Interface Crossroads: Designing for Larger Text

With map zooming complete, the next step on my list was to work on QoL to make it actually more feasible to play like that. Zooming is great, but if you're always zoomed in, there's a lot you can't see, and that's a big problem. So naturally that's the next challenge I was planning to tackle, but...

Honestly I don't think too many people will benefit from map zoom, and feel that releasing it with just that feature, even with supporting QoL, has several negative impacts. It makes the default text size stand out as even smaller, not solving a more fundamental issue, and still most importantly it's not very playable when zoomed in so much due to sight/attack range issues. (This is of course why Cogmind was tightly designed around such a large grid to begin with!) QoL features can somewhat mitigate the impact, but after considering the possibilities there, even after implementing them it won't be anywhere close to ideal, despite all the work required.

Instead of adding that QoL right now, I'm thinking of moving ahead with the idea of increasing the entire cell size, which would reduce the immediate need for such QoL to begin with (or at least help minimize the amount of required QoL, and the extent of its impact on regular gameplay).

Map zooming in this context is probably then relegated to an actual side quest in this bigger UI adventure, something we don't really need but is maybe a fun thing to play around with, and led to some interesting engine developments.

Phase 3

I'm currently working on designing the layout for an interface with 33% larger fonts across the board, so in other words reduced grid dimensions.

33% larger fonts correlate with a 44% reduction in space to display information. Our current 60-row Cogmind UI is generally composed of 12,870 cells, assuming 1920x1080p @ size 18. Switching to a 45-row design allows for a font size increase to 24 for 1080p, but drops us to 7,200 total cells.

Under this change, specifically the map area (as measured in wider map cells) drops from about 76x50 (3,800) to 50x35 (1,750), a 54% reduction. That's a lot of lost map area, but it's at least less severe than that caused by map zooming, which results in a 38x25 map view--only 950 cells, or a loss of 75% xD

This is essentially going straight to the third phase of what I've considered an eventual experimental evolution for Cogmind's UI, which I've been fast tracking now for the previously stated reasons...

The diagram below explains the evolution in full, most importantly demonstrating to scale the amount of space available to display information relative to sight/attack ranges.

• Phase 1 is now.
• Phase 2 is purely with our map zoomed, which as you can see means you'll have trouble seeing much of your intel, and can't even see out to the extent of your regular sight range, which can mean quite often getting threatened from (and seeing new items and content in) areas beyond what where can see. (Again, various QoL can help with this, but it's not a panacea.)
• Phase 3 converts the 60-row terminal to a 45-row terminal, allowing for larger text and map cells. Although this still restricts the amount of map visible at once, at least the base sight range, and some of the extended ranges (especially in the east-west direction), are visible. Interestingly this also reduces the amount of vertical space available for our HUD, which is what I have been working on designing lately--a HUD that can actually fit into 45 lines rather than 60. I've found design solutions for everything at this point, it's just a matter of finalizing the concepts. As far as the reduction in horizontal space, fortunately Cogmind's UI was originally designed over a decade ago to be compatible with a 4:3 aspect ratio, because back then lots fewer people had widescreens, but nowadays almost everyone does, meaning width-wise the UI can stand to be shrunk down to a 160-cell target, which interestingly puts us right back to what it was originally designed for! (That said, using a 45-row terminal would then mean that 4:3 is not supported by this UI, or at least it would require letterboxing on the top and bottom.)
• Phase 4 is... actually probably doable? It would obviously require even more extreme adjustments, but success would mean not only an increase in font size, but restoring the map view to 50x45, which is really really close to the original default 50x50! Almost all your ranged/sensor data will fit right in as designed! That one's interesting, although Phase 3 is definitely a stepping stone on that path anyway. Basically shrink the right HUD for Phase 3, then apply alternative solutions to make it possible to completely remove the topside windows. Unlike Phase 3 which is mostly mocked up at this point, Phase 4 is not, so I'm guessing the map might end up being something more like 48x45 there, in order to leave space for extra/new mouse buttons. Also one of its bigger drawbacks could be that on-map text usually appearing in corners could make it feel more cramped overall, but anyway all that's for later (currently we have it good in that the map view is a horizontal rectangle, leaving more space for text to appear over the left/right sides, but we'd lose that luxury once the view is square again).

Today I'm finishing up Phase 3 mockups, and then plan to start building it immediately to see how that works out.