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Topic: Illustrations of wares flow

ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-26, 14:56

Automation that produces non-messed graphs of inherently complicated information is currently more of a wish than a reality (even humans find it hard to turn complicated information into tidy graphs). Let me create proper graphs and then someone (probably an AI guy) can try producing something similar with code.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-05-26, 17:41

The problem will be finding that AI guy. Of course, you can go ahead with this if you would enjoy it, but I'm wondering if it will be a good use of your time if we can't find that guy.

I am against replaying anything in the encyclopedia with something that's not automated, but having a file attached to the Wiki would be OK.


Busy indexing nil values

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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-26, 18:34

One never knows. Replacing outdated stuff that nobody bothered touching for years could make the website more attractive to other guys. As about my time, let's say that I can do that in less time than Tinker.


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Tibor

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Posted at: 2018-05-26, 20:38

ypopezios wrote:

Let me create proper graphs and then someone (probably an AI guy) can try producing something similar with code.

What do you mean? Why AI guy?


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-26, 22:09

@Tibor

Producing good graphs takes intelligence, one that can arrange blocks with complicated relationships on a 2-dimensional field in a tidy way. There is a chance that this is even harder than arranging buildings with roads on a map.


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Posted at: 2018-05-27, 10:22

ypopezios wrote:

One never knows. Replacing outdated stuff that nobody bothered touching for years could make the website more attractive to other guys. As about my time, let's say that I can do that in less time than Tinker. I am not sure if you are saying I took a long time to create the image or it has been a long time without an update.

If I remember correctly it took about 15 minutes to create, so not much time wasted. The problem was that at the time, as is still the case, people preferred auto created everything even if the quality was poor as it meant they did not have to do anything. I much prefer hand crafted anything to automated production and my idea was to beautify the website, which seems your aim as well. Lack of interest from above kills creativity and I see no point in pushing updates onto the site especially when my own branch is so different from the standard version, my flow charts are only applicable to my branch.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-27, 13:39

@Tinker

You messed the quote a little, but no worries.

Throwing the boxes on a surface is a quick process indeed. Then most of the time is spent in rearranging them into a useful structure. For most people that is a long trial-and-error process, as they don't have an idea of the final result. While following some design principles can save much time.

Automation is convenient. And handcrafted stuff can be beautiful. But in my case I focus mostly on usability. Old users here don't care much about graphs, because they have learned almost by heart the flow of each tribe. But when it comes to new users, they have a hard time grasping the flow (I know that I had a hard time myself back at the time). Some may consider that as part of the game, but I consider it as a mere inconvenience. Another source of confusion is the differences between the tribes. An optical way of comparison can help a lot. It can also help the developers detect potential sources of imbalances and other problems. Humans are optical beings.

But the automated big illustrations are not much more than a colored table. The buildings are not grouped, the arrows are a mess, etc. In the end I don't know if anybody reads them. So the primary goal is to improve readability. Later we could add some artistic touch too. In any case, creativity should not be killed and there should be room for co-existence of different approaches. Especially in an open-source project.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-28, 00:30

Below is a draft of Barbarians. It is already useful, but I can think of some enriched versions of it.

Barbarians.png

EDIT: Fixed details.

Edited: 2018-07-16, 02:18

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Tibor

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Posted at: 2018-05-28, 07:53

bigger font would help


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-28, 11:45

@Tibor

Done some increase where there was room for it (refresh the page for new version). Users with reading difficulties can always zoom their browser. We can also provide an svg version of the file.


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