Clicking in new development version

[fabi]

If (and I hope that's a big if) the new scheme remains as the default in 1.12, then that should absolutely be on the condition that the game tells you about it when you first run it. It is not acceptable to have the game use the same control scheme for 10 years and 6 stable branches and then change that in the 7th without a note telling old players that it's happened and how to change it back.

The ideal solution? Have a dialog pop up when you first run the game asking whether you're an old player who wants to keep using the old scheme, with the controls getting automatically set the way you wanted without further hassle. That's the sane way to change long-standing defaults for fundamentals like the control scheme.

I pretty much agree and will implement this asap.

[Pentarctagon]

Even if the old system wasn't completely intuitive, it was also extremely easy to figure out. Selecting and all actions are done with left-click, deselect and menu-items are right click. Congratulations on learning how to use Wesnoth.

This is oversimplifying the old control scheme.
As promised earlier I will come up with a formal definition of the old scheme to have comparable sets of definitions soon.

I show Wesnoth to new users regularly here at home (over two dozen during the past 5 years) and I saw them struggle with the control scheme first in almost all cases.

Again, I will find the time to give some examples of such new user test runs later.

The new system mixes the actions together with the other stuff and in general makes it more complicated.

I can't follow you on this, what is mixed together?
Why is it more complicated?

I don't really see how it's over-simplified, but regardless my point was that in the old scheme right-click and left-click do very specific things and don't intrude on the functionality of each other. If I want to select and do something with a unit, I do it all with just left-clicks. If I want to stop doing things with a unit, I can deselect the unit and access the right-click menu with only right clicks.

This is no longer the case in the new scheme: To make a unit do something I need to left-click to select it and right-click to make it do something. To access the right-click menu I must first deselect a unit with a double left-click before I'm allowed to access the menu with a right-click.

Left-clicking other hexes simply moves the highlighted hex to where I clicked without telling me what it means, why it's doing it, or how to make it stop doing it.

No, left clicking an empty hex shows the number of units able to reach it and highlights them.

Left-clicking outside the movement range shows how many turns it would take to get there, which would actually be useful if I wasn't already told that information simply by selecting the unit and moving my mouse around.

No. Again, left clicking a hex selects it. Showing the number of units able to reach it (during this turn) and highlighting the units able to do so if the hex is empty. When the hex is not empty it shows the reach of the unit.

Perhaps this is a bug then, but if only 1 unit can make it, then no number displays. Whereas if I click a hex and 4 units can make it, the number 4 displays on the hex.

I can no longer right click on anything until I've deselected a unit. (which now requires a double-click instead of just a right-click).

Yes, the double instead of just a right click is a little more overhead.
Still the mechanism behind it is easy to get and easy to handle after some time.

Yes, but double-clicking is not the most intuitive thing to do (at least for me) without knowing beforehand that I need to do it. I think it would be better to swap the "deselect" and "show all units that can make it here" controls, so that single-clicking deselects and double-clicking show all units that can make it there. If nothing else, then simply because deselecting is done much more commonly and more important to being able to play at all.

However if I accidentally right-click somewhere while a unit is selected, instead of deselecting the unit in preparation for opening the right-click menu (old system) I've now moved the unit somewhere I mostly likely did not want it to go.

Indeed, you need to be more careful with the right, while the old scheme was save with it.
This comes with the benefit of having no longer any danger while using the left mouse button.

However (going back to the separation of uses), under the old scheme there was never any reason to left-click if you didn't intend to do something with the unit. Whereas in the new scheme there are reasons where you would want to right-click and not move the unit. So while there is always the risk of an unintentional move, the risk seems to be inherently higher with the new controls.

[Alarantalara]

The new control scheme is contrary to good UI design. One principle is that basic actions should not require using the right mouse button or holding modifier keys while clicking. Moving a unit is a basic action.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 45459.aspx
Apple has no similar guideline published any more, but the absence of a visible second button on their mice and trackpads is convincing evidence that they agree (even though both support right click actions).
While I have no objection to a more RTS like movement scheme in general, it should not be the default.

[Temuchin Khan]

EDIT: Never mind what I was going to say. It is no longer relevant.

[taptap]

A new user who feels that the game has an awkward interface won't make it into the forum.
She will just search for another free or commercial game to spend her time with.

Isn't it equally likely to assume, that a few of the interface-unhappy newcomers would have dropped a frustrated comment somewhere in the forum, how much the interface sucks, if they indeed do believe this. There is no dearth of repetitive complaints about other things as far as I can tell. From watching LPs or reading comments on Wesnoth I can't recall bad interface as a complaint, that showed up frequently or at all.

