Making a prettier GUI

[Chris H.]

Sloth, if possible I think it's even better for any mana color to appear only if the player have that mana color. What do you think?

`
Ah, that is an interesting idea. It would help to make this panel less busy looking.

IMHO moving mana pool to the player panel would give us more space in the play area. But I don't know if this will be difficult on the programming side.

`
I play on a 24" wide screen monitor so I have plenty of room, but there are people using smaller monitors. I like the idea of moving the mana pool to the panel if it is possible.

[MageKing17]

Sloth, if possible I think it's even better for any mana color to appear only if the player have that mana color. What do you think?

`
Ah, that is an interesting idea. It would help to make this panel less busy looking.

That's actually a great idea, especially since it means those snow panels won't clutter it up unless you actually have some snow mana.

[choppic]

I'm still working on the player panel. Meanwhile I'm making some visual tweaking on the info panel (top-left corner). Let me know what you think about it

I think a custom scrollbar for the panel will make it look better. Do any of you familiar with the SynthStyle and willing to lend a hand?

[slapshot5]

I'm still working on the player panel. Meanwhile I'm making some visual tweaking on the info panel (top-left corner). Let me know what you think about it

It looks kind of out of place to me (when compared to the rest of the screen. And it seems to have lost the visual phase clues (colored boxes) that we currently have.

What is the goal of revamping this box?

-slapshot5

[choppic]

It looks kind of out of place to me (when compared to the rest of the screen. And it seems to have lost the visual phase clues (colored boxes) that we currently have.

I'm working on the rest of the screen, starting with info panel

[Chris H.]

I am with Slapshot on retaining the colored borders for the info panel. Now that we have the additional phases, I find that I really need that red/green border to key on when I need to attack/block.

[zaroblan]

Greetings oh mighty Forge developers,

I think the new changes to the main UI are fantastic.

There is one area which really needs improvement ... and that is the resizing of the panels along the left and right hand sides of the battlefield. The resizing is clunky and often end up being unmanageable. The panels containing life points etc. do not scale well and often end off cutting off the life points. This is especially evident when playing in quest mode and your opponents have pictures. I do not have a widescreen monitor (just a 15" Philips CRT) and is it not pleasant.

The auto scaling of the cards etc. on the battlefield when using the New GUI option from the main screen looks terrible. Why when I play the 1st land does it scale upt o the fill height of my side of the battlefield. It looks terrible.

Thanks again and keep up the good work.

The Turquoise Mage

[rjp14]

Phyrexian symbol in black with a green highlight would work for poison. At least this is what wotc uses. The rest of the world uses a skull and crossbones.

Lightning bolt for flashback. However I'm not sure this is the right icon idea.

For Exile something to do with the desert. Maybe a Magic card in the sands or something. Once again I'm not 100% sure about this idea.

[Jaedayr]

Would it be possible to add the description of rewards for quest mode quests back to the available quest window?

[slapshot5]

Can subsequent size adjustments of the Deck Editor be persisted? It is way too small on my 1680x1050 screen. I make it bigger, and adjust the widths and heights to something better, but the next time I go in, it has shrunk back to its 1024x768 (or whatever) size.

-slapshot5

[Chris H.]

Can subsequent size adjustments of the Deck Editor be persisted? It is way too small on my 1680x1050 screen. I make it bigger, and adjust the widths and heights to something better, but the next time I go in, it has shrunk back to its 1024x768 (or whatever) size.

`
Sorry about that Slapshot. While helping with the deck editor mods I decided to try out a change in window behavior on the user base. My iMac screen is 1920 x 1200 and that is just too wide. I tried to come up with a way to limit the width to just 1400 pixels.

The original code in Gui_DeckEditor looks like this:

Code: Select all

        setSize(1024, 740);
        setExtendedState(Frame.MAXIMIZED_BOTH);
    }//setupAndDisplay()

`
I could not figure out how to set an extended state of max height and 1400 pixels width. It may not be possible to do so.

My hack starts the screen at min size and if you click on the maximum button it will expand to max height and 1400 pixels width. My code looks like this:

Code: Select all

        setSize(1024, 740);
        Rectangle bounds = getBounds();
        Dimension screen = getToolkit().getScreenSize();
        int maxWidth;
       
        if (screen.width >= 1400) {
            maxWidth = 1400;
        } else {
            maxWidth = screen.width;
        }
        bounds.width = maxWidth;
        bounds.height = screen.height;
       
        setMaximizedBounds(bounds);

`
If someone with more experience can come up with a better solution that would be great.

[Chris H.]

Would it be possible to add the description of rewards for quest mode quests back to the available quest window?

`
We have a forum topic devoted to quest mode UI changes at Making the Quest UI nicer.

[choppic]

Guys, which class is responsible for displaying phase info, stack info, and attacker & defender info?

[friarsol]

Guys, which class is responsible for displaying phase info, stack info, and attacker & defender info?

Hey Choppic, this is all in different classes.

Attacker/Defender is done in: CombatUtil.showCombat()
Phase info is based out of InputControl.java. Input_PassPriority, Input_Attack, Input_Block, Input_Cleanup, Input_Mulligan all play in that same area.
Stack happens in GuiDisplay(3/4) in the addObservers() function. In Display4 it starts with:

Code: Select all

        //stack
        AllZone.Stack.addObserver(new Observer() {
            public void update(Observable a, Object b) {
                stackPanel.removeAll();


[choppic]

Thanks for your help, friarsol.

It looks kind of out of place to me (when compared to the rest of the screen. And it seems to have lost the visual phase clues (colored boxes) that we currently have.

Thanks for the comments, the colored boxes is back (sort of).

My plan is to combine the phase info, stack, and combat panels into one. And then move the opponent panel to the top of the combined panel. I don't know if this will make sense, so I'm sharing what I have so far.
Like always, please share your thoughts