akron
Civ 2 was especially annoying with the pop-ups in the late game. You would have to go to more than half your cities every turn to change their production orders. That was tedious.

Late in the game when I got flush with cash I would rush buy the production in all my cities. I made a macro to do it 12 at a time, but the next turn when I had to change all the production orders it took ten minutes!

TechWins · October 14, 2001, 00:04

Wow, both pieces of news sound great. The first piece of news mentioned by Anunikoba from an interview has been stated many times by Firaxis before, though.

Lorizael · October 14, 2001, 00:04

Well then how will you get important messages?

Will it be like in CTP where you had those message buttons to click on the side of the screen?

ixnay · October 14, 2001, 00:08

Lorizael:

There were 3 types of pop-ups, which have been changed in civ3. Now the important messages will either:

Appear directly as an effect on the map (fireworks for WLTKD)
Appear as an advisor message
Appear as a popup

This will keep the amount of info, but reduce the number of popups.

Mars · October 14, 2001, 00:22

What a time saver

Quenes should help as well, so now we can change production straight from the map, have quenes and reduction of those annoying pop-ups that took forever to get through Yeessss.
Did i miss any time savers

Lorizael · October 14, 2001, 00:28

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay37
Lorizael:

There were 3 types of pop-ups, which have been changed in civ3. Now the important messages will either:

Appear directly as an effect on the map (fireworks for WLTKD)
Appear as an advisor message
Appear as a popup

This will keep the amount of info, but reduce the number of popups.

Actually I'd already seen that somewhere but forgotten, thanks for reminding me. Definetely a good way of showing the information, now you don't have to wait 5 minutes to save and quit when your mother is calling you up for dinner!

Another

to Firaxis (I just love those smilies!)

Sarxis · October 14, 2001, 00:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.

Dan

This is another evolution from SMAC where you could sort of do this through the production manager screen. But being able to control your cities through the main map directly is WAY better.

My gosh dardedness, you guys ROCK!

Thanks Dan.

SITS · October 14, 2001, 12:13

Its great that they are making it easier to manage bigger empires but they have also said the game itself makes it hard to have big empires!

LaRusso · October 14, 2001, 12:21

almost too good to be true

*clenches teeth, crosses fingers, hoping that everything will be perfect, as promised*

Lorizael · October 14, 2001, 12:29

Quote:

Originally posted by SITS
Its great that they are making it easier to manage bigger empires but they have also said the game itself makes it hard to have big empires!

Yeah, and ICS takes another hit!

Maybe then Civ III does have a sort of "rise and fall" of civilizations? I hope so!

Mars · October 14, 2001, 14:15

I think that the game will just makes it more cahllenging to have large empires, but none the less we expansianist warmonger bastards will find ways around it. So far it sounds like it will be even more fun than in any of the other games to be gigantic. And i like a good challenge anyway, with brute will and determination i'm sure that i will become just as big and mean and terrible as i was in civ2 and this time even worse because i won't get bored of all those pop ups and changing productions, instead i can just focuse i exucting people

cyril25376 · October 14, 2001, 16:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
I should also point out that in Civ III, you can right click on cities in the map view and change production (among other things) right there. This is incredibly handy, especially when administering large empires.
Dan

Excellent feature. Fine .Dan, is it also possibly to select orders for units only by right clicking on units?

squid · October 14, 2001, 17:19

One of the interesting areas of Computer Science / Psychology is "Human Computer Interaction".... it's all about making interfaces intuitive, usable, and friendly. It certainly looks like the Firaxians (sounds alien, don't it) were well versed in their interface design. Judging to the attention to HCI, I assume the AI and other code aspects are solid (i.e. not a hack) as well. Thumbs up for the solid job! SMAC's interface left something to be desired....and now, I see something more streamlined than imaginable.

Ralf · October 14, 2001, 17:38

I just hope that the map automatically recenters when anything needs new orders, and that the game-screen automatically turns to city-mode whenever a build-queue is empty.
I would really hate if one was forced to manually drag-around the map, and/or manually click, click and click just in order to proceed to bleeding obvious new order requirements. All actions that require player-interaction should be presented step-by-step automatically, if one wants it that way.