1.9.0 bugs and feedback

[Gambit]

American football players have armor-ish pads & helmets, run around, and get out of breath. To the extent you can tell they are breathing hard, it is not because they are bobbing and dancing.

Right, they're doubled over with heaving shoulders.

It is true that most of them are not magical lizards, but same is true for most of the other wesnoth factions which are presumably going to get these animations as well.

This is true. I'm not sure other races should be dancing like that, but the saurians have always struck me as tribal. Maybe the others'll be subtler?
Hmmm you've kind of changed my mind.

But this is just like the drakes in 1.8. The time for these complaints was back when the sprites were being made. Now that they're done [and paid for] exactly as requested, you (nobody in particular) want them scrapped and started over?

[Simons Mith]

But it makes sense for things that hover to be constantly moving. It doesn't make sense for things to move constantly when they don't have to. Like I already said.

As a matter of fact, in addition to including these as variable-length idle animations, which I've already suggested, I have just thought of three other possible uses where I would welcome the new anims:

0. [extra idle anims]
1. When a unit has been selected
2. When the mouse is hovering over a unit (possibly only if it's on your side)
3. When a unit is partway through executing some multi-turn orders.

3. in particular would be handy, but it relies on other units staying still most of the time. And flying, moving things like drakes and bats don't benefit, but that's a minor side-effect IMV, and fixable.

The other thing to consider: take things to their logical conclusion, and imagine the time in the distant future where every single unit does have a standing animation. Every elf, every dwarf, every heavy infantryman. Picture the map. Far too busy; I couldn't put up with that. What are they all gonna do?? Meanwhile, with a partial set of standing animations we have the worst of both worlds - some units still, some constantly, constantly moving. That looks even more strange.

[Eleazar]

quote]It is true that most of them are not magical lizards, but same is true for most of the other wesnoth factions which are presumably going to get these animations as well.

This is true. I'm not sure other races should be dancing like that, but the saurians have always struck me as tribal. Maybe the others'll be subtler?
Hmmm you've kind of changed my mind.

But this is just like the drakes in 1.8. The time for these complaints was back when the sprites were being made. Now that they're done [and paid for] exactly as requested, you (nobody in particular) want them scrapped and started over?

First, i should say that i haven't played with the new saurians extensively, so it's possible that my opinion could change with more exposure. Also it's somewhat difficult forming a fair opinion of the bob/weave when only a few units do it.

That said, i don't look forward to seeing all units doing a similarly lively shimmy and shake. To me it is distracting visual noise.

But if, for instance, even Jetrel came to share this opinion, that doesn't mean the animation is wasted. They are definitely good animations. They animation could be used instead to highlight the selected unit. It makes sense and conveys information, if the units springs to life when you select them.
Possibly (i'm less sure about this) it could also be used to highlight the unit that's currently putting dialog up on the screen.

EDIT: as i write, Mith makes some similar points.

[Jetrel]

It's called a standing animation, and at some point every unit will have them.

I get the flying animations, but every unit on the map will eventually be constantly moving? That sounds like a really bad thing. ... Literally every unit will have a looping standing animation?

Yep, every unit is going to have a bobbing animation like the saurians. The only exceptions to this are very non-human creatures like woses, who should look inert (though even they might get 'leaves rustling in the wind'). This decision isn't up for discussion - we are doing it, and if you don't like it, you get to turn off the animations. This is widely accepted as industry best practice, and especially when I completely agree with that practice, and have wanted it since I started working on the project, we're not contradicting it.

These are important to have, because even though the movement is exaggerated, the alternative of having them be "still as statues", which they are, looks much worse to the human eye. Real creatures, IRL, are always moving to some degree. They're always breathing, and are usually doing any number of small motions with their body to take mechanical stress (of their weight) and transfer it to some other limb. The lack of any movement whatsoever makes something look like a corpse, or a robot.

This is why virtually every game on the market does something to give all units constant motion - some games, like Final fantasy Tactics, try to economize (e.g. avoid having to draw these), by instead putting all units in a permanent walking animation. FFT has still frames of units standing, but finds it so important to give units motion that instead of having them use their standing animations when they're sitting still, they actually permanently use their walking animations.

Mind you - four separate games here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duVGyR9k-ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vSNWgAs8zE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ybMI7udmfw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnXkYFvX ... re=related

Other games in the genre bob:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jYbNVL ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyOThZWY ... re=related

I mean, hell, Advance wars goes ahead and makes TANKS bob up and down like bouncy balls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Ehn9DPx7Y


And this is to say nothing of the wide, wide field of non-strategy games, where everything is in constant motion.



If you look at most 3d games, most units have a similar or higher delta of motion than ours when standing still. Here are a bunch of animations from starcraft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJfbY6TgzN0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EfEZBS9 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvgHwRjXyCU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AlvkbSM ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGWjyrmC ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGThAoq8 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkqA4pAj ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koREkG3n ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cND9EquO ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOA3Pok0 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYEC8KN ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpvGVMFO ... re=related

By comparison, here is the look of a non-living machine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mFPjPU2 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huwzb_cQ ... re=related



(As a note for future intentions, I'm quite interested in having very variable frame-rates on these standing animations; having several duplicates of it with widely-varying speed, to make it look more organic. Likewise, I'm quite open to multiple variants of the animation, which bob in different directions/ways, and get mixed together.)



This is "industry best practice" for a good reason. We don't have a good reason to defy it, especially when we've got an option to turn off stationary animations. Especially so when some of us love the way it looks, and go out of our way to make the game look that way. (Regarding an option to turn off just "standing-on-ground" animations, feel free to write the code.)

[penguin]

That's because the shortcut opens the game with command-line parameters that tell it where your data is. It's still opening the same program, just opening it with different settings.

