Scroll Bars & Chat Boxes

SCROLL BARS

One thing that makes it hard to follow the action in the game is the scroll bars. Having to scroll up and down to see my opponents cards is something you might want to considering changing.

Since the playing area (map) is 7×5, it doesn’t fit well on monitors. A possible solution is making the game play from side-to-side (5×7) instead of bottom-to-top (7×5). I’m not sure if it would appear better at a higher resolution, but I’m running in full-screen mode at 1440×900, which I think is a relatively normal resolution.

CHAT BOX

When I enter a game I can’t see the Chat/Shout Box anymore. It would actually be nice to have 2 chat boxes available when in a game. One could be the general (current) chat box and the other could be an in-game chat box that only you and your opponent can see.

The in-game chat box would eliminate clutter in general chat when the game has more players playing. I’m sure most of this has already been planned, but just wanted to throw it out there.

You also might want to consider some sort of combat box that announces combat, spells cast, etc. I just started playing the game yesterday, but it was very confusing playing against Dark Warlock Tilon and losing the game without understanding how. One minute I had 7 population, the next thing I know I lost the game. I realize now that it was a spell(s) he cast that directly attacked my population.

These two are on top of my wish-list too :)

Anton (raptorAZ) has already made a principle design for a client without scrollbars. Its, however, a lot of work :(

I would like to change the base technology of the client too (from AJAX to Flash/Flex). When I do this, I already need to rebuild the base design, so I could change the playing map too. Possibly in the xmas-holidays, when the company I work for is closed :)