RavenX

[quote who="Tridus" reply="63" id="2656392"] And you keep missing the point, because we keep telling you that you can REMOVE things. Not minimized, gone entirely. Something that's not on the tree by definition doesn't take up space. [/quote] That's true, and yes, I got it the first time everyone said it, I justs didn't know what Kryo and Annatar said that I can Turn It Off Completely ;) , Now I know (and knowing is Half the Battle..G.I.Joe!!!) lol [quote who="Tridus"

[quote who="bilskis" reply="61" id="2656375"]And RavenX, I'd like to add a third point. 3. It has to be understandable (intuitive but that word is abused) or easy to get into. [/quote] That's true. I think the word "Intuitive" is probably the new "it" word for Devs these days. If I had a nickle for every time some-one said it at a E3 press conference this year I'd have as much money as Frogboy...lol. Note: I watched the press conferences, I wasn't there or anyt

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="58" id="2656263"] The point is to grossly simplify it, maybe even to the point of making a joke of it. I was considering just doing this, TL:DR Raven loves to BOLD and HIGHLIGHT! On a side note, I think my color choice was pretty good. [/quote] LoL I know, my friend, I know. I was messing with you back :P and...I agree, that was a better color choice then mine. Next time I'll have to use

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="56" id="2656240"] Isn't that the point of a TL:DR version? [/quote] Yeap :) except you boiled it down without enough detail, that's all. hehe

[quote who="Demiansky" reply="20" id="2655952"] I'm hesitant with this kind of "crowd control" of mega stacks. You'll end up with all kinds of squirrley ways to game it. You know, breaking armies into smaller stacks, then insta-combining them right before a city battle to have a mega stack, then break the stack apart after. What we need is game mechanics and incentives that encourage the player not to have 1 mega stack. Make more strategic objectiv

[quote who="kryo" reply="54" id="2656042"] I minimize everything, but, Even When You Minimize EVERYTHING, on a Large Custom Map (of course I add even More stars and planets), once your empire gets Big you still have All those planets on the left side of the screen. EVEN WITH EVERYTHING MINIMIZED. Actually if you completely disable autopinning and set fleets to not show as well, it'll only show whatever planet you have selected (or where you have ships selected at). If yo

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="16" id="2655962"]Good news! Talking with Cari_Elf on IRC today, and found out some info about exporting hkb files. Turns out they export them directly from 3DS Max and Maya. And also, cycholka directed me to link from Intel http://software.intel.com/sites/havok/ where you can download free plugins for 3DS Max, Maya, and XSI that allow you to export hkb's. Unfortunately, they don't have plugins for the newest versions of those software (ie, no plugin for 3DS M

[quote who="TCores" reply="51" id="2655902"]Hello RavenX, I don't really read posts with distracting levels of bold text. The trick to getting people like me to read things is to be succinct and to the point. Neon highlights are no substitute to good writing. No offense. A life spent being bombarded with advertisements has lead to eyes that naturally avoid looking at anything that resembles them. [/quote] No offense taken, my friend

[quote who="Tridus" reply="46" id="2655529"] The lag isn't caused by stuff being on the empire tree. It's caused by Sins being a single threaded game, and all the calculations going on to move all those units around pegging one CPU (even if you can't see them on screen, it's still going on). You should have seen what the Entrenchment beta mines did to performance when the AI put thousands in every sector.[/quote] Very true, my friend. I do understand Lag doesn't come from having

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="41" id="2655486"] I certainly can't object to a quick "hide/unhide" button for the tree. That way you can unhide it when you need it, and hide it when you don't. Sounds like a pretty fine solution. [/quote] Agreed. I think it kinda goes along with what I say here (below) in Reply 29 of this thread. "Agreed. I also just had another idea which is based on one of Stardocks most tried and true programs, Fences. Imagine a "Mini V

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="42" id="2655490"] Tell ya what, if you have Sins installed right now. Create a custom game. Make the Biggest Map you Possibly can and fill it with As Many AI Empires as you possibly can (even if you have to repeat a few) and play the game. Give it a good 3 hour or 4 hour go. Make trade pacts and share map information with as many races as you can, then get alliances so you see their ships in your empire tree as well. When you've got 500 things up there, and

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="39" id="2655481"]Anyway, who is Anetta? [/quote] Anetta? I don't know, unless you think I somehow miss-spelled Annatars name. I did work with a woman named "Anetta" back in UO days...um...what was her last name?!!?! I can't remember right now, but it'll come to me. Too many drugs trying to put me to sleep atm....so I'm going to bed. Been awake for too long into the daylight hours for my tastes. I'm only going to get 4 or 5 sleep at most anyway.

