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Topic: Statistics for Productivity

hessenfarmer
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Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
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Posted at: 2018-08-23, 20:18

so my vote is +1 for having a text "paused" or "idle" and +2 for having stats in blue.


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JanO
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Posted at: 2018-08-23, 22:55

What about, instead of having whatever kind of text-message above the building, showing small icons next to the productivity. The tooltip already gets some information on the needs of a building and on the economy. Now we could pick the small pictures from the inventory, give them a red or yellow background and put them left to the productivity for wares which the building needs but not gets and on the right of the productivity there could be icons for wares that are not produced because the economy doesn't need them.

Sure, that can be plenty of icons above a trainings camp or weapon-smith. So maybe productivity statistics on buildings should not just be switched on/off, but cycle through "off" / "classic only percentage" / "percentage+icon" / "only icon"


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king_of_nowhere
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Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
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Posted at: 2018-08-24, 02:34

JanO wrote:

What about, instead of having whatever kind of text-message above the building, showing small icons next to the productivity.

I prefer text over icons because text is clearer. Alphabet was adopted over gerogliphics for good reasons face-tongue.png


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-08-24, 09:52

Concerning text for not-needed-ware, I don't understand why "paused" is even considered, since it already has a different meaning (i.e. directly paused by the user). The blue stats sound interesting, but we need to find the past discussion where that approach got abandoned. By the way, there should be a target-value for ships, cause it would be more convenient than having to pause the shipyards.

Concerning the use of icons, when it is a single word, I prefer (possibly colored) text instead (e.g. I use text in toolbars). It is known that after a while the brain identifies specific words as icons. But when it is a long sentence, I would prefer icons. The hover-text in particular can get in some cases quite hard to read and extract the useful information. Carefully-thought icons would be welcome. But even if we stay with text, it would be better to shorten the sentence into something more keynote-like (e.g. status: waiting, missing: log).


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Ex-Member
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Joined: 2014-09-12, 10:53
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Posted at: 2018-08-24, 10:20

Coloured text was a good idea, provided there are just a couple of well diferentiated colours, not like tribe colours where I cannot tell which tribe is yellow or green or orange.

Totally agree that text if preferable to icons, I also set up everything with text only where I can, reading a word is so much quicker than trying to puzzle out what some meaningless coloured shape means.

+10 for target value for ships.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2018-08-24, 17:10

ypopezios wrote:

Concerning the use of icons, when it is a single word, I prefer (possibly colored) text instead (e.g. I use text in toolbars). It is known that after a while the brain identifies specific words as icons. But when it is a long sentence, I would prefer icons. The hover-text in particular can get in some cases quite hard to read and extract the useful information. Carefully-thought icons would be welcome. But even if we stay with text, it would be better to shorten the sentence into something more keynote-like (e.g. status: waiting, missing: log).

yeah, but what about when you still don't know them? that's the problem of icons, they require learning them. And they not only makes life more complicated for those who don't know them, but they are also difficult to figure out. I learned to use a pc because if I hover the mouse on something, I get an explanatory text; if I right-click, I get a bunch of options. I never learned to use a mobile because all I see are a bunch of symbols and I can't figure them and if I touch them randomly I may make a mess. Oh, there is an instruction manual somewhere detailing it. Which is several hundred pages long. You may notice there is no alphabetic order for icons, so you have to sort all the list to look for the one you need.

So, icons would be acceptable, but only if there would still be a text available if you hover the mouse on it. Leaving an icon with no easily available explanation is not good, but leaving one that will give text just by moving the cursor over it does not complicate anything.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-08-24, 18:42

Agreed, icons definitely will need tooltips

On the restriction on number of ships, yes, that's definitely a wanted feature - I'm sure it has been discussed and agreed upon in the past. Patches welcome face-wink.png


Busy indexing nil values

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WorldSavior
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Joined: 2016-10-15, 04:10
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Posted at: 2018-08-26, 23:45

stonerl wrote:

But this begs a deeper question: can productivity for this building really reach 100% even though it only produces 1 out of 5 wares?

Shown productivity: Yes

"Real" productivity: Why not?

And by the way: Skipping can be faster than working. If skipping will be very fast (like it should be) the productivity could drop very fast to 0%, but then it needs much time to increase again. So how can we achieve the correct productivity number here?

Skipping adds 10 seconds before the next time production gets started.

But this is a really mean bug...

Plus the time before the skip.

Which is often zero

stonerl wrote:

E.g. the barbarians big inn produces 3 wares. If only 1 would be produced, the productivity should be 33%. But it will jump between 35% and 30%.

Is that really a problem?

hessenfarmer wrote:

stonerl wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

It's wrong, but it has one advantage: At least you know if you supply buildings perfectly. With your approach, you don't see directly if the supply is too low or the need. Maybe we need two different kinds of numbers? face-tongue.png

And that is exactly why I would vote for keeping this mechanism as it is. Cause I am only interested to quickly identify any problem with a building, and economy not needeing the ware isn't a problem. Or at least I would track this one from the inventory.

But it can happen that you don't see it at the inventory: It happens often that the amount of a ware sinks quickly to zero, because the producers had paused. So you will see often zero wares in warehouses, even though there are so many producers that they often pause.

So it could also be an advantage if the productivity number would drop if the building skips producing.

stonerl wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

stonerl wrote:

I think that there is one flaw with the current productivity statistics.

Not only one flaw. Many of them are not accurate anyway.

Inaccurate in what way. Can you name/link some of the flaws?

yes: https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/1811/

einstein13 wrote:

I remember that in one of previous versions when building wasn't working because the economy hasn't need any ware, the statistics was coloured blue.

Sounds better than the current situation


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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