Topic: Couple of suggestions

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luitzen Topic Opener Joined: 2017-11-10, 08:36 Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 09:12 I've got a couple of suggestions for the game and I understand that some of them might already be suggested and that others might not or cannot be implemented for some good reason. Here is the list: Make the game zoomable Increase and decrease game speed with + and - buttons on the num pad as well as the regular keyboard in addition to or instead of Page Up and Page Down. Pause the game with spacebar or some other easily accessible key, but preferably the spacebar. Move the current behavior of the spacebar to another key. Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. When laying roads, change the mouse pointer. Sometimes I'm clicking around and can't figure out why the game is behaving the way it is. Then I click somewhere and suddenly I have a very long road going nowhere. Changing the mouse pointer to indicate that I'm laying a road would solve this. The minimap is too small and annoying in its use. Dock more information. Currently there's too much information hidden behind buttons. We're not playing on 800x600 anymore and some of the extra space can be used to permanently store some information. Currently I play with the stock page always on in the top left of the screen on the Wares in Warehouses page. This one and the minimap should always be visible. Make Configure Economy accessible from this place as well, rather than having to click on the flags. Get rid of the current message system. It's horrendous and very annoying. It can be done in a very different way. Play a Paradox game such as EUIV or Crusader Kings for a couple of hours to get some ideas. They provide messages with a little flag in the top of the screen. Example: quarry can't reach stone: put a little icon at the top of the screen with an explanation when hovering over it. Clicking it will rotate around all quarries lacking access to stone. Other messages could fly in somewhere on the right side of the screen, for example. Not all messages need storing. Example: quarry does not have access to stone. Flag appears in top of screen. You click the flag and are taken to the quarry. You delete the quarry and the flag disappears. No message is stored in the archive. Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? Create a list of ships to quickly find back your ships. That's it for now. If I have other ideas I will let you guys go. Top Quote

Nordfriese Joined: 2017-01-17, 17:07 Posts: 1950 OS: Debian Testing Version: Latest master One Elder of Players Location: 0x55555d3a34c0	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 09:50 Hi luitzen and welcome to the forums A zoom function is already implemented in the current development version, and I think a ship-list window is also under development. I agree with you that it isn´t always clear whether one is in road building mode. A mouse pointer change would be a good solution Get rid of the current message system. It's horrendous and very annoying. It can be done in a very different way. Play a Paradox game such as EUIV or Crusader Kings for a couple of hours to get some ideas. They provide messages with a little flag in the top of the screen. Example: quarry can't reach stone: put a little icon at the top of the screen with an explanation when hovering over it. Clicking it will rotate around all quarries lacking access to stone. Other messages could fly in somewhere on the right side of the screen, for example. +1 I don´t think it´s really that annoying, but I don´t like it either. Dock more information. Currently there's too much information hidden behind buttons. We're not playing on 800x600 anymore and some of the extra space can be used to permanently store some information. Currently I play with the stock page always on in the top left of the screen on the Wares in Warehouses page. This one and the minimap should always be visible. -1 Not everyone has as large a screen as you Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. When I was new to Widelands, I missed edge-scrolling, but I got used to it eventually. Still, it would be nice to have an option for this. Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? This should be explained in more detail in the tutorial. Especially as there can be several reasons: Perhaps your workers aren´t experienced enough, perhaps you need to look up in the in-game help which tool you need, or perhaps the worker needs two tools but they are in different warehouses. I, too, would appreciate a bit more detail in the "vacant" slot. Pause the game with spacebar or some other easily accessible key, but preferably the spacebar. Move the current behavior of the spacebar to another key. Isn´t the pause button reachable enough for you? I like having spacebar for buildhelp and see no need to change this. The minimap is too small and annoying in its use. I fully agree Top Quote

kaputtnik Joined: 2013-02-18, 19:48 Posts: 2439 OS: Archlinux Version: current master One Elder of Players Location: Germany	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 09:56 Hi luitzen and welcome to the forums As you have guessed, some of your suggestions get implemented in the next official release or have an open bug-report. Because lack of developers the progression of widelands is slow... luitzen wrote: Make the game zoomable Will be implemented in the next official release. The bug was open since year 2007... Increase and decrease game speed with + and - buttons on the num pad as well as the regular keyboard in addition to or instead of Page Up and Page Down. Pause the game with spacebar or some other easily accessible key, but preferably the spacebar. Move the current behavior of the spacebar to another key. Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. While your suggestions are good, i think this is just a matter of familiarization. Each game has his own set of keyboard settings one has to learn. When laying roads, change the mouse pointer. Sometimes I'm clicking around and can't figure out why the game is behaving the way it is. Then I click somewhere and suddenly I have a very long road going nowhere. Changing the mouse pointer to indicate that I'm laying a road would solve this. Good point The minimap is too small and annoying in its use. Can you explain? Dock more information. Currently there's too much information hidden behind buttons. We're not playing on 800x600 anymore and some of the extra space can be used to permanently store some information. Currently I play with the stock page always on in the top left of the screen on the Wares in Warehouses page. This one and the minimap should always be visible. I think it is no problem to just hit "i" to show the stock. Make Configure Economy accessible from this place as well, rather than having to click on the flags. +1 Get rid of the current message system. It's horrendous and very annoying. It can be done in a very different way. Play a Paradox game such as EUIV or Crusader Kings for a couple of hours to get some ideas. They provide messages with a little flag in the top of the screen. Example: quarry can't reach stone: put a little icon at the top of the screen with an explanation when hovering over it. Clicking it will rotate around all quarries lacking access to stone. Other messages could fly in somewhere on the right side of the screen, for example. I had a similar idea also, but there are many other things the developers are working on. So i didn't created a bug report for this idea yet. Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? That is something one has to learn, imho. Every building has a help button where this information could be found. Create a list of ships to quickly find back your ships. Will be in the next official release. Fight simulator for Widelands: https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/ Top Quote

