How to return some old good features?

[vicza]

In earlier versions (like 1.3.7-1.3.10) there were some features I liked (mostly visual ones, but still nice) and which were later for some reason removed/changed. So I thought: if in Linux I have to compile Wesnoth anyway, maybe I could change the code to return them back? The features are these:

1) Smooth decreasing of HP-bar during fight. I wrote already about it here.

2) When a unit moved across some hard territory (like mountains or water) its moving was slowed down.

3) After scenario finishing, "End turn" button changed to "End scenario" one, but the screen was not grayed, like currently. I don't need this graying to understand that scenario is finished, it only troubles me to view the final position.

So, could anyone suggest me, what could I change back in the code, to return these features?

[megane]

For 3 you can just change wesnoth/data/core/images/terrain/darken-linger.png (to a blank hex, if you desire).

[AI]

While I haven't much noticed the removal of #1, I still miss feature #2 and I have no idea why it was removed.

[vicza]

For 3 you can just change wesnoth/data/core/images/terrain/darken-linger.png (to a blank hex, if you desire).

O, thank you!


Still wondering about two other features...

While I haven't much noticed the removal of #1, I still miss feature #2 and I have no idea why it was removed.

Yes. I've just checked, both 1 and 2 were dropped in version 1.3.13. And (of course) no mention of it in the changelog.

[Vendanna]

1) Smooth decreasing of HP-bar during fight. I wrote already about it here.

Probably some bug, or unit dieing for damage before the hp bar left down (knights etc that had too much hp, in the end, while looking nice I think it slowed the pace of the fight) there should be something on the forum about that.

2) When a unit moved across some hard territory (like mountains or water) its moving was slowed down.

It acted weirdly with units using walking animations (since if the animation was longer than what they needed to move from one tile to the other it would hang the animation) in the end, it was talked why it was removed tought don't know in which part of the forum was.

[Dave]

I think that #1 and #2 were both great features. I have no idea why they were removed. I think they should be put back in.

David

[Alink]

Probably better to ask boucman about #1 and #2, but IIRC it was for technical reasons. The new powerful animation engine was some serious changes, and these 2 features were a bit hard to maintain (or priority was given to other new important bugs). A possible explanation is that both need some synchronization between "variable" stuff (HP lost, type of terrains) and the length/speed of the animation, which with the new freedom of the engine is less easy to have.

In fact, someone assigned #1 to me shortly before 1.4 but I was less active at that time and since it seems a bit tricky (probably need fake HP), I didn't wanted to risk introducing nasty bugs (keep incorrect HP bars if anim is interrupted) for such little aesthetic detail. I still hope that we can add it in 1.5, but I doubt that we backport it to 1.4.x, sorry.

Not idea if #2 is still planned.

[Boucman]

#1 was removed because the HP bar is directly liked to the unit's HP. So to have this feature we had to have the unit HP decreased by the animation engine during the animation. This was a very bad decoupling. This could be problematic because the game engine had to know the arcanes of the anim engine to guess if it should decrease the HP itself or delegate that work to the anim engine.

this could be added back if/when the halos and bar code is rethought, but that's quite tricky

#2 was removed after lots of thought, again because it was inducing some ugly code coupling in the anim engine. basicaly, this means that the "sliding speed" couldn't be set in WML, because the engine had to force its own sliding (WML cannot make a terrain dependant sliding) It also made things very tricky for units that did not want to have that feature.



#1 could probably be added back using fake units during the fight, but that pulls another truckload of problems with it... reviewing how fake units are used is on my todo list, but it's a big can of worms

#2 could be done by playing on the animation speed instead of the sliding, but again that means that units that don't want to use it can't disable the feature. hmm

yeas that would work...

please write bugs, assign to me so I don't forget them, but don't expect anything soon

[vicza]

Still, I don't understand. #1 was in versions 0.9-1.0. Then, it reappeared in 1.3.3... just to disappear again in 1.3.13? Why? What so special happened inbetween 1.3.12 and 1.3.13 that this feature has suddenly became so undesirable? If it worked previously, why it can't work now?

please write bugs, assign to me so I don't forget them

Actually, there is a bug about #1. Assigned to Alink, BTW.

[Boucman]

thx, reassigned to me

please open a second one for the speed on land

[AI]

Bug #11525, you're already added as CC.

[Boucman]

thx, reassigned