A question about the interface

[iceiceice]

Hi,

I've been playing wesnoth for about 6-7 months. I'm writing because I think there might be some obscure interface trick that everyone knows but me about how to get info about the time of day bonuses for tiles with special time of day effects.

The basic issue: Everyone knows that if you mouse over time of day picture in the info bar at right, it shows you, e.g. Morning \\ Lawful +25% \\ Neutral +0% \\ Chaotic -25% \\ Liminal -25%. However if I am interested in a "special" time of day specific to only one tile or a few tiles, I do not know how to get these numbers, since the picture disappears when I move my mouse and so I cannot mouse over it.

There are several maps which have special custom hexes with special effects on time of day, and special bonuses for lawful vs. chaotic. In campaign play you are of course exposed to caves in which it is always dark, which are well explained in the (F1) help. However, we also have:

-Elesenfar courtyard, the columns 28-31 have "lighted cavern" (dont know what its actually called) time of day, which it turns out is always neutral.
-Den of Onis, the lava hexes are passable to flying and give an illuminate bonus, benefitting drakes and hurting undead fliers. This illuminate bonus *stacks* on top of the global time of day, so a drake over lava at day gets +50%, and a ghost does only 2-3 melee.
-Tombs of Kesorak, the central tomb hex is always night, and the campfire hexes are always one time of day brighter than global time of day, but are "no brighter than day", and the green tomb hexes are always one time of day darker than the global time of day but are no darker than night.

The first two maps are mainline, Tombs of Kesorak is available in the Rushed By Yetis map pack add-on, and probably other places.

The question I am interested in is, how can a newbie who plays one of these maps for the first time figure out exactly what these special hexes do?

Tombs of Kesorak is maybe the easiest -- the campfire and tombs only change the TOD to a "standard" TOD, one that is described in the (F1) help. When I mouse over these hexes, I get a standard picture so I know what to expect, and it is documented.

In Elesenfar courtyard however, the special time of day does not appear in the help, so in fact the picture that is shown means *nothing* to me. Experienced players simply learn, by telling each other, that these tiles eliminate TOD bonus. There's nothing wrong with this, but suppose I were playing a ladder match on a new map which like this one has its own custom TODs with odd bonuses. Right now the only way that I know of that I could learn exactly what the custom TOD's mean is to boot up a parallel copy of wesnoth, boot up a local copy of the map, and move various types of units over the hex.

It's especially important because even mainline maps don't always adhere to conventions about how TOD modifiers should work. For instance in campaigns where one gets a mage of light, one learns that the illuminate effect "improves" the time of day in surrounding hexes, indicated by the illuminate icon appearing when mousing over those tiles. This will make night act as dusk and dusk act as day, but importantly, will not make +25% bonus on top of day. However, the lava hexes in den of onis illuminate "beyond" day. I do not know if this is just a bug or an intentional inconsistency, but I think even many experienced players do not expect this. (The images, at least, do not seem to be inconsistent -- it seems that when you mouse over a hex adjacent to a mage of light at day time, the TOD display does not show the "illuminate" overlay, consistent with the extra bonus not appearing, and on Den of Onis at day time lava hexes do have the illuminate overlay on top of day to let you know that the super bonus is happening.)

Suggestion:

To my mind, what is happening here is a bug. When a unit is selected, the *local* time of day affecting that unit should be the time of day appearing in the info bar at right. This would mean that when I see an unusual time of day I can move a unit over (perhaps using planning mode), then select that unit and mouse over the info bar, and see its lawful / chaotic bonuses.

It may be that this has been discussed and rejected, and the time of day display is thought to be working perfectly. In that case, how am I supposed to get detailed info about the time of day bonuses at a hex? I have tried right clicking on the hex and it doesn't seem to do what I want. There is no way that I know of to select a *tile*, only units. Hexes, on mouse over, already show defense and mp cost of the selected unit in small white text at the top -- should they also show TOD bonus for that unit? (+25%, 0, -25%, +50%, -50% etc.?)

Presumably there is some way to do this that I have simply missed which does not involve booting up a second copy of wesnoth and doing tedious experiments.

Thanks,
iceiceice

[iceiceice]

One week and more than a hundred views later with no responses, it seems that there is no known workaround to the problem I mentioned here (http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39388). Therefore I am classifying it as a design flaw / bug. (There is no associated error message; if it is a bug it is a logic bug.) I also rewrote the post for readability.

Problem

Everyone knows that by mousing over the TOD (time of day) image in the info bar at right the player can see e.g. "Morning: \\ Lawful units +25% \\ Neutral units +0% \\ Chaotic units -25% \\ Liminal units -25%", however there is no way to get these numbers for "special" times of day that affect only one or a few hexes, because the special time of day will disappear when you attempt to mouse over its image. For such "local" TOD's no one seems to know how to get this information (except by tedious experimentation), so this seems to be a design flaw in the interface, or possibly the intended behavior was not properly implemented.

