Annoying lost feature

[Yomar]

One thing that I really miss from the previous versions of Wesnoth, is the ability to click on an enemy that in this way remained selected, and then be able to scroll the map to see how far he could move.
This was very useful when playing on low (but also medium) screen resolutions, any way to reactivate this feature ?
The feature was present by default in V 1.8 of BFW and maybe 1.10 (but not sure).

[WhiteWolf]

I tried it, and I noticed, you can still do this. Select the enemy unit with a left-click, the right-click-hold and drag away from the unit. After releasing the right-button, the enemy stays selected, you can see where he can move, and you can scroll the screen

See the screenshot, the cursor is far away, and I could scroll. I use Wesnoth 1.12.6 on Debian. Hope this works for you.

[Elder2]

Use arrow keys?

[Yomar]

I tried it WhiteWolf, but sadly on windows it seems not to work.

ElderofZion, my arrow keys are broken, and the other computer that I have is in a such position that I need to change position to use the keyboard, so switching from mouse to keyboard while playing is very unconfortable, and as I said the arrow keys are not functioning on the laptop that I usually use to play the game, and the little space that I have in the room, makes unpratical to connect an external keyboard.

[Elder2]

Well, I use arrowkeys, mousewhell, and sometimes I use cursor to scroll the screen. i think mouse wheel+cursor works decently. And if you can't use it, well, i have tried it and I can select an enemy unit and then use cursor to scroll the screen, just that it is rather slow. Maybe it doesn't work for you because you have some setting changed, check your preferences, I recall there was some setting in advanced regarding scrolling or mouse use.

[Yomar]

My mouse has no weel.

Anyway, after some experementing, I discovered that clicking on an enemy unit, holding the left button and then dragging works, still more annoying than before, but at least it made the trick.

[Jarom]

I would use this feature if it ever will be (re-)implemented. I mostly play on high resolutions, but it's still annoying if you cannot see how far enemy unit can move without selecting it. Especially when you try to stay away from range of just one of his units, and both your and your enemy's unit is a fast scout (like Lancer) on diverse terrain.

[Yomar]

I was wrong, the method that I discovered works only in locals games against the AI, I tried it online, but it does not work, so I can't see the range of enemy units that are far away.
The feature was automatic, I wonder if it was removed on purpose, or if its a bug.

[Coffee]

To answer the questions of where this game behavior went: before 1.12 in the development cycle another developer Fabi/Fendrin was rewriting the input controls code. This was to allow for remapping of the standard left click and such that was not remappable beforehand.

IIRC he then experimented with a change to the mouse inputs to select a unit with left click and right click to move and attack. This didn't work out and I ended up reverting the behavior closer to 1.12 release with mouse clicks by default to the previous behavior, but using the new code (as some time had passed and it could not be reverted easily).

This is why you can't select an enemy unit like before and move around as before, but you can remap the inputs for movement/selection and attack. Maybe if you look at the control keys for this you might be able to set them so that you can achieve your desired outcome again (or you could submit a patch if you can do this and are keen enough).

[Yomar]

Thx, coffee, this explains a lot, I would definetly make a patch, if I could, but sadlly I'm not deep enought in programming to acheive this.