SOLVED: Units aren't in Help Menu

[keyboardashtray]

I mentioned this in a post about a different issue, but I am unable to read information about a Unit in the help menu until that specific unit has made an appearance in a game, past or present.

There is the text "Advances to" in a particular profile, but it is only a followable link if I've seen the unit before.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, or meant to be a feature as a sort of a follow along to the tutorial, but since it is happening across the board in all styles of the game, I don't think the tutorial applies. But if this is the case, that it is meant to be like that, I respectfully suggest considering changing it so all units can be referenced from the help, as it would be helpful to be able to follow the advancement chain to see long term what possibilities exist.

Thank you.

EDIT: This has been explained to me as a feature and not a bug.

[hjwn]

I mentioned this in a post about a different issue, but I am unable to read information about a Unit in the help menu until that specific unit has made an appearance in a game, past or present.

This topic reappears quite often. The default reply is: "Otherwise new players get overwhelmed by the sheer number of different units available and get confused".

Well, at least to me the number of posts from new players show that not displaying unit information is confusing too. Got confused myself. I would prefer to get confused by too much information if given the choice. When I started to play wesnoth I was sure that it's a (minor) bug in an otherwise polished piece of software that sooner or later will be ironed out. This being a feature, this thought never hit me until I've read about it in the forums. IMHO a checkbox in the preferences menu would help... but even then a new player has to find it and figure out what it does. Maybe the current behaviour should be "reconsidered".

[Sapient]

Maybe the current behaviour should be "reconsidered".

It has been "reconsidered" quite a bit, and each time we decided to keep it because even though its opponents tend to be quite vocal, its merits still stand. I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation, but I suggest you do a forum search on it.

[keyboardashtray]

It has been "reconsidered" quite a bit, and each time we decided to keep it because even though its opponents tend to be quite vocal, its merits still stand. I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation, but I suggest you do a forum search on it.

I think whoever wrote the help did a great job with the unit descriptions and overall. As far as in-game help goes, it's a nice read.

But I keep hearing "do a better (forum) search"; clearly everyone here is annoyed, these must get asked a lot.

Perhaps stick this information right out front in the help, and you'll avoid people coming here and asking why - because, whatever the intentions might be, it looks incomplete, like a work in progress.

[Sapient]

It has been "reconsidered" quite a bit, and each time we decided to keep it because even though its opponents tend to be quite vocal, its merits still stand. I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation, but I suggest you do a forum search on it.

I think whoever wrote the help did a great job with the unit descriptions and overall. As far as in-game help goes, it's a nice read.

But I keep hearing "do a better (forum) search"; clearly everyone here is annoyed, these must get asked a lot.

Perhaps stick this information right out front in the help, and you'll avoid people coming here and asking why - because, whatever the intentions might be, it looks incomplete, like a work in progress.

Guess which video game was recently voted best gameboy game of all time: Pokemon. Never played it myself, by from what I understand it used a similar principle where you had a Pokedex and it would fill up as you encountered different pokemons. So my question is, did people write bug reports and/or complaints to Nintendo? If not, then why is it so different or so much more intuitive than the Wesnoth help system?

[zookeeper]

Guess which video game was recently voted best gameboy game of all time: Pokemon. Never played it myself, by from what I understand it used a similar principle where you had a Pokedex and it would fill up as you encountered different pokemons. So my question is, did people write bug reports and/or complaints to Nintendo? If not, then why is it so different or so much more intuitive than the Wesnoth help system?

Probably because in Pokemon pretty much the sole point of the game is to encounter and capture as many different Pokemons as possible?

[Sapient]

Guess which video game was recently voted best gameboy game of all time: Pokemon. Never played it myself, by from what I understand it used a similar principle where you had a Pokedex and it would fill up as you encountered different pokemons. So my question is, did people write bug reports and/or complaints to Nintendo? If not, then why is it so different or so much more intuitive than the Wesnoth help system?

Probably because in Pokemon pretty much the sole point of the game is to encounter and capture as many different Pokemons as possible?

That doesn't seem like a good enough explanation to me. Yes, the objective is to collect more, but the desire is still there to see them in advance. So my question is how does their interface convey better than our interface that the omission is intentional? If Pokemon isn't a good enough example I'm sure I could list others. I think you're just stating the obvious and not being helpful, though.

[appleide]

Probably because in Pokemon pretty much the sole point of the game is to encounter and capture as many different Pokemons as possible?

That doesn't seem like a good enough explanation to me. Yes, the objective is to collect more, but the desire is still there to see them in advance. So my question is how does their interface convey better than our interface that the omission is intentional? If Pokemon isn't a good enough example I'm sure I could list others. I think you're just stating the obvious and not being helpful, though.

Note that in the Pokemon TV show, it has been explained that information is only added to the Pokedexonly as Pokemon are encountered... But on Wesnoth Help, I don't recall it saying so.

[Weeksy]

I'll be sure to tell our TV producers to write that into the script.

[Doc]

It seemed pretty intuitive to me that unit types were "unlocked" in the help menu as you encountered/promoted them. Things are fine as they are in that regard.

What I find annoying is thar after playing UtBS, one's unit list gets clogged with multiple iterations of desert elves that vary only in their recruitment cost. This is a bit of a disincentive to play the campaign.

It would be nice to be able to delete individual units in the help menu or, failing that, clear the menu in it's entirety and start over. In the latter case starting human vs. AI MP games in the Heroes era could be used to repopulate the list with minimal effort.

[zookeeper]

It seemed pretty intuitive to me that unit types were "unlocked" in the help menu as you encountered/promoted them. Things are fine as they are in that regard.

What I find annoying is thar after playing UtBS, one's unit list gets clogged with multiple iterations of desert elves that vary only in their recruitment cost. This is a bit of a disincentive to play the campaign.

This should be fixed in 1.3.6 (probably was in a version or two earlier too). Not in the 1.2 branch unfortunately.

[karsten]

I mentioned this in a post about a different issue, but I am unable to read information about a Unit in the help menu until that specific unit has made an appearance in a game, past or present.

There is the text "Advances to" in a particular profile, but it is only a followable link if I've seen the unit before.

I'm with you on this, I think that it complicates the game unnecessarily for new players. Nobody is going to click through every item in the Help before playing, anyway, but in case he sees a new own or enemy unit, he'll click on it and look at its profile. And he probably wants to know how his or the enemy units can level up beforehand, to not run into rude surprises. It would be enough if the help only showed all the currently known units (like it is now) plus their directly following next level-ups. Might be a compromise.

If you want to have your in-game help populated with all the units in base game, then here is something that you can use for that: Unzip the zip file in your personal data/campaign directory, then start a Multiplayer Game. Select Local Game, select the "AllCoreUnits" era in the box in the lower left from the map preview image, and chose some MP map (like Blitz). When you start the game, all the base units are in your recruit list. This makes them all appear in the help from now on, too. Problem solved!