Tooltips on Recruit/Recall screen please!

Jigsawn · Post by **Jigsawn** » February 11th, 2008, 9:27 pm

Hi folks,

As a new player to Wesnoth I constantly rely on the tooltips to find out how special abilities work, and the defensive properties of the unit.

However, the tooltips don't appear in the Recruit, Recall or fight prequisite windows. This means that picking which troops to buy is pretty hard for a newbie, when you are looking for particular strengths and weaknesses.

It would be great if tooltips appeared on pop-up windows, and would definitely help us newer players.

Cheers.

Post by **irrevenant** » February 11th, 2008, 9:38 pm

I don't remember re: recall off the top of my head (and I'm in a hurry, sorry), but the recruit screen displays unit stats in a pane to the left and if you click the 'profile' button it takes you to the help page including hyperlinks to all abilities that the unit has.

Aethaeryn (User Page) · Post by **Aethaeryn** » February 11th, 2008, 9:40 pm

irrevenant wrote:I don't remember re: recall off the top of my head (and I'm in a hurry, sorry), but the recruit screen displays unit stats in a pane to the left and if you click the 'profile' button it takes you to the help page including hyperlinks to all abilities that the unit has.

I think the person means the descriptions that appear when you mouse over a thing (e.g. an ability - ambush - on the main window) don't appear in the recruit screen.

Jigsawn · Post by **Jigsawn** » February 11th, 2008, 10:28 pm

Indeed.

There is a profile box you can click on the recuit screen, but it means going through 2 more windows to get info about special abilities. When choosing what units to pick you don't really want to have to go into each individual profile, you just want to get a summary of anything you are unsure about, which is why tooltips are great when you're playing the rest of the game, it's just missing in those screens. Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to plug the tooltip code into those screens as well.

Post by **Velensk** » February 11th, 2008, 11:36 pm

I don't see how getting a discription of the unit would help you make a disision, most units are pretty self explanitory.

Post by **turin** » February 11th, 2008, 11:41 pm

This is a good idea, and I can't imagine any objections to it from a GUI-aesthetics perspective or gameplay perspective. It's really just a matter of how hard it is to program vs. the expected payoff, which is, granted, rather minimal.

rchandra · Post by **rchandra** » February 12th, 2008, 2:57 am

Velensk wrote:I don't see how getting a discription of the unit would help you make a disision, most units are pretty self explanitory.

It's not the unit description that would be most useful, it's the explanation for stuff like charge and steadfast, at least for me. This would be especially useful for user-made factions that are likely to have more special abilities or odd ability combinations. The description would give you an idea of resists/movetype (though resists would be available as an HP-tooltip as they are in-game).

Turin is right that this should be pretty low-priority since the information is two clicks away - but it would improve professionalism and consistency, so hopefully it can be done sometime.

enclave · Post by **enclave** » February 12th, 2008, 3:15 am

my 1 cent

i think i just got used to what we have at the moment.. so i just click profile and have no problems.. though it took me some time to find it (the profile icon).

right click sounds much better as a more friendly user interface..
and i also think its more professional solution.. because most games have such a system.. -> when u want some information.. right click.. simple..

if only right click isnt reserved.

CarpeGuitarrem · Post by **CarpeGuitarrem** » February 12th, 2008, 3:54 am

I agree with having a mouse-over thing pop up for the traits, like what is done anyway when the unit is on the map.

enclave · Post by **enclave** » February 12th, 2008, 10:48 am

i disagree with mouse-over... lol.. do you want experienced players to get irritated of the fact that when they move mouse over ur unit comes f*cking popup which disturbs them playing?

i think most people would quit the game after implementing it lol..

i personaly dont need it, its like an advertisment when u enter some web page, which forbids u to log in, because the login field is beneath advertisment.

only right click... no mouseover popups please..

Post by **zookeeper** » February 12th, 2008, 10:55 am

enclave wrote:i disagree with mouse-over... lol.. do you want experienced players to get irritated of the fact that when they move mouse over ur unit comes f*cking popup which disturbs them playing?

i think most people would quit the game after implementing it lol..

i personaly dont need it, its like an advertisment when u enter some web page, which forbids u to log in, because the login field is beneath advertisment.

only right click... no mouseover popups please..

You're wrong.

Haibane · Post by **Haibane** » February 12th, 2008, 12:31 pm

Give it some appropriate delay and it's fine. The most fancy way would be an option (even better configurable delay), but it would be just naive to expect so much.
Anyway, I don't need it but I don't mind it either.

enclave · Post by **enclave** » February 12th, 2008, 5:05 pm

ok zookeeper, when u make it, i wanan see it to have some laugh.

Aethaeryn (User Page) · Post by **Aethaeryn** » February 12th, 2008, 5:50 pm

enclave wrote:ok zookeeper, when u make it, i wanan see it to have some laugh.

It doesn't bug people to scroll over for the info on the right, why would it bug them on the recruit screen? In fact, "tooltips" can be helpful for even experienced players when it's an unfamiliar era or when a unit gets modified. For example, scrolling over the HP gives you the unit's resistances, which helps if it is WML-modified.

Jigsawn · Post by **Jigsawn** » February 12th, 2008, 7:13 pm

I don't think it would be annoying to have it pop up straight away when mousing over on the recruiting or battle screen at all. In fact your cursor has no reason to move over that text in those screens unless you want to get more info - normally you're just clicking up and down the recruit list, or clicking on Engage for the fight screen.

I agree, having tooltips for these screens isn't vital but it would by pretty handy for us newbies, even if just for the special ability descriptions and nothing else.