Currently, games with more than 8 players do not show an avatar row. There have been some vision impaired players having difficulty with shapes. Hitting the ‘B’ shortcut key helps with colors but not with shapes.
I suggest having an avatar row that allows for 64 players. Here is my Paint job suggestion.
The avatar row would have a second row of shapes. This would allow mouse click to select the group of shapes that an empire belongs to, in addition to also allowing the selection of color on the Empire screen or any screen that needs it. The selected shape group would be white, highlighted and larger, while the unselected shape groups would be grey and smaller.
This could partially aid the vision impaired players, and make it quicker & easier for all players to find that ally for emails and trade, or find that enemy to backstab.
4 Likes
Many games do not have 64 players, so some shapes should not show, and some avatars should be blank.
If you were going to do something like this I would suggest:
- overlaying the icon above the image (transparent layer) so it doesn’t take up so much room
OR
- a keyboard shortcut that flips from avatars to symbols (similar - ish to B shortcut functionality, kinda)
I was thinking of overlaying the coloured symbol on the image, then allow you to scroll the bar across so you can them. In other words, all players have an icon, just most of them are scrolled out of view.
1 Like
My OP was just intended to get some ideas and thread discussions to start flowing.
Whatever feature that is user friendly, convenient for most or all platform devices, easy to code implement and maintain, then that is what I vote for. 
There are 5 likes on this thread, so there are users who wait eagerly for your code, Jay. 
Of course, you have to prioritize.
Hope Blight 2 is going well at PAX !
