Strategy Mode GUI

So, with so much work going into the Strategy Mode these days, it would be nice if we could get some artists involved as well. In this thread we will start to get some GUI's going for the Strategy Mode. Don't worry if you don't know all the different buttons and tabs that are needed on the interface, just place as many tabs as you think we would need and leave them blank so we can tell you what goes in them. Obviously there would also have to be tabs to access the menu, a minimap, etc.

Here is one idea I got. It isn't anything special, actually, it's quite dreadful. However, it's the idea I want to convey. I was thinking of having some big circle with your species name in it, then smaller circles tangent to that which are all the different tabs of the Nation Editor, such as Political, Economic, Social, Military, Technological, Religious etc. Each Tab would be represented by an icon instead of having its name there. The icons for the tabs would be:

Spoiler:

The tangent circles would use this colouring theme. With a dark blue gradient filling the circle, and the icon itself all just shades of white. However, instead of the icon being a terraced farm it would be a book or pile of coins etc. from above.



So overall it would look like:

Spoiler:

Remember, this is just my idea. The above images were something I just threw together in a couple minutes with little artistic drive. If you guys have other ideas for the GUI, please post images and describe your choice of GUI.

Shouldn't it say Nation, Tribe, Kingdom, or (space) Empire's name instead?

That really doesn't matter, the point is the GUI layout.

Inmy opinion it take too much space, and leaves the screen unbalanced (you can see top right but not top left). However, i can't think of any solution, as leaving the circles on a line on the pot would make them feel like "floating".

We could make it so that normally it is only the circle with the name in it, at a smaller size, but when the cursor hovers over it the circle enlarges and the tangent circles appear. Or we could add something in the bottom right corner to balance it out.

Are there any other ideas for the GUI. If there are any artists out there reading this, show us some concept art of what you think would work well.

We could also look at innovative GUI's used by other games and try to get some ideas.

Also, is the GUI something that will incorporate the shard idea of sciocont, or is that for the menu?

Through reading some past posts, I was able to find some links given by Bashinerox to some good GUI sites. These should give some ideas.

Link 1
Link 2

That links are for cegui. We are using Mygui for interface. Ideas or concepts for the interfaces can still be used.

Yeah, exactly.