Star-shaped Ellipses

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » November 18th, 2006, 2:25 am

Well, at long last, i've made a star-shaped ellipse for special units. I imagine it will be used for leaders. I don't expect this to replace the crown, but merely to supplement it. This isn't dreadfully needed, but would be nice.

The pieces have been uploaded to the trunk.

Post by **Jetrel** » November 18th, 2006, 4:54 am

IDEA: use this to the exclusion of that blue shield we currently use.

All units, friend or foe, whose life is loosely defined as "crucial to their faction", get this. Loosely defined means that we could have the code actually give this to leaders, and then have campaign writers do any further "pinning this on other units" themselves, in WML.

Looks good, BTW.

Website · Post by **Sapient** » November 18th, 2006, 4:56 am

I agree that it looks good. Thumbs up.

Post by **Zhukov** » November 18th, 2006, 5:42 am

Jetryl wrote:IDEA: use this to the exclusion of that blue shield we currently use.

The thing is, wouldn't the fact that ellipses are optional be a problem...?

(From a purely personal viewpoint I would really like this to happen as I dislike the blue shields and would like to be able to turn them off along with the ellipses.)

Post by **Jetrel** » November 18th, 2006, 6:45 am

Zhukov wrote:
Jetryl wrote:IDEA: use this to the exclusion of that blue shield we currently use.
The thing is, wouldn't the fact that ellipses are optional be a problem...?

No.

It's okay if info like that is optional - because the following two would still be mandatory, and they give a redundant shot of all the same information:
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ Units that must survive are still displayed in the "Scenario Objectives"
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ We'd still force use of the crowns.

Post by **zookeeper** » November 18th, 2006, 10:06 am

Fantastic. I tried to do exactly the same things a few times before, but failed. This looks great.

I'd also suggest letting the scenario designer give this to units (the canrecruit=1 unit could by default get this), and as a convention it should be given to all the "hero units" - replace the shield, basically, as Jetryl suggested.

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » November 18th, 2006, 11:49 am

Thanks.

I like the concept of the blue shield, but not the implementation. I'd like to maintain a distinction between the recruiter and non-recruiting heros, so i'll try and come up with another similar star-ellipse. Since the two ellipses will indicate very similar things, it's OK if the player might confuse them.

Elsewhere i've proposed that the blue shield be replaced by a smaller silver crown, which would solve the issue of the disappearance of the "hero-indicator" when ellipses are turned off.

nightcrawler · Post by **nightcrawler** » November 18th, 2006, 3:30 pm

Eleazar wrote:Thanks.

I like the concept of the blue shield, but not the implementation. I'd like to maintain a distinction between the recruiter and non-recruiting heros, so i'll try and come up with another similar star-ellipse. Since the two ellipses will indicate very similar things, it's OK if the player might confuse them.

Elsewhere i've proposed that the blue shield be replaced by a smaller silver crown, which would solve the issue of the disappearance of the "hero-indicator" when ellipses are turned off.

I love the ellipse idea. I'm surprised the blue shield has really lasted this long. Let's add a key "hero=yes" to [unit] and [side]. I don't think distinctive ellipses for recruiters and non-recruiters is a good idea. You don't need to have every difference exactly distinctive - players will "get it" on their own. If it's explained that the star ellipse = can't die, that's enough I would say.

Post by **Darth Fool** » November 18th, 2006, 6:09 pm

Note that it is already possible to have custom ellipses for a unit:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 702#143702

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » November 18th, 2006, 6:33 pm

OK, i did a less spiky version for non-recruiting (blue shield) heroes. The distinction is there if the player notices it, but the similarities, are strong enough that a new player can ignore the difference if 4 ellipses-shapes are too much.
Yeah, i know technically the spiky things aren't ellipses, but i'll stick with that term because everyone knows what it means.

These have been uploaded to trunk. Even if these aren't officially implemented in 1.2, it will be decent to include them for campaign authors.

Post by **SkeletonCrew** » January 28th, 2007, 4:58 pm

Eleazar wrote:Elsewhere i've proposed that the blue shield be replaced by a smaller silver crown, which would solve the issue of the disappearance of the "hero-indicator" when ellipses are turned off.

I see you committed the new crown to trunk it looks nice

, I only see one small problem with it. The shield stayed visible during combat so does the crown. Since the crown is on the other side it looks strange in combat now. The health and XP bar disappears but the silver crown stays.

I think overlays need to have an option to hide them during combat or not.

Post by **SkeletonCrew** » January 28th, 2007, 6:29 pm

Another problem is the new icon clashes with the crown Kaleh (Utbs) is the leader and has both the golden and the silver crown. (The silver is visible.) I resolved that by removing the {IS_HERO} macro from Kaleh. I'm only not sure what to do with allied leaders some of them have the {IS_HERO} tag some don't.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, so if somebody has a proposal post it here. I was busy converting all units with can_recruit and {IS_HERO} but I won't commit it yet.

Post by **turin** » January 28th, 2007, 8:12 pm

SkeletonCrew wrote:
Eleazar wrote:Elsewhere i've proposed that the blue shield be replaced by a smaller silver crown, which would solve the issue of the disappearance of the "hero-indicator" when ellipses are turned off.
I see you committed the new crown to trunk it looks nice , I only see one small problem with it. The shield stayed visible during combat so does the crown. Since the crown is on the other side it looks strange in combat now. The health and XP bar disappears but the silver crown stays.

I think overlays need to have an option to hide them during combat or not.

There's one obvious solution - not have the health and XP bars disappear.

I know I'd love to have that at least be an option.

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » January 28th, 2007, 9:54 pm

SkeletonCrew wrote:Another problem is the new icon clashes with the crown Kaleh (Utbs) is the leader and has both the golden and the silver crown. (The silver is visible.) I resolved that by removing the {IS_HERO} macro from Kaleh. I'm only not sure what to do with allied leaders some of them have the {IS_HERO} tag some don't.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, so if somebody has a proposal post it here. I was busy converting all units with can_recruit and {IS_HERO} but I won't commit it yet.

The intention is that a unit would have one crown or the other, but not both. The visibility of the hero crown is supposed to be the same as the recruit crown, but that would require a different implementation.

I suppose it's possible that some allied units with "can_recruit" wouldn't by their death cause defeat. But that's rather rare, and probably not worth the complexity of having 2 simultaneous icons.

I think it's best to remove {IS_HERO} from all "can recruits".

Post by **turin** » January 28th, 2007, 10:25 pm

In campaign play, often you are fighting with AI-controlled allies on your side. Sometimes you are allowed to let them die. Sometimes you are not. But, since they are able to recruit, they will get the golden crown either way. If the golden crown is changed to mean can-recruit-and-cannot-die, instead of just can-recruit, it will become unclear when you are allowed to let your allies die, and when you are not.

This is not rare at all. It happens all the time in campaigns. So I think we really do have to have the "complexity of having two simultaneous icons".