MArcomage

I noticed several shortcomings:

1. After button pressing, pop-up hints flash several times while page is loaded.

2. In your own profile page pop-up hint for button "Send message" appears out of bounds of page.

3. In Games section, names of offline players shown in green if it's your turn in game. Is it supposed to be that way?

1. - I wasn't able to reproduce this one thus far. Maybe this happens only on slow connections?

2. - hints that are bound to elements that are in the bottom part of the screen have this problem, I'll look into it

3. Names of players are now in green if it is your turn in their game. Information about your opponent activity has been removed for simplicity

Mojko wrote:
1. - I wasn't able to reproduce this one thus far. Maybe this happens only on slow connections?

I don't know. Maybe.

Mojko wrote:
removed for simplicity

Lord, help us!

Is there an option to switch to the old interface? It is impossible now to play on mobile phones.

Sorlag wrote:

Mojko wrote:
removed for simplicity

Lord, help us!

My reasoning behind this change was as follows: we have changed the list layout to button-less, so list items would now be accessed by clicking on a list item instead of "item details" button. This was done in general effecting multiple sections, but for games section it meant that I had to move the information "it is your turn" from the missing button somewhere. That is why I moved it to Opponent's name since I believe that this information is more important than knowing if your opponent is online or not.

Overall, I want to minimize the instances where we encode information into highlighted text since it's not very transparent. Also, it is not consistent - for different sections it has different meaning.

In the case of player activity I plan to remove the text highlight on player's name in all sections and replace it with an activity icon (something like green circle if you're online and so on). With this change I can return the opponent's activity information back to the games list.

Coolis wrote:
Is there an option to switch to the old interface? It is impossible now to play on mobile phones.

First of all, be sure to clean your browser cache to have the up-to-date layout. It's strange to hear that new layout looks bad on mobile phones when it is supposed to be much better. Please provide some additional information like your screen resolution, screenshots and some description on what the issue is.

Old layout used 1045px minimum screen width, we are are not considering the return back to that. Also, it's not technically reasonable to support the old layout as well.

Mojko wrote:
I had to move the information "it is your turn" from the missing button somewhere. That is why I moved it to Opponent's name

Oh. But there are other colomns, like "Round".

Mojko wrote:
In the case of player activity I plan to remove the text highlight on player's name in all sections and replace it with an activity icon (something like green circle if you're online and so on). With this change I can return the opponent's activity information back to the games list.

Now I see it in a new light, thank you.

Mojko wrote:
2. - hints that are bound to elements that are in the bottom part of the screen have this problem

Ah, indeed, the same problem on achievements page.
About tooltips on that page: part of them looks like "(100/150 )", i.e. there is excess space before closing parenthesis.

New or revealed cards are located lower then other. I'm not sure, but I think that revealed not new cards before update was located higher, so new cards could be easily distinguished by their shift.

Just a small observation:

It is good that all the notifications are now gathered under the player's mini-profile on the top left corner. But at the same time, I think that it would be more natural and intuitive, to place the "Reset notifications" button somewhere near there also, instead of being "hidden" in the the opposite corner.

Also another small nitpick: I think the tooltip should be something like "Clear notifications" or "Mark all as read", instead of "Reset" as Reset might be interpreted as bring me back the notifications...

Sorlag wrote:

Ah, indeed, the same problem on achievements page.
About tooltips on that page: part of them looks like "(100/150 )", i.e. there is excess space before closing parenthesis.

New or revealed cards are located lower then other. I'm not sure, but I think that revealed not new cards before update was located higher, so new cards could be easily distinguished by their shift.

I will correct the achievements tooltip thanks for reporting. I'm not sure about how exactly the new card and revealed flags were displayed before, but now they should take the same amount of space. This is intentional behavior.

dimitris wrote:
Just a small observation:

It is good that all the notifications are now gathered under the player's mini-profile on the top left corner. But at the same time, I think that it would be more natural and intuitive, to place the "Reset notifications" button somewhere near there also, instead of being "hidden" in the the opposite corner.

Also another small nitpick: I think the tooltip should be something like "Clear notifications" or "Mark all as read", instead of "Reset" as Reset might be interpreted as bring me back the notifications...

Good suggestions. I'll add it to my TODO list.

I can confirm that the new layout glitches out in a lot of places on my iphone.

And I think the complaint about being unplayable refers to the game layout being highly vertical and zoomed in, making it hard to get an overview of the situation. This could also be the side-effect of a layout glitch.

In the original layout, you could get an idea of the situation by zooming out enough and scrolling left/right.

^That's exactly what I meant. You can't zoom out the screen anymore

Coolis wrote:
^That's exactly what I meant. You can't zoom out the screen anymore

If that's the case I believe this is intentional behavior. We have switched from fixed table layout to responsive grid. This means that on screen with small width content is displayed in a single column. This ensures that there is no horizontal scrollbar and there is no need to use zoom. You can find nice pictures explaining how it works here:

Responsive web design

Bootstrap grid

This means that on small screens (width < 768px) the game is displayed like this:

your cards
----------
your empire info
-----------
played / discarded cards
----------
opponent's empire info
-----------
opponent's cards

You can always flip your phone on the side to display the content next to each other. The application display will adapt once you resize the screen.