[quote who="Tridus" reply="37" id="2655454"] The Empire Tree is so much more effecient. [/quote] In my opinion, it;s ONLY more efficient on Small Maps or maybe Medium Maps without a Ton of Planets or Fleets to worry about. Once you get all that on screen at one time, picking the right group of fighters out of a massive line that represents your fleet (and let's be honest, in battle these ships can be destroyed and disapear from the list before you can even click on them

[quote who="Tridus" reply="37" id="2655454"] I'm going to have to agree with Annatar, that doesn't make sense to me. You don't want stuff cluttering the UI, but you do want an entirely separate screen to try and figure out where stuff is? How is taking over the whole screen with a modal dialog army list less intrusive then a minimizable empire tree? Given the option of opening up a screen, clicking a guy, then going over to him, or just pinning him to the HUD and being able to

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="34" id="2655421"] This is a bit of an odd statement since having to spend all your time in a separate "Armies" screen that takes up the display area is much more intrusive to the view of the world. I've actually spoken to BoogieBac about it way back during the last PAX 'cause I wanted to see an empire tree in Elemental, and he basically just told me they were already planning on it because they wanted to keep the player looking at the game world, n

[quote who="Tridus" reply="32" id="2655386"]The reason why it (the Sins empire tree) got cluttered on large maps is because things get auto-pinned by default. You can turn that off, and only add the planets/fleets you really care about to it. At that point it functions like it does on a small map even on a large one. [/quote] Yeap, I tweaked it every way possible that I saw at the time and kept it minimized at all times because I couldn't stand it. I used the bigger pop-up interf

[quote who="Tridus" reply="28" id="2655348"] I AM reading it on the Elemental forums. Even here, it's painful and distracting. Not trying to be a jerk about it, but it's just making the post harder to read. 58% of the text is bolded or highlighted (I counted). If that much is the key part, you'd be better off doing a rewrite pass to chop out the other 42%, and not bold anything. Most of the posters here are pretty good, people read and comment on feedback every day

[quote who="bilskis" reply="17" id="2655286"]Why not just keep it short. This is not my opinion I really like the tree in Elemental, in Sins though despite the collapsibility it was sometimes ridiculous .[/quote] I Bolded that part there to show you something, my friend. The ONLY Reason Elemental's current tree isn't as Messy as SoaSE's was is because at this Early Stage of the Beta a lot of things that WILL</s

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="26" id="2655322"] "Honest Raven Reviews" site!!! [/quote] I've done that before!!! LoL After I hit a certain "Viewer Base" I was approached by a company called ACS-Advertising through MySpace and another small company who's name I can't recall atm, both wanting to pay me to write "possitive" reviews of their products on my Blog to get people to buy them. Another "Top Blogger" on Myspace named AwesomeZara does the same thing. She wi

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="23" id="2655310"] Quoting Raven X, reply 20 Unlike you though, my friend, my life (unfortunately for now) consists almost entirely of sitting in front of my PC playing games.Enjoy it while it lasts because once you are "on your feet" again, forced labor (aka need of a job to pay bills) will be upon you like a starving Homer over a doughnut. [/quote] I make a decent living from sitting here on my ass, eve

[quote who="joasoze" reply="21" id="2655302"]Couldn't the tree be more dynamic? When the tree get to a certain size, it can change rules to not give too much clutter. Instead of showing 12 red archer units it could collapse them into a blue archer unit after reaching 10. Then if you mouse over the blue one, then it expanders to individual red ones that are clickable. [/quote] That could work, but, it's still being Forced into the players face with No Way

[quote who="Tridus" reply="19" id="2655296"]First of all, you could very easily set stuff in the Empire Tree to stack, so instead of an icon list that long, you'd see one for each type of ship with a number on it. That took up far less space. You've got it set on the most space-taking configuration, and then complain about it taking up too much space. That's pretty silly. Second of all, I couldn't even finish your post. All the highlighting and bolding is distracting and makes it p

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="18" id="2655289"] Quoting Raven X, reply 10 I have to say I think we disagree on this one, my friend. I don't think "The Tree is Fine". It was novel and handy on Small Maps in SoaSE, but anything bigger then a hand-full of systems and ships and it was a mess that I just wanted to make Go Away Completely so I could see more of the screen. As for the color choice, I don't like that drab brownish color you used ther

[quote who="joasoze" reply="15" id="2655284"]Well, its your choice ofcourse. One final note though. Splitting the text and organizing it neatly will not make it longer. You will be able to say the same in fewer words in my opinion. You will also have more enlightened audience that can follow your points. When I started writing like this on my exams my grades improved in every subject. Why? Because sensors are lazy too. When they find the text summed up in the beginning and the logi

[quote who="joasoze" reply="12" id="2655273"]Hi there Raven. I love reading your posts, but your bolding strategy is starting to put me off a bit. How about you structure your posts for easy reading without the boldness Example: Mermaids in Elemental In this post I will explain why mermaids are a bad idea as an Elemental creature. First I will look at the mythology and then I will look at the practical problems of such a sea creature.