Minimal_ui

[SpencerH]

I've tried out the minimal_ui and liked it but I've had some weird unit 'lagginess' (units stop moving) when moving the camera around and at other times that I dont have with the normal setup.

Has anyone else experienced this and what do you think about the new UI?

EDIT I've switched back to default UI and have no problems again.

[Bob the Insane]

I am using the minimal UI and I have not seen the same issue... In fact the only issue I have is that is you can't select of give commands in the top quarter of the screen (where the action buttons are when they are not hidden)...

Personally I find full screen RTW (all UI elements toggled off) to be bloody fantastic...

[The Stranger]

why minimal ui

[SpencerH]

why minimal ui

Larger viewing area and it's more immersive.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

I've tried out the minimal_ui and liked it but I've had some weird unit 'lagginess' (units stop moving) when moving the camera around and at other times that I dont have with the normal setup.

The minimal UI mode does put more strain on your graphics card, as it's pushing a lot of extra pixels through the main 3d pipeline (some extra geometry as well, but we've found that to be less of an issue). So you should expect a framerate drop and maybe a few hiccups, though if you have a decent card it shouldn't be that noticeable...

[frogbeastegg]

I've been using the minimal UI right from the first moment I installed 1.2 and I really do love it. I have had one tiny little fly in the ointment type problem with it: there is no way to see/alter the time acceleration with this version of the interface. Ordinarily I wouldn't care; it's rather easy to see when the game is running on full acceleration and when it is not, but I have had a lot of trouble getting time acceleration to turn off. I nearly lost one battle because of it; I couldn't get acceleration to turn off at all and pause wouldn't work either. All I could do was watch as a rather large army of Gaulish warbands poured into my nice, shiny, brand new, never used before, pretty looking legion with great general attachment and optional crome extras. It took me quite a few turns to rebuild what was left of that army...

The problem appears, to my layman's eyes, to involve the pause or ctrl+t shortcuts firing twice for each time I press the key, effectively pausing and unpausing at the same time, or accelerating and decelerating. It is not a consistent problem, only occasional. That said I have found it to be a common occasional issue. Nothing works to circumvent it; even taping the keys as if they had nice little spikes mounted point upwards on them does not help. The problem does become more common once acceleration is engaged, however there have been a few occasions where I could not get the game to speed up. This did happen with the original interface, but there I had access to the speed control buttons.

Any possible solutions? I really don't have the time/patience to watch my army march at a tiny rebel army for several minutes before getting into bow range.

[SpencerH]

I've been using the minimal UI right from the first moment I installed 1.2 and I really do love it. I have had one tiny little fly in the ointment type problem with it: there is no way to see/alter the time acceleration with this version of the interface. Ordinarily I wouldn't care; it's rather easy to see when the game is running on full acceleration and when it is not, but I have had a lot of trouble getting time acceleration to turn off. I nearly lost one battle because of it; I couldn't get acceleration to turn off at all and pause wouldn't work either. All I could do was watch as a rather large army of Gaulish warbands poured into my nice, shiny, brand new, never used before, pretty looking legion with great general attachment and optional crome extras. It took me quite a few turns to rebuild what was left of that army...

The problem appears, to my layman's eyes, to involve the pause or ctrl+t shortcuts firing twice for each time I press the key, effectively pausing and unpausing at the same time, or accelerating and decelerating. It is not a consistent problem, only occasional. That said I have found it to be a common occasional issue. Nothing works to circumvent it; even taping the keys as if they had nice little spikes mounted point upwards on them does not help. The problem does become more common once acceleration is engaged, however there have been a few occasions where I could not get the game to speed up. This did happen with the original interface, but there I had access to the speed control buttons.

Any possible solutions? I really don't have the time/patience to watch my army march at a tiny rebel army for several minutes before getting into bow range.

I have an ATI 9800/128MB

I had the same problem with the pause too and forgot to mention it. I wasnt even aware that I could control the acceleration but problems with that could explain the units changing speeds.

Hopefully, it'll get solved since the minimal_ui is nice to have.

[Colovion]

I had the same problem with the speed setting. I'd press and hold Ctrl and then hold down T and the speed would increase - then let go of the T and sometimes it goes back to normal speed and sometimes it goes to a faster speed. Usually I'm pressing Ctrl T frantically to get it to change back to normal speeds as my army closes quickly with the enemy.

[Bob the Insane]

I have had one tiny little fly in the ointment type problem with it: there is no way to see/alter the time acceleration with this version of the interface.

In the option/controls you can assign keys to the Pause, Normal, Fast and Very Fast settings... Having done this I find they work more reliably than the default P and Ctrl+t commands...

As for graphics (and I really am not trying to get into a pissing contest here) but my GF6800 GT does not seem to mind the imagary at all. Do those who are having problem find the it worsens as they add more units to a battle?? Frogbeategg are you also using an ATI card (perhaps it's a driver thing..)??

