Search when recruiting

[Qazerowl]

Ok, I suggest adding a search bar to the recruit menu, (like the one in the "add unit" debug thing or the recall menu). It could only show up when there are more than X number of units in the recruit list, maybe 20? I don't think it would be hard to implement, since it's already in use twice. I know it wouldn't be used much, which I fear is the main reason it won't be implemented. The reason I ask for this feature is because I am planning to do something in my Ultima Era involving a large recruit list. I restate that I know it won't be used much, but it couldn't take more than 10min to add, right? This request seems "selfish" to me, because as far as I know, no fraction (currently) has a large recruit list. But that may change in the future, so it's not "just" for me... I don't want to come across as "I want a thing in Wesnoth, put it in for me!" but I don't even know where to begin if I was to try to add this. If it was do-able in WML then I'd do it myself... I know it wouldn't be used much, but adding it wouldn't be to hard.

If it is decided that this idea shouldn't be added, would someone tell me how I might add this myself?

EDIT: I was sorta trying to figure out how to do this myself, I thought that I could move some of the debug menu code to the recruit code. I don't know if that's possible, and I don't know where the code is. Any help with this (or a response to my first post...) is greatly appreciated.

[Iris]

I'm writing this double post for two purposes:
1. I posted this at a time when not many people were on the forums. So this is a bump. (Only 36 views and no replies in 15 hours...)

That makes no sense since the forums are a volunteer-driven board where not everyone has time to respond to every thread that pops up during the night. Threads don't disappear anywhere here just because they have been inactive for 15 hours, so we don't really like bumping as if you had a really important issue that needs to be solved ASAP (Wesnoth causing your machine to freeze, eating your dog, etc.). Therefore, I'm editing your first post and merging point 2 into it as you should have done in the first place.

Sorry for the policy reminder above, but hey, 15 hours are just 15 hours. I'd understand if your topic was relegated to page 2 and above...

I have nothing against your proposal, although I'd rather have a unit recruitment/recall dialog with tabs or other kinds of filter to see the contents by race, level, etc., since the recruit and recall lists easily become cluttered over the course of a campaign, especially so for recall lists.

EDIT: As for implementing stuff by yourself, you'll really need to know C++ in this case, or learn in the process as I did in my time. Patches should be submitted according to these simple guidelines.

EDIT2: And I bumped your thread after all. Ah well.

EDIT3: "rarely used" is not an excuse for implementing stuff in Wesnoth, but it is a guideline we follow when distributing our time and assigning task priorities since we also have lives outside the game and all.

[Hulavuta]

By the way, it's "faction" not "fraction". Okay, bye.

[Lachu]

I won't be noise, buy I think better using filter, like example:
Min attack, Min pierce defense, weapon type/class. Additionally could be great to add filter of tags, like healing, flying, etc., so people can select one ability and recruit unit with it.
Filtering unit by abilities have great impact for newbies(or somebody, who playing this race first time).

[Maiklas3000]

I have wished for filtering in certain campaigns. Filter for "loyal" would be most useful.

[Naeddyr]

Recruiting and recalling is not the most optimal at the moment. You have too many clicks.

I suggest that instead of having just 10 Right-click > Recruit / Recall > Choose Unit From List > GOTO 10, you'd do something like this:

Right click any hex in the castle > Recruit & Recall > Highlight units you wish to recruit or recall > Done >>
When you click on done, you will be returned to the map view, where all castle hexes that are recruit-abled at the moment are highlighted. In the side-panel, there's a running list (portrait, name and movement on one line) of all the units you have chosen: clicking on a hex places the first unit in the queue, click another hex places the second unit, etc.

In fact, righ-clicking an empty recruitable hex should default to popping up a Recruit & Recall window. To indicate that a recruitable hex is special, you could change the cursor to show something appropriate, like an abstract humanoid figure with a + sign.

To summarise:
- Combine the recruit and recall windows into one.
- Right-clicking on an active recruit hex should default (without the menu) in opening up a recruit and recall window.
- Choosing the recalled or recruited units should be a single, two-parted action: choose recruits or veterans, then place them in order (or let the computer do it if it's not important, like if you want all same units).

These are all separate ideas that could all be implemented separately, and each one would be a slight improvement.

This is a (relatively) uneventful GUI-improvement that seems to not to break anything else. And of course there are probably other ways to do it, and I'm just suggesting this as a quick idea I just got reading this thread.

Got the idea and posted within the same 5-minute period, maybe I'll do some graphical mockups later.

This is a relatively big change in the GUI, but I believe that it would be much better than the current system.

EDIT:

If the GUI is getting a facelift with West's theme, and that change would need some changes in the GUI system itself (or that's how I've understood it), then that would be a good a chance to enact other changes, too.

