Interface suggestions

HMI, GUI, whatever the acronym of choice is these days, I wanted to offer a few suggestions.

As Gila mentioned in that thread about the world map, some of the icons and menu items are hard to read.  Because I took a class one time, and I dick around on the internet a lot, I'm practically an expert! So here are a couple of suggestions, take them for what they're worth.

1.  Main menu, left side - people with good eyesight can pick out every pixel in any given shade.  People with less good eyesight cannot.  Contrast is important to make menu items and important features easier to read.  A good rule of thumb is, squint your eyes while looking at your user interface.  If you can still pick out the menu, you have enough contrast.  Looking at the forum, the stripe across the top has the name Illyriad in black on a light yellow background, good contrast, no trouble.  The main menu down the left has black text on a dark background, much less easy to read.  My suggestion for the menu is not to change the swirly background, but to add more opacity to the banners behind the text, so that there is a lighter field behind the text, it will pop more.

2. Resource status - showing the current resource rates in green on tan is also pretty low contrast, though the green (or red) convey good information.  It would be easier to read if you could lighten the background up one or two steps.  You might see what it looks like to put the resource rates in bold, just to give it a little more weight.  (There are also a non-negligible number of people with red/green colorblindness, as an advanced interface setting, you might think about adding an option to change those all to black text instead of red/green.)

Great game you guys have here, I'm looking forward to seeing where the development leads.

Hi Rattlesnake,

Excellent suggestions both, and we're having a look at the button visibility as a result, specifically at providing sharper visibility between a (brighter) background and the text.

Best wishes,