I’ve added a blurry background, which I’m not sure if it helps or not.
I’ve also fixed the broken tooltips for the currently researched item, and changed the formatting of items in the research queue so that they match those in the main tech tree.
When the header strip colors (BTW these match the category of the task being researched as seen in zoom out icons on the main game screen) get below a certain darkness, I set the title color of the text to be white. I may have to be a bit more aggressive about doing that?
I admit there is a lot of wasted space, but I think too many scroll bars might be a bit confusing? I can probably do a better job of re-packing the research to reduce that waste actually, just by changing some of the layout
I never really explained the draft I made very well I guess.
The idea was that the top of the hierarchy of research in a given topic would be a button that you can click on that expands that research topic downward and creates the vertical scrolling space as it adjusts to what the player unlocks and reveals it. You would only need the vertical scrolling space if there are too many research topics in a given column and that column exceeds the height of the research window for that players monitor, otherwise just expand it within the current screen. The player has the choice of managing what current topics are relevant at the moment by expanding and collapsing different topics can limit or increase the space available in each column.
I think it would be a lot more intuitive and organized as the player makes decisions based on the category of the research types rather than doing things in a play by play fashion - usually you have a set idea of what you are looking for.
So restructuring the tabs to include those different categories and split the research types makes a lot of sense to me.
Ideally it would be, as I did mention, a window with a ton of tiles for each research topic waiting for the player to make a decision along each tree that can be explored a little at a time without overwhelming the player and without you getting lost looking for something.
Hopefully this helps clear things up and maybe explains my perspective on it a bit more. If I had the time I would make the draft animated so I could show what I’m talking about a bit better, very hard to do with a sitll image.
One thing I think would be a good change is to have the color coding on by default. Not sure if its intended but for me it only shows up when I have moused over it or have it in the research queue, where by that point I’ve already found it so any color coding is not actually helpful. Looking at the screenshot its showing all of them so I’m wondering if this is a bug or something…?
its currently colored if the tech has been researched, otherwise not, although I agree thats not as helpful as it could be, but I need it to be super obvious what has and has not been researched, so this may need a further tweak, maybe a faded version of the same color…
you are kind of at the point of having a lot of colors on the screen .
probably a good idea to remove the unlocked / available / researched color coding at this point and instead to just do a locked unlocked icon on the top right of tech tree stuff instead of color coding and have it just greyed out when locked maybe with striped watermark as well to make it more obvious (you need a prerequisite research first), when unlocked white with an unlocked icon (you are able to research this) and white with no lock icon when researched. maybe that would be more intuitive than a color code because in the US color meanings are different than in other countries so it doesn’t translate that well if its not specific to something unique to a category within the game, and those that are color blind would surely appreciate it