[Dixie]

To summarise:
- Combine the recruit and recall windows into one.
- Right-clicking on an active recruit hex should default (without the menu) in opening up a recruit and recall window.
- Choosing the recalled or recruited units should be a single, two-parted action: choose recruits or veterans, then place them in order (or let the computer do it if it's not important, like if you want all same units).

I would personnally disagree with all three ideas.

1) People are already having trouble sorting through either just the recruit or just the recall, don't put them together! Plus, when you recall, everything is 20 gold: will you need to look carefully to see if you're recruiting a 14gold Lv1, or recalling a 20 gold one? Seems like more trouble to me.

2) I disagree with the default thing: what if you want to label an hex of your castle, misclick it, or some scenario includes a special right-click context-menu option, but for some reason you an't use it because it is a caste hex? If you really can't be bothered by clicking to recruit/recall, you have hotkeys already: alt-r and ctrl(or cmd on mac)-r (not sure which is which anymore though I generally prefer manually placing which unit goes on which hex).

3) Yet again, I disagree: in competitive matches, it can be very deterministic to choose which unit is recruited on which castle hex. Having a queue and the computer deciding for you is a big no-no to me. It's also very dependent on map and a bunch of factors, so I don't think you could realistically make an AI to gauge this intelligently. Also, the queue sound like a bad idea. Imagine you were, I dunno, drakes vs undead but had randomized without knowing it. On your turn, you recruit some stuff, and queue a skirmisher and a warrior or something. Then, on your opponent's turn, an undead comes in sight! Maybe you'd have changed your plans to get an extra burner or something, but no, as soon as your turn starts, stupid queue auto-recruits previous selections. (Ok maybe my example contains some flaws, but I think you get it)

Personnally, I think just adding some tabs or filtering or something would be far enough already, and I doubt the above three suggestions fix anything, if not make them worse sorry.

[Naeddyr]

You have completely misread all of my points.

1) People are already having trouble sorting through either just the recruit or just the recall, don't put them together! Plus, when you recall, everything is 20 gold: will you need to look carefully to see if you're recruiting a 14gold Lv1, or recalling a 20 gold one? Seems like more trouble to me.

Uniting recruit and recall into one window dialogue doesn't mean that you put them in the same list, god forbid. That would be slightly stupid, which is why I didn't suggest it: I meant that the options should be available in the same window, side-by-side, tabbed, or in some other manner. And, come to think of it, even if you made them into a list, there are thousands of ways to show if you're recruiting or recalling something: for example, you could high-light recruit units. Write "RECRUIT NEW UNIT" in big bold letters instead of a unit name. Etc. Etc.

2) I disagree with the default thing: what if you want to label an hex of your castle, misclick it, or some scenario includes a special right-click context-menu option, but for some reason you an't use it because it is a caste hex? If you really can't be bothered by clicking to recruit/recall, you have hotkeys already: alt-r and ctrl(or cmd on mac)-r (not sure which is which anymore though I generally prefer manually placing which unit goes on which hex).

How often do you label hexes on your castle? The right-click context menu for special scenarios or eras I will give you. But these are special circumstances, hardly as important as recruiting.

Recruiting and recalling should absolutely take precedence of anything else. It is possible only on very few hexes, and not even on those if there's no leader the keep, which makes it unlikely that when you'd want to label a hex or do some special action, it wouldn't be on those hexes.

3)

This one is completely wrong. I didn't mean an in-game queue! I meant a placement queue for when you are doing a single recruitement and recall event! You choose which 1 to N units (where N=castle hexes) you want to place on the map, then you place them one at a time!

You have so misconstrued what I wanted to say (except for maybe the default right-click > recrall) that if someone reads your post before mine, they will dismiss my thoughts out of hand.

EDIT:

How about this:

A recall/recruit button in the side-panel that is operational as long as you have one recruiter unit on a keep, and an empty castle hex to recruit on. This would open up the above-mentioned recruit/recall dialog. Only works with a unified recruit/recall dialog and the queue thing, though.

A "single-click" recruit would work best only if you can only place one unit at a time. I misrepresented things a bit (= didn't think about it), but if you have a unified placing system (2 + 3, recall/recruit dialog+placement), a menu command wouldn't be as painful as it is now: but then it becomes illogical to have a right-click menu command, because you don't actually right-click the hex you want to place your unit on.

My point is, there are probably thousands of ways to handle recruiting and recalling in Wesnoth, most of them an improvement over the current hunt and peck and right-click and recall or recruit system. This you can at least agree on.

I'm going to make some simple mockups now.

EDIT:

I am a bleeding idjit.

Why would you need to right-click, when you have LEFT-CLICK?

