More than 4 products per store(floor)?

[David]

Thanks for explaining this. Now I see the merit in the design you devised.

Before I would bring this up to the dev team, I would like to see if you have any suggestion for addressing the issue that the product images and their indicator bars next to them being too small in the new design. The majority of users are using 1920x1080. When the product images and the bars are displayed in one-fourth of their current sizes, they could strain the eyes particularly for people with aging eyesight. The product images will also appear less sharp, affecting people's overall impression of the game's graphics.

Any ideas for displaying product images in their original sizes while still making this new design work?

[Brutus]

Hmmm excellent point, you got me there for a moment but I think I have two easy solutions.

I am actually also a person who has poor eye sight ... like really ... terrible eye sight blind in one eye and only 60% to 80% or so in the other with peripheral vision loss.

I use the 1366 x 768 resolution and the UI images are still very big to me (easily readable). I really need to upgrade to a bigger screen resolution though

One possibility is to simply allow a setting in options to blow up the interface by 50% or 100%. (poor eye-sight mode)

Another idea that I had originally was to use one of the unused buttons in the game currently to expand the product view.

I made a quick mockup.

Image 1 is how to get to the button. (a hotkey is probably advised which when tapped switches between the two firm views instantly)
Image 2 is a quick mockup of how it would sortof-ish look with each row of products representing an Aisle (or floor currently) and a quick button (bottom right) to get to the ''product details'' in the information center quickly if that is what the user is interested in. Double clicking on the product will bring them back to the original default view (image 1) with the product selected so that they can easily access the current product information and adjust prices, view supplier or change the 3x3 layout of that Aisle/Floor.

AisleViewButtonSelection.png (1.3 MiB) Viewed 396 times

AisleViewerActivated.png (1.15 MiB) Viewed 392 times

Using the Aisle Viewer mode would make it quite easy for a user to quickly flip through all the products of each floor in one quick go if one used the Page Up and Page Down buttons to switch between nominal floors. It would kind of be like flipping through a catalogue of products.

I'm not sure how the firm view on higher resolutions looks. but currently those small 3x3 layout blocks are also only 1/4th the size a normal product right now. They would also be straining the eyes of normal users currently I imagine if that were the case. However I think the solution I provided is quite elegant and user friendly.

I hope this adequately provides a solution.

[cantdownloadit]

in conjunction with this, i would like to see some sort of (optional) limit that can be set on numbers of stores...

eg most normal cities wouldn't allow 1 company to build 9 supermarkets in there city... and if each supermarket can sell 24 products this would be manageable.

[Brutus]

I live in a mid-tier dutch city (500,000 citizens) and there's already like

• 6 Albert Heijn Supermarkets

• 1 Albert Heijn Supermarket XL (2 to 4 x normal size)

• 4 Supermarkets by Jumbo

• 2 Lidl Supermarkets

• 2 Vomar Supermarkets

• 2 Aldi Supermarkets

• 1 Deen Supermarket

• 1 Dekamarkt Supermarket

• 1 Sultan Market (For the Muslims)

• 1 Hafen Supermarket

• 1 Arena Supermarket

• 1 Tropische (Tropical) Supermarket

I probably missed a few slightly smaller supermarkets here and there ...

Total large supermarkets: 23 supermarkets

and an even greater number of convenience stores which I won't list since they are all relatively small shops.

The point being that a medium tier city like mine already had 6 supermarkets by one company. Who's to say that a large size city with 5 million won't have 30+ supermarkets? They actually used to have an even larger size until they kind went almost bankrupt and Jumbo bought some stores from them and rebranded them, meaning that in the past they had an even larger chunk of the supermarket pie.

It's quite possible actually to have more than 9 stores in a city by one company ...

[player_rxb]

Could it also be a very simple solution to allow for more than 3 floors in the store?

Currently we have 3 floors in a retail store with the little number buttons on the bottom to switch between them.
This could easily be changed to 5 floors - retaining the exact same layout as right now - but with having 5 floors. If you add arrow keys left and right you could even add more floors.
However, my feeling is that 5 may be enough. That would give you 20 products.

[ohms_law]

Just adding more floors seems like the optimal solution, to me.

I'd only add more to the larger stores as well. Discount megastores should have 6 or 7, even. Department stores, supermarkets, and electronics stores are the only ones I'd give 5 floors too (off the top of my head).

[Brutus]

Indeed ohms_law

Part of the idea is to keep the small shops small and provide more unique flavor to the larger stores by allowing them greater product variety and store floors.

Personally I'd also enjoy if it was more visually easy to navigate and oversee in the way I proposed. Having to flip through all the different products can be an enormous chore especially if you are trying to do this every 3 to 6 months to streamline your retail for every product sold.