User Interface

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The user interface offers a convenient way for the user to visually and manually interact with the game. It is devided into two central areas. The first one is the main game window. It visualizes the game world with all its components such as sky, wheather, terrain, water or buildings. The user can navigate through this world with the camera control keys.
The second basic area is the menu panel on the right side of the screen. It contains all the buttons to select buildings for construction and some panels that provide vital information for playing the game.
The figure right below shows a typical screeshot from the running game. Every section of the user interface is being explained right after.


(1) - Central game window

As desribed above the central game window visualizes the game world with all its components. The user can navigate through this world with the camera control keys.

(2) - Building selection panel

This panel provides the buttons to the player that can be pressed to choose a building for construction.

(3) - Balance panel

This panel contains the financial balance of the player. It provides information about tax income and regular costs or rather the difference between them as a result. If the result is a positive value the player receives gold which gets added to the gold resources, otherwise the player loses gold and the gold resources decrease.

(4) - Building info panel

This panel contains the information of a special building. If the user clicks at a building in the scene with the left mouse button, that building gets picked and its data is being depicted on this panel. The information provided is the name of the picked building, its number of inhabitants, the amount of taxes that can be collected from this builing and the regular costs caused by the building.

(5) - Resources panel

The resources panel has information about several resources of the player. It shows the current amount of gold and food and the total number of inhabitants of the scene.


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