If you click an empty hex, nothing happens. Ever. So that's basically an empty space to park some gui in.

So my new improved suggestion is:

If you have an empty castle or encampment hex, you should be able to click it to recruit and recall.

That would leave right-click alone.
EDIT:

piccieees yay

clickonhex.png (54.13 KiB) Viewed 3447 times

no unified recruit/recall list here but that's not too hard to imagine.

[Dixie]

I'm sorry if I misunderstood your points earlier. Maybe they weren't clear enough, though, which you have now corrected. The pictures also help understanding what you mean. Note that I am no developper and my opinion is as good as yours, afaik.

I'm still not overly fond of that system, though. Left clicks can be useful to unselect stuff, sometimes, so making it a possible land mine on castle hexes might not be the best of choices. If your idea were implemented, a button in the menu somewhere on the right or top would probably be best. Also:

A recall/recruit button in the side-panel that is operational as long as you have one recruiter unit on a keep, and an empty castle hex to recruit on. This would open up the above-mentioned recruit/recall dialog. Only works with a unified recruit/recall dialog and the queue thing, though.

A "single-click" recruit would work best only if you can only place one unit at a time. I misrepresented things a bit (= didn't think about it), but if you have a unified placing system (2 + 3, recall/recruit dialog+placement), a menu command wouldn't be as painful as it is now: but then it becomes illogical to have a right-click menu command, because you don't actually right-click the hex you want to place your unit on.

As I said earlier, you do have an hotkey to both recall and recruit if you hate clicking so much. ctrl(or cmd for macs) + r, and alt + r.

And honnestly, I feel your proposed system mostly just changes the click places. It doesn't seem very faster/less-clicky/better filtered. Instead of first clicking an hex and then clicking a unit in a menu and repeat, you basically suggest clicking a button or hex, clicking several units in a menu, and drag-and-dropping them of sorts on some hexes. If anything, that sounds even longer and possibly much less KISS.

[Naeddyr]

And honnestly, I feel your proposed system mostly just changes the click places. It doesn't seem very faster/less-clicky/better filtered. Instead of first clicking an hex and then clicking a unit in a menu and repeat, you basically suggest clicking a button or hex, clicking several units in a menu, and drag-and-dropping them of sorts on some hexes. If anything, that sounds even longer and possibly much less KISS.

No no, listen.

I will count clicks for five units. "Find unit" is a free action for now.

A single pass:
Click hex or Recruit button > Find five units and click them (5 clicks) > click OK > click the hexes you want to place them on, NOT drag and drop! = 12 clicks.
A single unit is 4 clicks.
Two units is 6 clicks.
Three units is 8 clicks.
Four units is 10 clicks.
Five million units is only 10 000 002 clicks.
2*Units + 2 clicks

Ctr-R:
Ctrl-R hex > Find unit and click > OK + 5 = 15 clicks, one of which is an awkward keyboard shortcut that you have to use in a less-than-common manner (hover your mouse and then use ctrl-R isn't really standard GUI practice! "KISS", my... krhm. )
A single unit is 3 clicks. In this case, ctrl-R:ing wins.
Two units 6 clicks.
Three units 9 clicks.
Four units 12 clicks.
Five million units is 15 000 000 clicks.
3*Units

Using the menu:
Right-click hex > Click Recruit or Recall > Find unit and click > OK x 5 = 20 clicks
One unit is 4 clicks.
Two units is 8 clicks.
Three units is 12 clicks.
Four units is 16 clicks.
Five million units is 25 000 000 clicks!!
5*Units

If a Wesnoth player plays the game every day from when he is 18 to his death at 78, at least one standard MP match per day... Ah, you get the idea.

For these calculations I've supposed that you'll have to find your units in the list. Of course, sometimes the unit you want is on top of the queue, which means one less click.

EDIT: You "suppose" that my method would be less KISS, which is a bit ridiculous to bring up, because the differences in KISSness is so miniscule as to not make any difference. Let's say that a user doesn't get the "make a list of units to put on the field", and instead only clicks on one unit, then clicks OK, and then clicks the hex to put it on. What has happened? Suddenly, she's doing exactly the same thing (well not EXACTLY but close enough) as the original system did! If she continues doing it this way, the whole system devolves into a 4N click system, which is still better than right-click>recruit. You can't beat that! The system is built in such a way that even when it fails, it's marginally better. And then when the user finally mistakenly clicks on two units (to check out unit stats, say), those two are high-lit (and of course you can turn that of by click the unit one more time) and put into the placement list, she learns how to use it properly. Not that this kind of "high-light item" system is uncommon.

EDIT:

Also, this has nothing to do with filtering.

EDIT:

My posts got a bit off-topic, would it bother anyone if i made a new topic, or asked a mod to move the posts?