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smeborg



Joined: Jan 04, 2019

Post   Posted: Jan 13, 2019 - 19:45 Reply with quote Back to top

I am an experienced TT player (20 years) but brand new to FUMBBL (1 week, 10 games). I am thoroughly enjoying myself, so my hearty congratulations and thanks to Christer and no doubt many others for their toil over the years.

I make the following gentle and non-technical suggestions while they are fresh:

PLAYER ICON RESOLUTION: While they are well drawn, the player icons are small and hence not always easy to distinguish. I wonder if there are plans to increase the resolution (number of pixels) in the future?

TRANSPARENT PLAYER ICONS: Even after several games and much spectating, I struggle to distinguish between active and inactive (transparent) player icons. The consequences are important, as what chess players call "sight of the board" is lost (a big difference from TT if the quarter turn convention is used). I think I would much prefer a white symbol in a similar style to the prone and stunned markers (e.g. a circle). No doubt there are also other ways to do it, the main idea being simple: can the visual distinction between active and inactive players be improved?

BOARD SIZE (RELATIVE TO SCREEN): A distinguishing feature of BB compared to other games is that the board is large (390 squares). The board in the FFB client uses c. 50% of the screen (c. 30% in the case of my iMac). Important information (e.g. turn time, RRs remaining and whether one has been used this turn, what has just happened, chatbox) are spread to the edges and corners of the screen.

I venture to suggest that the relative size of the board could be increased by modest changes to layout, e.g.:

- Move the RR markers to the top of their boxes,

- Invert the white boxes (what has just happened and chat) so that they read from top to bottom, instead of from bottom to top.

- Move the chat input line to the top of the chat box.

- Move the turn time display to somewhere more central on the screen (e.g. next to the number of spectators).

These are just a few simple ideas, but they might increase relative pitch size for users by as much as 30%. More radical layout changes might increase the relative screen size further, but I do not want to complicate the general idea, which is a simple one: increase the size of the pitch relative to the screen.

Note that all of the above suggestions are related to visual cognition and/or eyeball movement, issues which I suggest will become more important to FUMBBL users as they get older, or encounter medical issues affecting sight.

All the best.
Harad



Joined: May 11, 2014

Post   Posted: Jan 13, 2019 - 20:42 Reply with quote Back to top

Whether or not these suggestions are good can this please serve as a template of how to make suggestions in terms of politeness. Great work.
Rbthma



Joined: Jan 14, 2009

Post   Posted: Jan 13, 2019 - 21:32 Reply with quote Back to top

Welcome to FUMBBL, glad you're enjoying it!

Issues with the resolution are known, and Christer has been working on resolving that for a while. Check it out: https://fumbbl.com/p/phaserapp

Some workarounds in the meantime are to decrease the resolution of your monitor, or use the magnifier app built into windows 10 for example.

For issues with the chat/RR being cut-off most commonly all you have to do is move the task bar to the left/right side of your screen instead of the bottom.

With the transparency of the icons after they have moved/blocked/etc. I generally don't find this a problem except in specific cases (rain I believe) and for those I click on them if I can't recall (no interaction means I've already used them)
Very much in agreement with the eyesight issues, experiencing them these days Very Happy
Hope that helps!
The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: Jan 13, 2019 - 21:36 Reply with quote Back to top

I second what Harad has said. This is exactly the type of coach we would like to discover, invite, and retain, after they have tried FUMBBL.

For smeborg: After some recent and not so 'politically correct' or 'gentle' complaints, much forum discussion and banter, Christer has recently spelled out his personal position once again, in this Blog.

https://fumbbl.com/p/blog?c=Christer

My summary.. he might not be the only one smart enough to modify things.. he simply dosn't have the time to monitor another person making modifications to the client that plays the game, or the website that integrates all of the features.

Top priority will always be keeping the site functioning as is, and continually modifying/adjusting/improving/developing when he has the time, and is in the mood to enjoy what is his working on.. which is alot, usually behind the scenes.

With respect to your personal experience here so far, I'd be most interested to know if you eventually found one of the client features you mentioned above became a deal breaker, and you elected to play elsewhere, like Cyanide's BB2.

Welcome!

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Gary_Gygax



Joined: Aug 08, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 13, 2019 - 22:55 Reply with quote Back to top

Harad wrote:
Whether or not these suggestions are good can this please serve as a template of how to make suggestions in terms of politeness. Great work.


