Bye-bye interface

[Jmouse]

If you want to get rid of the interface and “- in a square" to take in-game photos, just press the “Num Lock” key. Now you see it, now you don’t. Press “Num Lock” again to get it back. It works in Win 8 and Win 7, but beyond that, I don’t know. Still, it’s quick and easy.

[Indiana Joe]

Confirmed that Num Lock will expand/minimize the UI, but it won't hide the square button in the corner on its own.  You probably have Willy's Minimize Button Remover mod.

[compdude787]

Confirmed that Num Lock will expand/minimize the UI, but it won't hide the square button in the corner on its own.  You probably have Willy's Minimize Button Remover mod.

The Minimize Button remover can be downloaded here from the STEX: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/28243-minimize-button-remover/

You can also download a mod to remove the yellow border that shows up when you have the game paused, here's the link for that: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/18680-smp-yellow-pause-thingy-remover/

[Jmouse]

I’m sure it will not surprise you when I say that I discovered this little trick by accident and have not researched it in depth. And you are correct in assuming I have Willy’s Mod on both my Win7 and Win8 computers. I am limited in the research I can do on this because I have access to only three computers. I don’t know where the laptop is at the moment. Still, with Willy’s mod and the “Num Lock” key, it makes for a quick and easy “hide and seek” trick. I use it a lot when terraforming – you’re terraforming that map AGAIN? – so I wanted to share it with the community. And I hope members of the community like you will help by working to improve the idea.

[GDO29Anagram]

I was thinking about how dumb it is to have the "Hide UI" button mapped to the numlock key (I actually have the numpad set so that turning it off activates a numpad-controlled mouse, so turning on/off numlock will result in a beeping sound), so I tried it for myself and it didn't work for me.

That's because I had remapped all of the keyboard shortcuts ages ago and none of the default controls work for me. But yeah, I did remember seeing it as mapped to the numlock key when I did do all of that remapping. And after a bit of searching, I found that I actually had it remapped to U.