First I apologise in advance if I've duplicated anyone's ideas.
Secondly, apologise for length of this post and subsequent ones. I originally posted some of these ideas on the Real Arcade Forum and debated whether or not should bother to post anything on this thread.

But I started making a comprehensive list, and what can I say, it's turned into a "monster" with a life of it's own, haha!!

So, I decided to just go with it, to blazes with the consequences, haha!! But just to make it a little easier I'm posting my total list in installments, haha!!

So here goes....


MENU/DETAIL LAYOUT IDEAS
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1.Name of what village your playing should appear on the village “scene” so you don’t have to revert back to menu to find it.

2.More info given re mood or what they are doing , such as, teaching ?? (medicine, farming,)

If angry, what about (the noise from the love shack, badly behaved children, ), chatting about the weather, family.
When elders complain, it could be about their aches and pains, no rain for the crops.

3.The “village scene” menu (where you actually play the game) should be enlarged and the various details/menu keys more streamlined so take up less “island” space.

As you select a VV, then details appear in a pop up, instead of “dead” space when you are looking at the village scene. The brown detail area at bottom of screen could be used to expand village area.

Same for the side menu area, instead of having details, tech, puzzles, menu listed separately, there should be one button “Index” or similar, then a selection box appears where you can click what you want to see.

There is approximately 3 cms. (2" ) of overlarge menu to left and bottom of screen which could be better utilised as viewing area.

This simpler option maybe would be to have details in single bar across top of screen:

Village Name Pop. Food Tech Points Index (this would
contain puzzles,tech,main menu,details)

And/or another menu bar across bottom of page (if no index key on top) with puzzles, tech, main menu, details, zoom/map key

Basically, I think most people would prefer to see more of the island and less "button"/menu space.

4.Details page -

Instead of just a solid blue bar, the various stages of training should be colour coded. Say levels were untrained, trainee (or novice), adept (or apprentice), master.

Colours of bar could start with green, then blue, red, finally yellow (any order really). You then wouldn’t have to take up valuable space with printed career status, if you were intending to include this in the details page of VV2.

Best of Irish,
Maura