I totally agree, there's really a lack of politeness in these days (especially in Italy...) and we really need it for a better world.
FinnDiesel



Joined: Mar 07, 2018

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 00:16 Reply with quote Back to top

I haven’t had problems with the difference of who has done and not, but I agree on some other of your points + very polite and informative

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awambawamb



Joined: Feb 17, 2008

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 00:30 Reply with quote Back to top

Harad wrote:
Whether or not these suggestions are good can this please serve as a template of how to make suggestions in terms of politeness. Great work.


indeed, I second this and what Gary_Gygax said.


Smeborg wrote:
TRANSPARENT PLAYER ICONS

a tick mark in the corner of the player icon? that could be tested, alongside other possible solutions, in a mock-up image.
I could do it in a pinch but... not tonight. will be back to this in some days maybe.

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Christer



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 01:18
FUMBBL Staff
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Good post, and while I don't necessarily agree with all of the specifics, the core idea here is absolutely solid:

smeborg wrote:
increase the size of the pitch relative to the screen


Let's take a look at this point in a bit more detail.

The current layout has been fixed and unchanged since the client was made. Back then, the constraint was to keep it possible for people to run it on a 1024x768 resolution screen.

Today, people have different setups, with the most popular resolution being 1080p (1920x1080 pixels). This resolution accounts for roughly 32% of the people on the site according to analytics. This would imply a large potential to scale up pretty big.

However, the second largest group (at 15%) of people are running 1366x768, which is a very popular laptop resolution. Third and fourth, we have some oddball resolutions (1536x864 and 1440x900) which add up to roughly 13% of users. Then we have the 1024x768 resolution on 5th place at just under 5%.

So, what are we looking at in a practical sense? Probably 1366x768 as a minimum and possibly support 1024x768 in a reduced capacity.

In the current client, each square is 30 pixels square. With 26*15 squares for the board, we're looking at 780x450 pixels. In the actual client, there are two additional pixels in each direction for a total of 782x452 pixels for the pitch image. Let's skip these two additional pixels for the purposes of this post.

If we assume that we want to maintain a view of the whole pitch at all times for the client, we end up with a few possible scalings that would make theoretical sense given the available amount of space:

60 pixels per square (100% scaling): 1560x900. More or less the max for a 1080p display.
50 pixels per square (67% increase): 1300x750. The max for 1366x768.
35 pixels per square (17% increase): 910x525. The limit for 1024x768.

Ok, but these would leave very little space for other UI components and the chat and log panels. Also, supporting multiple layouts like this would be annoying to deal with.

So, let's explore a dynamic resolution system.

Let's assume we don't do anything totally radical to the layout. We have the board (26 units wide and 15 units high). On each side we have dugouts which are 3 units wide and span the height of the pitch.

So we're at 32 units wide at this point. For the height, the current layout has the area below the field more or less 13 squares high. This could probably be cut down a bit without any huge consequences. Let's say the minimum we want is 5 (this is cutting it pretty narrow).

We have a target of 32x20 units to fit on the screen.

Let's see what that would be on those three resolutions:

1920x1080:
1920/32 = 60. Ok cool, that's what we had above as well, so that's nice
1080/20 = 54. This is unfortunately less than 60.
Let's choose 50 pixels per unit here; we'll end up with 6.6 units for chat space, which is shorter than before, but we get much larger icons (potentially)

1366x768:
1366/32 = 42.7
768/20 = 38.4
Here we're looking at either sticking with 30 as-is or slightly increasing to 35.
At 30, we have (768-15*30)/30 = 10.6 squares of chat
At 35, we have (768-15*35)/35 = 6.9 squares of chat
Either are fine honestly. 35 is nicer, but depending on other factors, we might want to stick with 30.

1024x768:
1024/32 = 32
768/20 = 38.4
Obviously, 32 is the max we'd want to use, and a switch from 30 to 32 is so small it almost doesn't matter.

This could obviously be made to simply find the highest possible integer square size for any resolution (54, 38 and 32 respectively in the above cases) and use that.

For a bit more fun, let's consider those who have higher resolution screens:

2560x1440: (1440p)
2560/32 = 80
1440/20 = 72

3840x2160: (4k)
3840/32 = 120
2160/20 = 108

Ok, so this is all well and good. We'd have a system that allows us to scale the client to whatever resolution you want (windowed mode, or full-screen wouldn't matter).