[iceiceice]

The new control scheme is contrary to good UI design. One principle is that basic actions should not require using the right mouse button or holding modifier keys while clicking. Moving a unit is a basic action.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 45459.aspx
Apple has no similar guideline published any more, but the absence of a visible second button on their mice and trackpads is convincing evidence that they agree (even though both support right click actions).
While I have no objection to a more RTS like movement scheme in general, it should not be the default.

fabi, I don't think you should point to major RTS games as being the model of simplicity. Having a realtime game requires complex shortcuts for everything, and playing the game at a high level requires lots of coordinated mouse and keyboard activity. AFAIK most professional / highly experienced starcraft players will not usually right click with their units to attack, they will instead prefer to use 'A' + left click as this is more comfortable and also safer -- misclick on the ground instead of enemy unit will never result in a move command and will always result in an attack command. I doubt if any players of this game will be particularly more comfortable with right click to move/attack if they came to wesnoth. In wesnoth we have the luxury of time and a clean interface -- I feel Dave's comments about KISS and not wanting to have "active" spells and magic abillities are in part a pushback against the trend of games like Warcraft III, Dota, etc. to require all this tedious micro. We, fortunately, can afford the luxury of having no keyboard shortcuts, and all actions on left click.

Additionally, consider how the interface would work on a touch screen. Having Select/Move/Attack on left click makes it obvious and intuitive how it will work. IMO right click should be reserved for ``interface'' actions like deselect, bring up context menu, etc., as it is in most commercial software.

[taptap]

I am somewhat undecided regarding the controls ... I really want to believe it is modern etc. but it is most definitely very unfamiliar to me. I also have the habit of wanting to deselect everything. Unlike Velensk I did suffer from occasional unwanted attacks when using only the left mouse button, so it should be for me, on the other hand I don't know whether I would ever like to play Wesnoth on my Macbook (without mouse) again.

I wonder about the buttons below the minimap, while good and useful functions, they have now such a prominent place for so little actual difference (changing the minimap display).

[Velensk]

I won't say I don't have the occasional misclick but I can't recall ever having a misclick where I wasn't trying to move or attack something (mostly the kind delay shroud updates would fix if I liked that option) so even if you could get rid of the extra stuff that comes with it switching that function to the right click doesn't help me.

I still would like to know where we're supposed to be discussing things about the infobox.

[Zolm]

I played wesnoth for some years now, and I still didn't get the newest release, so I'll talk only about the general idea.

I've played strategy rpgs for many years - tactics ogre (probably all of them), FFT (all of them too), and many others which weren't very good (like ragnarok tactics), but I played them all anyway.

Then, these days, I grabbed this agarest something, another SRPG like the mentioned above.

Ok, the battle system is horrible, the craft system is horrible and the story is probably horrible too - but what made me give up the title was something a lot simpler: the battle grid.

On every single older SRPG I played, I pressed up and the cursor would move to upper right. But this game had to go against everything in the planet - moving up would send the cursor to upper left.

That caused a 90 degree rotation on every move, and I uncounsciously wasted too much time trying to correct movement mistakes on the older grid. I pressed left trying to go upper left, but the cursor went bottom left; then I pressed up to go back to the starting position and the cursor goes further to upper left.

Of course, if someone never played older SRPGs they'll have no problem with this, but to me, and probably for some others, this little thing (and being unable to customize it) was enough to delete it and never try it again.

If the idea is to attract new players, keeping a pattern is a very good idea, and since wesnoth keys can be bind anyway, I see no problem on this change.

An option to avoid older players to have problems with the new schema is a small batch on first run, asking if they wish to keep the classic binds or the new ones, and adjust the keys accordingly. Or maybe an extra button along "default" (with the new schema) called "classic" (with the old schema).

[Turuk]

I am somewhat undecided regarding the controls ...

An option to avoid older players to have problems with the new schema is a small batch on first run, asking if they wish to keep the classic binds or the new ones, and adjust the keys accordingly. Or maybe an extra button along "default" (with the new schema) called "classic" (with the old schema).

As it stands currently, the controls will be reverted to the previous default, and the player will be given the option to select between the classic Wesnoth controls or the experimental controls. It will be either given as an option in the settings or as a prompt at start-up in order to see if players will select the controls to provide feedback.

[CIB]

Sorry for the slight OT, but I haven't played the latest and greatest yet, and I do wonder - how do context actions on units work now? I'm asking because currently I'm working on and off on a campaign that has an overmap, and the way to attack armies there will be a context action on an enemy unit representing the army. But if right-clicking a unit makes you attack it rather than bring up the context menu, this might actually make my custom context action unnecessarily complex to use.

[HD-Berlin]

(Me too, I'm not a fan of the new user interface.)

Just wanted to let you know: In the tutorial, it still reads "left click on tile labeled Here" but now it needs a right click...

Edit: This is already marked as "known bug". Sorry.

[xhh2a]

This is no longer the case in the new scheme: To make a unit do something I need to left-click to select it and right-click to make it do something. To access the right-click menu I must first deselect a unit with a double left-click before I'm allowed to access the menu with a right-click.

To go from one click to three clicks is a regression imo.

[fabi]

This is no longer the case in the new scheme: To make a unit do something I need to left-click to select it and right-click to make it do something. To access the right-click menu I must first deselect a unit with a double left-click before I'm allowed to access the menu with a right-click.

To go from one click to three clicks is a regression imo.

Indeed, but we go from two clicks to three.
And only in the worst case.

The common situation is that you decide to not use a unit after you just selected it, meaning one click is enough to deselect it.
Although, selecting a unit to see its reach is no longer necessary.

[Velensk]

In the old scheme you didn't need to click a unit you just had to mouse over it. There was a bug in the new version which made it so that this didn't work properly which is one of the primary reasons I don't use the development version now despite being able to mostly fix the interface.