More info in sidebar

[starfury]

I thought I'd make this separate from the Statistics per unit thread since that seems to be moving away from what to do with the sidebar, so here's the post that got me thinking:

It would be nice to view detailed statistics/logs per unit, but I think the right place for this is after the scenario (also after multiplayer game), or through some submenu. Displaying information which does not influence player's strategy is IMHO wrong.

You are correct, all information on the sidebar is currently completely relevant to fighting, that is a good trend and should continue. To a submenu it should go.

Since there is a lot of space available at higher resolutions, what other relevant information could be displayed in sidebar? The unit's damage resistances come to mind as something that would be convenient to have on hand. Terrain movement and defense seem less useful, as it's relatively easy to figure these out by pointing at hexes on the map (at least for your own units). Number of AMLAs attained also comes to mind, but it's not directly relevant since the effects of AMLA are already reflected in the other information that's already displayed.

[AI]

Resistances: hover mouse over hp.
Checking movement/defence works the same for enemy units, just click on them first.

[nataS]

I think filling empty spaces with more information isn't a very good idea. I do however believe certain crucial information could be accessible more intuitively. How is a player to know resistances for a unit are available by hovering a certain spot in the side panel?

[irrevenant]

I think filling empty spaces with more information isn't a very good idea.

Why not?

[turin]

I think filling empty spaces with more information isn't a very good idea.

Why not?

It clutters the interface.

[starfury]

I think filling empty spaces with more information isn't a very good idea. I do however believe certain crucial information could be accessible more intuitively. How is a player to know resistances for a unit are available by hovering a certain spot in the side panel?

Now that I know of the easy way to get at these stats, I'd agree with this viewpoint. I always thought I had to point, press 'd', then scroll to the bottom of the unit description to get at this information.

nataS brings up a good point though. Is the existence of this hover feature documented anywhere? I haven't read the manual or played the tutorial for quite a while, so I might be alone in my ignorance of this feature. Could it be more intuitive? A little shield icon in the sidebar that would give the resistances when hovered over would seem a bit more intuitive to me than hovering over the hp, but I still don't think many people would randomly point at that either without being told that it does something either in the manual or tutorial.

[idanwin]

Well; look at that! I'm already playing wesnoth for (nearly) five years and I didn't know that!
Yes, I think it should be made more clear.

And no, it's not in the tutorial.

[Alink]

Since I added this little HP tooltip, maybe I can give some background info:
Showing resistances was very often asked (and needed), there is many forum posts about that. But this is not simple to do perfectly, there is many forum posts about that too . The main problems are: the need of icons (with clear gfx and tooltips), how handling custom damage type, where and how display it in sidebar, handle the different resolutions, dealing with the somehow complex theme code, etc...

So, to avoid these swampy problems, I did the lazy fix (but at least done): put it in the HP tooltip. The idea was that the meaning of HP depends of resistances (having 50% for all damage types, is almost the same thing as having double HP, except for healing, poison etc..). The XP toolip also works like that, even if I personally wanted to use this one differently (advancements or reminder of XP gain rules).

Of course, another reason is that this place was free, and so I didn't need to change themes, create and place a resistance icon etc... I was a fresh dev at that time (joined after 1.3.1) and the other little coding details were already some work for me. Funny how all that seems simple now. But I also added basic support for ability like steadfast. BTW this is another annoying thing for this resistance in sidebar feature.

It is indeed not documented and not very intuitive. When added in 1.3.7, it was mentioned in both changelogs, but who read that? (hint: read changelogs if you want to test and comment new dev features). I wanted to mention it in the 1.4 release note, but this tiny thing was forgotten in the big process. Also because it is a quick temporary feature, it was not added in help and then probably forgotten. I still hope that new users will explore tooltips (others have useful info, also not documented) and that experimented users will find it by other communication channels like this thread.

I suppose that we will improve this for 1.6. We often need a better theme code for various features like that, so I hope it will be done one day.

[irrevenant]

Why not?

It clutters the interface.

Clutter has as much to do with how the information is organised, as with how much of it there is.

[Iris]

Personally, one of the things that I liked of the game was its simplistic interface - only primarily needed info was shown on-screen, and the rest has to be researched on the user's own.

[Espreon]

I think more info should be displayed in the sidebar, but the display of it should be disabled by default...

[Aethaeryn]

Buttons are probably the best way to do it. You could have a row of circle icons for various stats or perhaps even having a "Detailed Mode" button that switches between the standard info and more specific info being displayed on the sidebar.

[Derekkk]

Wesnoth at the moment allows users to choose a theme out of several for their own interface, so I think it might be most-welcomed if we can have themes which offer a clean and simple interface and others which offer more detailed info on the screen. I agree with the rest of you that location for the resistance info is not very intuitive, and also it's quite troublesome to find out the terrain movement costs for the units too. So, for example, we can have a theme which is specifically for screens with large resolutions, which plainly show all the above info.

Another thing that campaign designers might want to see is the showing of campaign-specific variables on the sidebar. E.g. what a unit has got in its backpack. This feature will only be available with some tinkering of the C++ code.

[campfire-earth]

I posted a lot of my ideas at once including a solution to this problem

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 26#p299126

[Wesnothian Citizen]

How about unit resistance? (6 rows of data)
- I don't know, but only clear everytime I check in help screen

This should easily inform what damage type is better to use against that unit.
(This works well with for player to consider with existing units attack type)

To be more intuitive, big shield icons will representing 40% and small shield icons representating 10% while floating notes explains that.

EDIT: Further polish might be red sheild = original resistence, blue = addition due to other factors (like terrains)