And why hasn't this already been done? Well, it comes down to two primary things:

1. Developer time. Something like this would take time from a developer which at this point is me. Would I be willing to do this? Yes. I think it would be amazing to be able to full-screen the client and make it friendly for streaming and YouTube videos.

2. Graphical assets. This is the hard one. Currently, all icons in the game are pixel art. Scaling icons is less than ideal, and if we were to want to support things like 4k resolutions, pixel art isn't really an option anymore. Having to draw the same human lineman in all various resolutions you'd end up with is simply not feasible so a scalable variant would be needed (SVG). We have several hundred icons, and doing an effort like this would be a gargantuan task.

However, this is something that has been considered before, and a reasonable plan to make this possible would be to make a system where one icon is composed of a set of parts. feet, legs, chest, arms, head, shoulder pads, etc. Each icon would then be defined as a combination of these parts, with configurable colours so the same icon could be rendered as both the red and blue side (and possibly allow customizable team colours). Something like this could also be used to make crude animations in the game itself, by moving these parts relative to each-other.

It's still a huge task for a group of people to do, but certainly possible.

This hasn't happened before, and maybe I simply need to trust that there will be a group of people who are able to do this type of graphical work and put the hours in to write the code for it.
PurpleChest



Joined: Oct 25, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 01:26
FUMBBL Staff
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Welcome to FUMBBL and my thanks added to the others for a lovely and polite way to offer feedback.

On top of the various ways to deal with the tiny client (try it on a 4k screen, it's postage stamp sized) and 'familiarity' there is one tiny point that people often forget, there is an option in the client to play without icons and with 'Abstract icons' ('user settings', then 'icons' in the client) which a lot of people with eyesight issues find much easier.

I'm not saying your layout suggestions arn't good ones, just offering what we already have.

And once again welcome to FUMBBL, I hope you find it to your taste.

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Chainsaw



Joined: Aug 31, 2005

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 02:20 Reply with quote Back to top

Christer wrote:
Scaling icons is less than ideal, and if we were to want to support things like 4k resolutions, pixel art isn't really an option anymore.

I would say you are creating a problem by saying it isn't an option.

There is a massive demand for pixel art games at the moment. Some of the most popular indie titles are absolutely pixel art and some ridiculously low resolution.

Nothing wrong with scaling as an interim or even longer term solution. If there is the demand for higher definition images then the community will provide them, but making that a barrier will create a chicken and egg scenario that won't be solved for many years.

TL;DR: KISS, people <3 pixel art, just scale

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smeborg



Joined: Jan 04, 2019

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 03:09 Reply with quote Back to top

Thanks Christer and all for your kind words.
smeborg



Joined: Jan 04, 2019

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 06:51 Reply with quote Back to top

The_Murker wrote:
With respect to your personal experience here so far, I'd be most interested to know if you eventually found one of the client features you mentioned above became a deal breaker, and you elected to play elsewhere, like Cyanide's BB2.
Thanks for your concern, Murker. I doubt this will be the case, as I have managed by trial and error (and some help from this forum, a good sign) to get the pitch and icons to a size where they are, shall we say, just acceptable to me for play.

The margins are fine, one magnification smaller than the best I can get (say 7% less) does not work well for me.
smeborg



Joined: Jan 04, 2019

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 06:57 Reply with quote Back to top

PurpleChest wrote:
On top of the various ways to deal with the tiny client (try it on a 4k screen, it's postage stamp sized) and 'familiarity' there is one tiny point that people often forget, there is an option in the client to play without icons and with 'Abstract icons' ('user settings', then 'icons' in the client) which a lot of people with eyesight issues find much easier.
Thanks, PurpleChest, the "abstract icon" setting is brutal, and for me loses much of the imaginative side of the game, but it is good to know the option is there, should I experience visual issues with FUMBBL that I cannot overcome.
garyt1



Joined: Mar 12, 2011

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 07:06 Reply with quote Back to top

Good post Smeborg. Client size is definitely a very important issue. I think the most important thing to improve, in terms of making it scaleable like in an internet window. Or at least some options. Good to see Christer is still thinking on it. His HTML client work will hopefully sort it out.
I also agree that inactive/active players is unclear with some teams and background.

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polemarch



Joined: Mar 20, 2009

Post   Posted: Jan 14, 2019 - 07:54 Reply with quote Back to top

as my screen resolution increase i just switched to using the circular abstract icons. sure they don't look as good, but it made it much easier to play and that is what I am interested in.

in the mean time i just magnify or change the screen resolution as required depending on whether i am on the iMac or Windows PC.

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