luitzen Topic Opener Joined: 2017-11-10, 08:36 Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 10:15 Goeie dei Noardfries, I don´t think it´s really that annoying, but I don´t like it either. I think it also comes down to the vision of the game you have. There are a lot of things that veteran players are used to and changing that would be annoying to them. But do you want to make a game that is inviting to play and intuitive to use or are you afraid to upset your veteran users? I've never played Settlers, for instance, and if it would be up to people like me the game would evolve in a wholly different directions than when Settlers fans are in control. Not that I want to change anything, but sometimes it's good to get an outside perspective. Not everyone has as large a screen as you Then what if you create two interfaces and let people choose between them? Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? This should be explained in more detail in the tutorial. Especially as there can be several reasons: Perhaps your workers aren´t experienced enough, perhaps you need to look up in the in-game help which tool you need, or perhaps the worker needs two tools but they are in different warehouses. I, too, would appreciate a bit more detail in the "vacant" slot. I realize that the information is actually there, but make it context sensitive and the game becomes a lot easier to play, especially for beginners. Isn´t the pause button reachable enough for you? I like having spacebar for buildhelp and see no need to change this. I don't even have a pause button since I'm playing on a laptop and my guess is that's true for a lot of laptops. Edited: 2017-11-10, 10:16 Top Quote

luitzen Topic Opener Joined: 2017-11-10, 08:36 Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 10:27 Hi kaputtnik. I will give feedback to your other points later, but for now: Increase and decrease game speed with + and - buttons on the num pad as well as the regular keyboard in addition to or instead of Page Up and Page Down. Pause the game with spacebar or some other easily accessible key, but preferably the spacebar. Move the current behavior of the spacebar to another key. Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. While your suggestions are good, i think this is just a matter of familiarization. Each game has his own set of keyboard settings one has to learn. No, I don't think that is true at all. Since not all computers and keyboards have the same buttons, some choices are arguably better than others. Also the location of the buttons matters. On many laptops you don't have a pause button and the Page Up and Page Down buttons are often hidden behind Fn buttons. On most normal full keyboards the num pad is all the way to the right and the plus and minus buttons are all the way to the right of that, meaning that if you put those functions there you can leave your hand rested on your desk and need to only make a small movement when you want to increase the speed of the game, but if you need to use the page buttons, you need to lift your hand and move it all the way over the num pad to change the speed. And I understand the consideration if you want to use these buttons for something else, but last I checked, pressing + or - doesn't do anything. Furthermore, if these buttons are still available, might as well use both of them for changing the speed. If the page buttons are easier for you, you could still use them, if +- is easier for me, I use these instead. I cannot imagine that's a lot of extra work to code. Top Quote

GunChleoc Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56 Posts: 3324 One Elder of Players Location: RenderedRect	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 10:27 luitzen wrote: Make the game zoomable Implemented in the current development version. We still need to implement higher-resolution animations though. Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. This is something that could certainly be implemented one day. When laying roads, change the mouse pointer. Sometimes I'm clicking around and can't figure out why the game is behaving the way it is. Then I click somewhere and suddenly I have a very long road going nowhere. Changing the mouse pointer to indicate that I'm laying a road would solve this. +1 Dock more information. Currently there's too much information hidden behind buttons. We're not playing on 800x600 anymore and some of the extra space can be used to permanently store some information. Currently I play with the stock page always on in the top left of the screen on the Wares in Warehouses page. This one and the minimap should always be visible. Well, I am playing on 800x600. Make Configure Economy accessible from this place as well, rather than having to click on the flags. I wanted this as well, but it's not as easy as it sounds - you can have multiple economies, so which one would be configured here? Other messages could fly in somewhere on the right side of the screen, for example. We could certainly rethink this - there is a lot of other stuff in the UI though that's more annoying to me and that I want to fix first. Not all messages need storing. Example: quarry does not have access to stone. Flag appears in top of screen. You click the flag and are taken to the quarry. You delete the quarry and the flag disappears. No message is stored in the archive. As soon as you dismantle or enhance the building, the message will disappear. Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/bug-794407-soldier-stats will at least tell you whether the worker is coming or indeed missing. Finding out why is part of the learning curve for the game and documented in the in-game help system as well as explained in the tutorials and the campaigns. Create a list of ships to quickly find back your ships. https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/bug-1358880-ship-statistics Busy indexing nil values Top Quote

