Show all enemy movement?

[Eponymous-Archon]

I've been thinking that a hotkey that showed at one time the hexes where all enemy units can reach would be useful. It wouldn't matter which or how many units could get to which hex (though I suppose the latter could be done with increasing opacity).

For those times when I want to place my unit in an unreachable position, or one that's barely reachable at only 1 hex.

Now, I wind up doing a lot of mousing over, which can take a while and occasionally I miss an enemy unit, which can be very bad.

[miyo]

Now, I wind up doing a lot of mousing over, which can take a while and occasionally I miss an enemy unit, which can be very bad.

This leaves room for human error... and as I have already said in the past I think it should be that way. In medieval wars human errors did make a difference.

- Miyo

[Christophe33]

Now, I wind up doing a lot of mousing over, which can take a while and occasionally I miss an enemy unit, which can be very bad.

This leaves room for human error... and as I have already said in the past I think it should be that way. In medieval wars human errors did make a difference.

- Miyo

In recent warshuman errors still make big differences. Death by friendly fire as it is called can represent 25% of total causualties.
While I would like a system like EA proposed, it would not be eay to implement and probably useless since you have to take in account the ZoC of units. If you move one of your unit by a single hex you can change things a lot. So I'm afraid we will have to keep clicking around

[Darth Fool]

Now, I wind up doing a lot of mousing over, which can take a while and occasionally I miss an enemy unit, which can be very bad.

This leaves room for human error... and as I have already said in the past I think it should be that way. In medieval wars human errors did make a difference.

- Miyo

Well, In medieval wars, I''m pretty sure elven arrows didn't make a difference. Ok, bad pun, but Wesnoth is a fantasy game after all... but I don't think that ignoring a feature beacuse it makes easier for a human to be able to see what is going on is a good idea. Human error will always happen. I think this would be a useful keybinding and leave humans to make mistakes in much more interesting (rather than frustrating) ways.

[Dave]

My philosophy is that the interface in a TBS should always try to help the player as much as possible.

If one doesn't think so, then consider this: if a player modifies their game to display things in a different way [1] (that they find more convenient), and then plays against another player, is this cheating? IMO it's not.

I think the feature is a good idea, and I'll consider implementing it. Also, there could be a mode that ignores enemy units. So basically "what's the furthest this side could theoretically reach this turn even if they cut through their enemies like chaff?"

David

[1] and I don't mean anything silly like removing shroud or FoW or displaying any information that is incalculable by the player normally or changing the game rules in any way

[Eponymous-Archon]

I appreciate the replies (esp. Dave's ).

I would add that this would do nothing more than one can already do, just that it would do it more quickly.

I appreciate the consideration of human error, but I think this speeds up the game (giving one more playing time) and lets one spend brain-power on strategy, not picking out every enemy unit in the vicinity.

[Boucman]

I think that's a bad Idea because (as C33 pointed out) the ZOC/other moving unite problems would make that feature deceptive. I move the unit I want to protect on a place that is shown as "safe" then I move a unit that was portecting with the ZOC and suddenly, my unit isn't safe anymore.

the only "clean" way to do that would be to take a "most pesimistic" approch, which wouldn't take units/ZOC into account, but that seems overly pessimistic to me

thoughts ?

[Eponymous-Archon]

I would just respond that it is no more misleading than mousing-over currently is, just faster. I wouldn't mind being able to see "maximum range" and "current range" frankly.

But I don't have to program it.

[Dave]

It wouldn't be difficult to program.

The main difficult thing would be working a nice way to integrate it into the interface.

I guess some kind of 'show enemy moves' on/off option, and then we'd have to have a way to specify whether you want to see enemy moves taking ZoCs into account or not.

David

[miyo]

Cycling different modes with hotkey?

show enemy movement ranges -> show enemy movement ranges and take ZoC in account -> don't show enemy movement ranges

- Miyo

[Dave]

Cycling different modes with hotkey?

show enemy movement ranges -> show enemy movement ranges and take ZoC in account -> don't show enemy movement ranges

This will work well.....until we are both slapped over the head with a very thick set of results from Apple usability studies which shows that options should never be accessible only from the keyboard.

I guess we can do that same thing but also with a menu item....

David

[Darth Fool]

It wouldn't be difficult to program.

The main difficult thing would be working a nice way to integrate it into the interface.

I guess some kind of 'show enemy moves' on/off option, and then we'd have to have a way to specify whether you want to see enemy moves taking ZoCs into account or not.

David

Perhaps using different alpha levels on the shading? That way you get all the information at once: Units can't get here at all (dark), units could get here if only it weren't for those pesky kids...(lighter), and units can get here no problem(lightest) This would also be useful for your own units...

[Dave]

jbmesserly has recently submitted a very good patch which implements this feature, and I have accepted and committed it to CVS.

Make sure you direct any thanks (as well as suggestions for improvements etc ) to him!

David

[jbmesserly]

Question for everyone.

The main thing that I don't like about the two new "Show Enemy Movement" options is that they're a bit intrusive. They're verbose and always in the context menu. Assuming I can get it working, would you like the "show enemy moves" option to only be available in the right-click menu when you click on an enemy unit?

The keyboard shortcuts will always work, regardless of whether an enemy unit is selected.

John

[Sangel]

Thanks for the handy script.

I agree, having it show up all the time is somewhat pointless. This links back to my topic about contextual menus.

Yes! Having only options associated with the place you're clicking show up in the menu is a very good thing. Clicking on a unit should reveal options for Description, Terrain Modifiers, Resistance and possible moves, but not recruit or recall.