[frogbeastegg]

I have a radeon 9800 pro 128MB version, using the cat 4.11's. I tried the 4.12's and they were terrible for me. For the rest P4 2.4, 1 GB DDR RAM. I have most graphical options set to medium or above, AAx2 on, antistrophic filtering x2 set in my card's control panel (I find the game looks terrible without it, absolutely terrible, "STW looks far better than this" type terrible. No idea why, and I had the same issue with the demo), and I use the largest unit size.I will not turn that down for love nor money; I hate piddly little units as they respond to orders too quickly and take less management. I have shadows set to off, and some other options in that tick box set. Desync is on, as is dust and gloss, but I think I will turn gloss off again soon.

I'll try altering the hotkeys and see if that helps any.

I find I get the control issue regardless of what size army I have; so far in my campaign I have been using medium sized armies and fighting small to medium armies.

[Prodigal]

frog I have the exact same h/w spec's on my PC & have pretty much the same settings, however can you please explain what "cat" is? Sorry if thats an obviously dumb question

Have run all the usual spybot s/w etc. so the only justifiable reason I can think of is some setting that's raining on my parade; much like lowering rather than increasing one setting made MTW run smoothly.

[RJV]

frog I have the exact same h/w spec's on my PC & have pretty much the same settings, however can you please explain what "cat" is? Sorry if thats an obviously dumb question

Have run all the usual spybot s/w etc. so the only justifiable reason I can think of is some setting that's raining on my parade; much like lowering rather than increasing one setting made MTW run smoothly.

CAT is short for CATALYST - the name for the driver pack.

[SpencerH]

I turned minimal_ui back on since I think its worth the effort to figure this out. This time (without changing any settings) I havent had any unit movement lag and I havent had the pause ctrl-t problems. I havent got any ideas what the difference is yet. I tried re-setting some hot-keys as mentioned by "the insane one" but couldnt find any that werent in use except F2 (I think) so I re-set the keys back to default. Other than that I havent changed anything. The other odd thing is that my war elephants worked fine and showed none of the problems mentioned in the other thread.

[afrit]

I've been loving the minimal UI since 1.2 came out. As an added touch, you can get fantastic views of the battlefield if you load up the Carrhae historical battle first , quit it and then play your campaign

The bird's eye view with the extra space from the minimal UI is simply stunning. In a recent battle I fought in Latium at the edge of the Arretium province, I could see Rome as a small circle all the way in the background with the Tiber river running through the map! That highlighted what was at stake (too bad I lost that battle!).


Afrit
PS: I read about the Carrhae trick somewhere else, but for those who don't klnow it, it allows the camera to zoom closer down to the ground so you see the facial features of your soldiers, and zoom much,much higher up to see the entire tile you're fighting on. AFAIK, works only on RTW camera mode. Quite reminiscent of the camera in MTW's -ian debug mode.

[AggonyKing]

Minimal_ui?? Can someone fill me in please

[SpencerH]

It allows you to toggle on and off the radar, cards, and controls so you have a full screen battle without the junk. Its in the read me for the 1.2 patch.

[The_Doctor]

Can someone post a screenshot of the min ui. ~:)

[Locklear]

Frog, I have the exact same problems with speed and pause toggles using minimal UI, and have tried reassigning various keys from the defaults, to no avail. As it is, I can change speeds with keys assigned to a single speed (not as a toggle), but cannot pause easily, and still hear the continuous "thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk" when I use the speed-changing keys. I'm on a GF4, however, so I don't think it's just a specific graphics card problem..

[Colovion]

Can someone post a screenshot of the min ui. ~:)

Link (https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/colovion/Rome/0007.jpg)

[The_Doctor]

Thanks. ~:)

It looks a lot like the MTW ui

[Attalus]

I have a radeon 9800 pro 128MB version, using the cat 4.11's. I tried the 4.12's and they were terrible for me. For the rest P4 2.4, 1 GB DDR RAM. I have most graphical options set to medium or above, AAx2 on, antistrophic filtering x2 set in my card's control panel (I find the game looks terrible without it, absolutely terrible, "STW looks far better than this" type terrible. No idea why, and I had the same issue with the demo), and I use the largest unit size.I will not turn that down for love nor money; I hate piddly little units as they respond to orders too quickly and take less management. I have shadows set to off, and some other options in that tick box set. Desync is on, as is dust and gloss, but I think I will turn gloss off again soon.

I'll try altering the hotkeys and see if that helps any.

I find I get the control issue regardless of what size army I have; so far in my campaign I have been using medium sized armies and fighting small to medium armies.

In what way was the CAT 4.12 'terrible'?

I'm running something similar (Half your RAM though :sad: )

I find that I mess with the AA and AF too much...THEN it looks bad.

[ChaosLord]

I've had the sticky pause/time not changing happen before the patch, so I think its probably from slower framerate/more strees on vidcard/etc... The way I found around is when I want to pause or change time back to normal while on high, is to move the screen around. It slows down some like it did in MTW, and this usually lets me pause or set time back down again. Trying to do it without doing this is nearly impossible i've found. Anyway, hope this helps.

Edit- I should mention, I have a GF2, so no I don't think its a game bug, just my crappy graphics card.

[Colovion]

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

all I use

and overclockers swear by them