22DEC10 - New User Interface Update

Hi All,

We are very close to the release of the new User Interface for Illyriad, and wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about it, with some illustrative screenshots.

The new User Interface (UI v2) brings greatly improved functionality in a wide variety of areas that will enhance your playing experience.

General Enhancements include:

It's Faster
When you click on links and buttons (ie when you load webpages), it only retrieves the new information it needs - rather than "everything on the page", as it currently does - and this means it runs swifter than a 100-metre sprinter running towards the river after recently being set on fire.

It Actively Notifies You When You Need To Know Something
You may have noticed that currently you only get notified about a new email when you click on a different page.  Or you may have noticed that when your building completes construction, it sits there saying "Completed" and it doesn't go away until you click on something.

That all goes away with the UI v2.  Your web browser will sit there listening for "events", and when the server has something to tell you that happened without you performing an action (ie someone cast a spell on you, your building completed, you got mail etc) it will tell your web browser to invisibly and silently refresh your game world, and change whatever needs to be changed.

This means that - in the future - when a player asks you for a private chat conversation (yes, that is coming!) - then you'll be instantly notified of this request and can choose to accept it immediately.

On the screenshots below you'll see a "Notification" window on the right hand side.  We're moving away from the ingame mail system we currently have whereby you get dozens - if not hundreds - of mails about things you don't necessarily care about. 

All of the system generated emails such as combat reports and trade emails will be removed from the mail system and into a searchable set of report interfaces.  The Notifications System (with a History) will tie these different kinds of events (military, trade etc) into chronological order, and link directly into the report.  For a period of time we'll run the two systems in parallel, but the ingame mail system will ultimately only be for player-to-player communications.

It Means Less Clicks
One of the things that's frustrating - especially when dealing with multiple cities - is the number of clicks it takes to get around and manage things.

UI v2 puts the most used "common" tasks right at your fingertips, either through the new satellite button system on the top navigation menu, or on a bunch of newly created pages such as a complete production overview of your town(s).

Similarly, we've provided common functionality on elements such as player names, town names, map coordinates, military units etc.  This means that, for example, every time you see a player name (in chat, in a trade, in a combat report - wherever) you can click on that player's name to see further details and interact further.

We've also brought in many of the commonly requested functions, such as a single button click for "Produce as many X as I can currently afford" on the production pages.

It's Prettier
The new graphics for navigation are cleaner and more visible than ever before, and there are many enhancements to the visibility of numbers and text.  We've also designed the new UI with vision impairment and colour blindness in mind.

We've also localized certain functionality - whilst things (events) still run off server time, the server will read your browser locale preferences when deciding to display the 12th of November 2010 as 12/11/10 (UK) or 11/12/10 (US).

It's Got a New World Map
Perhaps the most visible, and useful, change for players is on the new World Map.

It's the same world as before, pretty much, but we've expanded the number of terrain graphics from the 60-odd there are now to more than 200 distinct terrain types, also covering the new biomes.

We've introduced Coastline and River Bank graphics to the whole mix, as well as a host of new NPC square types.

Also, we currently only have 6 City Graphics, from a small hut to a mighty white castle.  This has been changed to 19 City Graphics that upgrade with your population for each race.

The World Map can also (optionally) display a wide variety of overlays - from Sovereign Claims to City Names, from Region Names and Borders to highlighting (eg) NPC Resource squares or hostile armies.

A clickable "minimap" is also an alternate method of navigating around the world, and this can be set to show region, terrain, or water feature.

The zoom level you can rise to has also been lifted. 

On the current world map, the maximum level of zoom is 13x13 squares (169 in total).

In the new world map, every player gets a default maximum zoom level of 21x21 (441 squares in total), and players with Active Prestige Accounts can go out to 31x31 (961 squares in total).  We will also be introducing a new set of Strategic map zoom levels to cover the gaps from 50x50 through to 1000x1000.  These strategic map zoom levels will be available to Active Prestige Account holders only; however they won't be in this first release!

The Screenshots below illustrate some of these changes to the World Map.






GENERAL SPRUCE UP OF OTHER PAGES
Many of the pages that currently exist ingame have had a spruce up - to give more information, more useful information, and/or to be clearer. 

This task isn't complete yet, and - after this initial release - we will be going back through many of the existing pages tidying them further, however here's the kind of thing we mean.




Edited by GM Stormcrow - 22 Dec 2010 at 23:50

/me waits in awe...

/me begs santa claus to bless all the children of Illyriad with this wonderfull gift that only the most talented people can provide for us...

Crank's 2nd wish is a powefull horde of angry mammoths that will listen to his command.

But that 2nd wish is like most wishes... impossible... So I will settle with my first wish wich also would make me a very happy man :)

999.72M research points at only +144 per hour? O_O

Also, you're gold will be completely depleted in 8041 hours, might wanna work on that sometime within the next year or so...

Brids17 wrote: 999.72M research points at only +144 per hour? O_O Also, you're gold will be completely depleted in 8041 hours, might wanna work on that sometime within the next year or so...

Heh.

King Sigurd had to support Sovereignty claims for every single 9x9 Trade Hub around the entire world for a few weeks, and so may have had some additional resource-age from the Gods.

SC