For example many mainline scenarios have underground regions in which it is always dark. This is fine because the underground TOD is described in (F1) Help. However there are also scenarios with nonstandard local TOD's which are not documented and/or have peculiar properties.

Examples:
- Elensefar Courtyard
- Den of Onis
- Tombs of Kesorak
- more?

For discussion of the significance of these examples see my earlier post.

Suggested Fix

The easiest fix, IMHO, is that the behavior of the TOD display (which shows the picture in the infobar at right) should be changed slightly.

Currently the behavior is: If the cursor is over the game board, display the TOD of the hex which is highlighted. Otherwise, display the global TOD.

Proposed change: If a unit has been selected AND the mouse is not over the game board, then the local TOD specific to that unit's hex should be displayed.

This will make it possible to get a description of the local TOD at any hex by moving a unit over it (possibly in planning mode) and mousing over the TOD image. This change will not affect the way that the user can scan across the hexes with the mouse and see the pictures for the local TODs easily; if the player wants to see the global TOD again they must simply right click to deselect the unit, or select any unit under the global TOD.

On any map without special TOD hexes, the user will see no difference with this change, so it is "safe". For the maps which do have such hexes (including some popular mainline MP maps, and some UMC scenarios), this will be a welcome and useful change. And it does not significantly complicate the interface -- most likely players will understand the new behavior immediately.

[Turuk]

Just because you did not get a response in what you felt was a timely manner, please do not create multiple topics on the same subject.

[iceiceice]

The second post was because of new information, and to make it easier to read. Just trying to report problems in a helpful way, sorry if it came off as demanding or anything like that. I was not trying to suggest that I was not getting a timely response from devs, just that none of the other forum visitors appear to know of a workaround.

[Turuk]

Certainly, and we appreciate you taking the time to identify and document such an issue, it's just easier to keep track of a topic if it's kept together, so there are not multiple threads discussing the same thing.

There will hopefully be someone who can explain this shortly.

[JaMiT]

-Elesenfar courtyard, the columns 28-31 have "lighted cavern" (dont know what its actually called) time of day, which it turns out is always neutral.

If it had a name, it would probably be "illuminated cavern". The ToD image associated with those hexes seems to be intended to serve the same purpose as the cavern image with the illumination overlay.

-Den of Onis, the lava hexes are passable to flying and give an illuminate bonus, benefitting drakes and hurting undead fliers. This illuminate bonus *stacks* on top of the global time of day, so a drake over lava at day gets +50%, and a ghost does only 2-3 melee.

In 1.11, that's been capped at 35%. You should still see the illumination overlay when mousing over those hexes, though, as I recall.

The question I am interested in is, how can a newbie who plays one of these maps for the first time figure out exactly what these special hexes do?

I think I figured them out because the illumination overlay is the same as you see when mousing over a hex next to a mage of light, and I just extrapolated from that. And I looked at the damage calculations when attacking out of those types of spaces.

In Elesenfar courtyard however, the special time of day does not appear in the help, so in fact the picture that is shown means *nothing* to me.

There is an argument there for adding it to the help (it is a "core" image), but be aware that each map can define its own ToD images, and I think there is no mechanism for adding custom ToD images to the help.

[...] but suppose I were playing a ladder match on a new map which like this one has its own custom TODs with odd bonuses.

If your opponent had not seen the map before, then it's fair since you're both equally disadvantaged. If your opponent had seen the map before, then to be fair, you should be given enough time in advance to try out the map on your own to learn its quirks. And "quirks" includes more than just ToD locations.

Or you could just have fun with it and wing it. The joy of discovery, and all that.

(The images, at least, do not seem to be inconsistent -- it seems that when you mouse over a hex adjacent to a mage of light at day time, the TOD display does not show the "illuminate" overlay, consistent with the extra bonus not appearing, and on Den of Onis at day time lava hexes do have the illuminate overlay on top of day to let you know that the super bonus is happening.)

Yep, you figured out how the display works. So we can cross those hexes off the list of problems.


OK, enough for me today. That's a long post. Takes a good chunk of time to process. (I don't even recall how many times over the past few days I read the post just to get far enough to write this reply.)

[JaMiT]

In that case, how am I supposed to get detailed info about the time of day bonuses at a hex?

Well, one way is to plot an attack to or from that hex, then look at the damage calculations. (This does require an enemy to be in position, and one of your units to be able to attack this turn, but you don't have to actually move.)

Everyone knows that

This is a red flag to me indicating that massively unjustified assumptions are likely being made. I don't know if that is the case here, but it's usually a bad idea to assume everyone knows something. (And I'm pretty sure I can find some people who have never heard of Wesnoth, and therefore are extremely unlikely to know that tidbit about mousing over the image.)

Proposed change: If a unit has been selected AND the mouse is not over the game board, then the local TOD specific to that unit's hex should be displayed.

I'm just going to quote this because it could easily get lost in that wall of text you wrote.