Not entirely sure how that works, but I'm glad it's not anything serious - since they're the same file, at least I thought. Any way to make the data available to both?

Not really; not unless you compile it yourself, or start it from a terminal. Neither of which you want to do; it would completely spoil the point (convenience).

It would be good if something could be done about it though.

[ivanovic]

Oh, and the Previous / Next buttons on the opening screen (for the little tactical hints) sends me to a "The End" credits screen. Again, hope this hasn't already been posted.

This one is even already fixed (and relevant for 1.8.4, too). The fix will be included in 1.8.5 and 1.9.1.

[norbert]

It doesn't make sense for things to move constantly when they don't have to. [...] distant future where every single unit does have a standing animation. Every elf, every dwarf, every heavy infantryman. Picture the map. Far too busy; I couldn't put up with that.

I agree that it would be far too busy and that it wouldn't make any sense. These games that have units permanently walking simply didn't have the resources (time, money) to work on (multiple) idle animations. That's why they picked that unrealistic, annoying and ugly solution. If everything is moving, would you even notice an Ulfserker drinking beer? I have a fourth alternative to add to Simons Mith's list, that I think would be a nice 'compromise':
4. Use bobbing animations, but only for (flying/hovering units and) the units that are both: a. owned by the person whose turn it is and b. still able to perform an action (i.e. don't have a red orb). They are anxious to get to work!

[TheBladeRoden]

Here's a video of a lizard NOT dancing
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=vrD5CQ9Eq ... re=related

[Maiklas3000]

When a lvl 3 unit advances (AMLA), the game crashes.

Do you have a savegame to reproduce this? Have you used some special addon amla or was it default? As thespaceinvader just wrote in IRC:

[21:18:14] <thespaceinvader> Ivanovic: I wonder whether that's some problem with non-default AMLA - I've AMLA'd level 3s without any problem

Some more information might help. Any information (like the operating system used, how you got your binary ("official", built by yourself, ...), ...) might help. Please provide as much as possible.

I am also experiencing this problem. When an allied campaign-specific level 1 unit advances AMLA, the game crashes. I'm pretty sure I have AMLA'ed these units myself, so the crash could be due to it being an ally. Or not.

Campaign: Dead Water
Scenario: Slavers
Unit: Merman Brawler
OS: Windows 7, 64-bit
Version: Standard executable download of 1.9.0

To reproduce, load the attached file and hit "end turn". If the allied Brawler kills a unit and advances, the program will terminate with no message. This also happened to me on another play of the scenario, and that time the allied Brawler leveled up (AMLA) defensively, instead of offensively.

[boru]

Personally, I *like* the new saurian animations a lot.

Since Skirmishers/Ambushers/Flankers get 4 melee attacks per round, it's hard to imagine them as being lethargic cold blooded lizards, sunning themselves all day. I've always thought they must be a bit hyperactive. Same with Fencers, Thugs, Elvish Fighters, Nagas - units with more attacks per round would move around a lot more.

[sur.nhm]

First of all: Xubuntu 10.0.4, BfW 1.9.0, compiled from source.

I have an odd bug: some of the terrain types (Dwarvish castle, flat, etc) show as void, when units walk over these terrains they ghost and I get a message that says that those terrains are missing their .png suffix or something similar (I've checked, and they don't). What should I do?

[Xudo]

MS WinXP SP3
When I attack enemy by my silver mage from position on the screenshot, an error was occured.

stderr.txt:

Battle for Wesnoth v1.9.0
Started on Tue Aug 31 19:56:18 2010

Automatically found a possible data directory at D:/Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0

Data directory: D:/Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0
User configuration directory: D:/Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0/userdata
User data directory: D:/Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0/userdata
Cache directory: D:/Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0/userdata/cache
Checking video mode: 1280x968x32...
setting mode to 1280x968x32
20100831 19:56:18 error display: could not open image 'buttons/menu-button-disabled.png'
20100831 19:56:18 error gui/draw: Image: 'buttons/menu-button-disabled.png' not found and won't be drawn.
20100831 19:56:18 error gui/draw: Image: 'buttons/menu-button-disabled.png' not found and won't be drawn.

screenshot:

Savegame:

МВ-Огненный_Меч_Turn_11.gz

(69.74 KiB) Downloaded 116 times

Error says:

Assertion failed!
Program: D:\Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.0\wesnoth.exe
File: src\unit_map.hpp
Line: 109

Expression: valid()

For information on how your program can cause an assertion failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts

(Press Retry to debug the application - JIT must be enabled)

[Alink]

MS WinXP SP3
When I attack enemy by my silver mage from position on the screenshot, an error was occured.

Thanks for the report, bug was only when move+teleport+attacking from a fogged village, which hopefully is very rare. Anyway, now fixed on trunk, and will be back-ported to 1.8 too.

[Soliton]

First of all: Xubuntu 10.0.4, BfW 1.9.0, compiled from source.

I have an odd bug: some of the terrain types (Dwarvish castle, flat, etc) show as void, when units walk over these terrains they ghost and I get a message that says that those terrains are missing their .png suffix or something similar (I've checked, and they don't). What should I do?

Remove the old data lying around somewhere.

[doofus-01]

(Regarding an option to turn off just "standing-on-ground" animations, feel free to write the code.)

I can't do that, but can I comment out the animation in the unit file. That may break multiplayer, but oh well.

This python script comments out lines with "{STANDING" of the animation macro, it should be more useful when there are more dancers than just saurians. You'll need to change the directory in lines 71 and 79 to wherever the unit files would be found on your system.

If you get it to work, but change your mind about the animations, run it again with "--undo" argument.

It seems to work for me. Use at your own risk.