WorldSavior Joined: 2016-10-15, 03:10 Posts: 2094 OS: Linux Version: Recent tournament version One Elder of Players Location: Germany	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 13:36 GunChleoc wrote: luitzen wrote: Get rid of the requirement to press the right mouse button when moving the screen. This one is very annoying. I cannot come up with a good reason that I also need to right click when moving around the screen, just moving the mouse to the edge of the screen should be enough. This is something that could certainly be implemented one day. By the way, the arrow keys are rather useless here, because the screen moves much too slow... When laying roads, change the mouse pointer. Sometimes I'm clicking around and can't figure out why the game is behaving the way it is. Then I click somewhere and suddenly I have a very long road going nowhere. Changing the mouse pointer to indicate that I'm laying a road would solve this. +1 I don't consider this as a problem anymore... Dock more information. Currently there's too much information hidden behind buttons. We're not playing on 800x600 anymore and some of the extra space can be used to permanently store some information. Currently I play with the stock page always on in the top left of the screen on the Wares in Warehouses page. This one and the minimap should always be visible. Well, I am playing on 800x600. I'm also against this. But maybe one could change the default setting to: stock shown, b-key-window shown, building help shown, c-key and s-key activated... Make Configure Economy accessible from this place as well, rather than having to click on the flags. I wanted this as well, but it's not as easy as it sounds - you can have multiple economies, so which one would be configured here? If it would be that one of the flag of the first heaquarter/warehouse/port, it would be enough for almost every situation, as splitted economies are rather rare... Other messages could fly in somewhere on the right side of the screen, for example. We could certainly rethink this - there is a lot of other stuff in the UI though that's more annoying to me and that I want to fix first. I also think that the message system is not bad, as one can sort messages and so on... Make it more clear why a building has no workers. What tools do I need to get the workers there? https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/bug-794407-soldier-stats will at least tell you whether the worker is coming or indeed missing. Finding out why is part of the learning curve for the game and documented in the in-game help system as well as explained in the tutorials and the campaigns. And anyway, one can look at the help window of the building which shows directly which workers and tools are needed... luitzen wrote: I've got a couple of suggestions for the game and I understand that some of them might already be suggested and that others might not or cannot be implemented for some good reason. Here is the list: Increase and decrease game speed with + and - buttons on the num pad as well as the regular keyboard in addition to or instead of Page Up and Page Down. One could also think about improving the game options so every user can choose the buttons which he prefers... The minimap is too small and annoying in its use. Why? Even if you increase its seize? I'd say that the minimap is too big on really big maps... Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked Top Quote

luitzen Topic Opener Joined: 2017-11-10, 08:36 Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 14:08 I gave it a try and made a road laying cursor. I don't know if you guys like it, but I tested it by replacing the cursor.png file in the folder and I think it looks alright. Where can I upload the file without loss of quality? Top Quote

GunChleoc Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56 Posts: 3324 One Elder of Players Location: RenderedRect	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 17:52 You could attach it to a new bug on Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands Busy indexing nil values Top Quote

hessenfarmer Joined: 2014-12-11, 22:16 Posts: 2648 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria	Posted at: 2017-11-10, 18:29 Hi everybody, just my five cent. I like the following ideas: changing mouse pointer while in road building mode configurable keys for game control (accesible via options perhaps) --> this would make things easier to configure the game on different machines (there was also a suggestion to have on screen buttons for tablets which could be another option in this menu) changing defaults for the in game helps or even better include this in the above game options. I am not convinced of the following ideas: edge panning (Maybe I am somewhat old fashioned but I think Map panning with right mouse click is more controlable in detail and I like to have the right things exactly centered. furthermore I prefer to have some windows at the left and right border and when fastly moving the mouse to this windows this could lead to inadvertend scroll actions. Last argument against edge panning is how to configure or control the panning speed some might consider to slow what other wil find to fast. taking the HQ economy window as a standard window will leave us probably with a doubled solution how to access the economy options for other economies. But that doesn't need to be a problem. as always the biggest question is is it worth the effort to implement this. Personally I arranged my self pretty well with the game and would like to see focus on new features like seafaring attack on ports for example, or the new markets. This is mainly due to giving me more options to script scenarios. regards hessenfarmer Edited: 2017-11-10, 18:30 Top Quote

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