Gripes about the map on smaller phones

[blackwolfe]

I have not gotten very far in this game, due to lack of time but played it quite a bit last night. Anyway, I dont know how the map display looks on tabs or phones with a large display, but it looks horrible on smaller displays.

Cant exactly take a screenshot so I'll try to explain

On the bottom right is the locations slider with icons of bars, hotels etc
On the top right is the area name
Just to the left of the area name is the faction flag
well, this you know already.

However this might look good on larger displays, but on galaxy 5 and other phones with smaller displays its not very good looking...

First of all, the area name is crammed together on the side looking something like

So
ut
h
B
os
to
n

Well, that doesnt look to nice does it?

Secondly, the the locations slider needs improvement. Its also pretty small on smaller display phones. Some kind of popup list would be better, or the locations sliders could be replaced with clickable icons on the map(configurable size perhaps). Its painful to start moving towards a destination only to be interrupted by an encounter(several times) and be forced to in some cases scroll all the way to the bottom of the list one location at a time. Being able to continue traveling would be nice.

Hope that makes sense, keep up the good work!

Oh and one more, post-combat.. the ammo and stealth exit buttons overlap on small displays like galaxy 5.

[moof]

I actually have the same phone (mine's epic if there are different ones that changes it or not..) and I haven't had this problem. Not sure what is different, but this is a pretty sweet game, and I hope you can get this fixed.

[blackwolfe]

You sure that you dont have galaxy S? The screen is a bit bigger on that one.

Samsung Galaxy 5(i5500) has a display size of 240 x 320 pixels while Samsung Galaxy S(i9000) has a display size of 480 x 800 pixels

Anyway I'll throw something together in paint or whatever explaining exactly how it looks, once I get home from work later on tonight.

[taatuu25]

I have galaxy 3 and no broblems with the map after the mdpi device fix.
I actually Have no idea what mdpi means,i think its something to do with the screen, not sure,though.
Is galaxy 5 mdpi device?

[moof]

Jul 8, 2011 6:57:59 GMT -5 blackwolfe said:

You sure that you dont have galaxy S? The screen is a bit bigger on that one.

Samsung Galaxy 5(i5500) has a display size of 240 x 320 pixels while Samsung Galaxy S(i9000) has a display size of 480 x 800 pixels

Anyway I'll throw something together in paint or whatever explaining exactly how it looks, once I get home from work later on tonight.

Oh, misread that, it's pretty late/early here. Yeah I have the S, my mistake. Either way, I hope there's a way for that to get fixed up or something.

[Cory Trese]

Trust me that I'm working on this and that I do care very, very much about supporting all phones.

The interface in CK is more complicated than ST.

Unfortunately for Android Developers getting test devices is really hard and the emulator is terrible.

The smallest phone I have is 320 x 480 pixels, the HTC Hero. That's an MDPI device and it sounds like perhaps the i9000 is an LDPI device.

I will keep trying ... back to the cave =(

[blackwolfe]

I know you will fix it eventually

In Trese we trust!

[Cory Trese]

i can haz fixed?



- check out v33, a lot of love went into that release related to this thread. not perfect, but much closer

[rerelee]

thanks Cory. love your work. now i know where I've to go. if you've the please see my problem in contact. thread. peace

[blackwolfe]

Much better, thanks cory Sure, it aint perfect but its almost there

A small suggestion, I dont know how it affects larger displays but for small displays, it would be better to move the map down to the bottom of the screen, move the area name starting on the top left and raise up the faction flag and location slider.

Currently the area name is for example

Sout
h
Bost
on

The area name would fit above the map and the location slider would fit almost two locations at a time. The location icons could be a bit smaller and the location text moved a bit closer to the icon, thus the height of each location box could be made a bit smaller.

Dunno if it makes sense, no idea how it looks on a big display either.

Btw, forget the comment about the 'continue to destination after encounter' in the originak post because I hadnt figured out that the blue arrow icon was for that precise purpose

Ammo and stealth exit buttons in the post combat screen still overlaps, but dunno if you did any changes there.

[taatuu25]

The new update messed up my galaxy 3's (mdpi?) screen.
The main maps lower bar(the one with faction flag and 3 buttons and time and sector name) is lotsa bigger than it needs, and it consumes the main map space.
In the minimap,the white bars in the right with building type and name also are lotsa bigger than needed,and will. Conaume a ton of minimap space.

I think the map is configure to a small screen,with my screen still bigger than a small screen..

Cory,you did look throught big and small screens(right?) but not medium screens and BOOM! Medium screens dont work. (mdpi=Medium Device Portable Interface... Something like that?)

[Cory Trese]

No of course I tested it on all screen densities. XHDPI, HDPI, MDPI, LDPI. And 21 different known combinations of "small-ldpi" and "large-mdpi" screens.

I will look into setting up an emulator to match your phone exactly and attempt to replicate your problem. Roughly a third of the devices and emulators that I use to test each release are of the MDPI.

If you would like to see a brief simplified explanation of how it works, Google provides on here:

developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

Android is very complicated. The actual considerations for multiple screens is much much larger than this document makes it out to be, but it does give you some background if you care to read it (and I have, about 50 times!)

[Cory Trese]

That might have come across as really mean, if it did, I'm sorry.

I do not mean to make light of the game's bugs or your frustration with them.

I guess I just wanted you to know for sure that it wasn't me not testing, it is just not always possible get everything perfect on the first try =(

[blackwolfe]

Mean? Nah. I dont know much about programming but sometimes what seems like its easy to fix might be harder than people think for different reasons(at least from what ive heard). Interesting read though.

[taatuu25]

Nah, i thought you havent tested because i know that you have some test devices,and the update talks about something like "fixed small and big screens" but nothing about normal screens, and i thought that "everything that can go wrong will go wrong".. <--Wise words,wise words.

..And Im not angry,but i just wanted to point the broblem out.