Also, if anyone has suggestions regarding the new button icons feel free to let me know. Here is a complete list of all icons that are available:

Bootstrap icons

Mojko wrote:


Also, if anyone has suggestions regarding the new button icons feel free to let me know. Here is a complete list of all icons that are available:

Bootstrap icons

Well, the only two icons that seem somewhat off to me are the icons used for the "Reset notifications" and "Quote" buttons. For the first one, I would probably use the "repeat" or "refresh" icon and for the second one maybe the "share" or the "comment" icon seems more appropriate.

Also you might want to take a look at Font Awesome. It seems to have a larger variety of icons to use and it's also served via Bootstrap CDN in case you don't want to have it locally.

dimitris wrote:

Well, the only two icons that seem somewhat off to me are the icons used for the "Reset notifications" and "Quote" buttons. For the first one, I would probably use the "repeat" or "refresh" icon and for the second one maybe the "share" or the "comment" icon seems more appropriate.

Also you might want to take a look at Font Awesome. It seems to have a larger variety of icons to use and it's also served via Bootstrap CDN in case you don't want to have it locally.

Thanks for the ideas for the icons. I'm familiar with Font awesome but I don't think we need another library at this point, basic icons should bejust fine.

I have consulted the layout issues on mobile devices with umage and we were able to design several improvements. Please keep providing us with feedback and we will try to make improvements.

The plan is to prepare a new application build and deploy it on new year update.

The UI is interesting. It'll take a little getting used to, but I think I'll like it. :)

I miss knowing when someone is online as I'm playing cards. I did see your thoughts on putting a online status indicator too. May I suggest keeping the online status on the player? The games waiting for your attention notification is neat, I like that! But maybe put that same icon next to a players name in the games list if attention is needed instead of changing the players name? That threw me for a loop at first.

Minor, but I did grow attached to having the games list sorted by when they were created. :P If it's a consideration, maybe low on the todo list. :) I will get used to the sort now, too, but I'll miss the old sort. :P

Nice update btw, thank you! :D

3of0 wrote:
But maybe put that same icon next to a players name in the games list if attention is needed instead of changing the players name? That threw me for a loop at first.

I like this idea. Thanks for suggestion.

1. In games, long game sign is missing.

2. Invisible close button on Notes and Chat windows.

3. Buttons disappear with corresponding place. So after card playing discard button disappears and all other buttons shift, including next game button (Do we have hotkeys?).
Preview card, if was there, disappers too. For previews, how about unrevealed card placeholder for cards with random drawing?

I have a suggestion for a change, based on how things appear on a desktop computer (which is the only way I play the game). I don't know if it displays differently on mobile devices, but as the game is now, here is what I see below the towers:

MyName Token1 Token2 . . . . . . . . . Token1 Token2 Token3
. . . . . . . . .Token3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OppName

I'm guessing that it displays this way because it's coded to show MyName Token1 Token2 Token3 all on one line, getting wrapped to the second line. And the opponent's details as Token1 Token2 Token3 OppName, with the same wrap to the second line.

Could it be coded with both names at the end so the name is always at the bottom on both sides? (That is, Token1 Token2 Token3 MyName : Token1 Token2 Token3 OppName) It feels awkward having just one of the token counters on its own line. Again, I don't know if this will ruin mobile device layout, but the current arrangement looks sloppy on computers.

Sorlag wrote:
1. In games, long game sign is missing.

2. Invisible close button on Notes and Chat windows.

3. Buttons disappear with corresponding place. So after card playing discard button disappears and all other buttons shift, including next game button (Do we have hotkeys?).
Preview card, if was there, disappers too. For previews, how about unrevealed card placeholder for cards with random drawing?

1 - Interesting, I'll have a look.

2 - I will fix this.

3 - I'm aware of this and I couldn't find a good way to solve this. Obviously keeping the buttons there or keeping the space unoccupied is a waste of screen space and is an issue on the mobile devices. The other option is to rearrange the buttons in the order that buttons that are always present are on the left side and buttons that are state specific are on the right side. This approach has a problem however: there are quite many button combinations based on the game state and game modes. Current button order is based on importance which I think is a reasonable trade-off.

DPsycho wrote:
I have a suggestion for a change, based on how things appear on a desktop computer (which is the only way I play the game). I don't know if it displays differently on mobile devices, but as the game is now, here is what I see below the towers:

MyName Token1 Token2 . . . . . . . . . Token1 Token2 Token3
. . . . . . . . .Token3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OppName

I'm guessing that it displays this way because it's coded to show MyName Token1 Token2 Token3 all on one line, getting wrapped to the second line. And the opponent's details as Token1 Token2 Token3 OppName, with the same wrap to the second line.

Could it be coded with both names at the end so the name is always at the bottom on both sides? (That is, Token1 Token2 Token3 MyName : Token1 Token2 Token3 OppName) It feels awkward having just one of the token counters on its own line. Again, I don't know if this will ruin mobile device layout, but the current arrangement looks sloppy on computers.

I like your suggestion and it can certainly be implemented. I think current setup is just a leftover of the previous design which had some questionable decisions. For example opponent's tokens are in reversed order for some reason.

If preview mode can be inaccessable due to specific cards in hand, would it be possible for that button to appear in case of valid card selection?