06NOV18 - New User Interface (UIv4) Alpha Test

We're delighted to announce that we're opening up a new User Interface (UI) for testing by the general community.  This new UI (UIv4) is a significant enhancement to the (frankly rather old UIv3!) existing user interface, in terms of visual impact, the amount of information you can get from the world map, better usability and performance, and enhanced functionality in areas ranging from chat to saved map locations.

The new UI is a direct result of development we've been carrying out for Age of Ascent (AoA)'s UI, and has significantly enhanced technologies churning away in the background, with multi-tier architectures and improved networking and distribution capability.

Click image for full size (18MB image)

The new UIv4 is not complete - we haven't yet converted most of the functional 'sub'-pages into the new content window; but we'll be doing that in swift order, to the point that the new UI can work entirely standalone.  You will find many pages linked from the main menu are currently placeholders.

We're going to run the two UIs (the current UIv3 and the new UIv4) side-by-side for quite some time, so if people prefer to continue to use the v3 UI they can do so for the foreseeable future.  At some point we're going to want to deprecate UIv3 - but there's a considerable amount of testing that needs to happen first, and we're also very much aware that players use third party code assistants such as Durctools, and want to continue to do so.  Hopefully we can assist the writers of third party tools to migrate over to UIv4, and we'll be getting in touch with them shortly to work out how best we can help.

Please bear in mind that this new UI is 'live'.  Any action you perform in the new v4 UI will also occur in the old UIv3, and vice-versa.  It's not a separate game in any way; it's an improved interface to the same game data.

We'd very much like your feedback, suggestions and bug reports; please submit these either as petitions in the old UIv3 - or as comments in the relevant subject thread in the forum.  We really, really want to hear what you think.

We hope you enjoy the new UIv4, as it's substantially better - in practically every way - to the old version.

To access the new UIv4, log into the current version of Illy as normal, and click here: https://map.illyriad.co.uk/

The first time you load the new UIv4, it will take a few seconds - but should then be cached thereafter.

A run-down of the major UIv4 features follows in separate posts:

Hope you enjoy!

SC & The Illy Team

Are there plans to enhance these features as well? 
The only issue I have with it so far, only played with it for a couple hrs, is the chat window. ITG has a very active chat, not sure I like that it covers the map when it's open... Will definitely take some getting used to.

It looks awesome, well done Devs!