Updating In-Game Help

Destructicus · Post by **Destructicus** » November 11th, 2005, 1:35 pm

I have some free time and I want to help get the in-game help completed. I've been playing Wesnoth for a while now and I would love to give something back to this wonderful project. Specifically I was thinking about finishing entries for every unit so that newer players can make more informed decisions about what path to choose for their upgrades. Can someone send me a PM or offer to get me rolling so I can start contributing?

Destructicus · Post by **Destructicus** » November 14th, 2005, 3:11 pm

I was looking at some of the code this morning... Is the in-game help automatically generated from the .cfg files for each type of unit? If so, why aren't some of the units included?

Post by **Dragonking** » November 14th, 2005, 3:37 pm

You can't see in help higher level units, unless you advance to them in game. (I don't understand why it works like that...)

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » November 14th, 2005, 4:04 pm

Dragonking wrote:You can't see in help higher level units, unless you advance to them in game. (I don't understand why it works like that...)

It makes sense to me that you don't see the entries for units you haven't met yet (at least as a default option) It's confusing to have to sort through 200+ names when you've only played with a couple dozen. But of course you should always be able to read about units 1 level above the units you currently have.

Post by **zookeeper** » November 14th, 2005, 4:57 pm

Eleazar wrote:It makes sense to me that you don't see the entries for units you haven't met yet (at least as a default option) It's confusing to have to sort through 200+ names when you've only played with a couple dozen. But of course you should always be able to read about units 1 level above the units you currently have.

And makes it rather frustrating to upgrade the game and find that almost all of the unit descriptions are disabled before you "encounter" the units again. I don't know if this happens anymore, but at some point it really pissed me off.

Destructicus · Post by **Destructicus** » November 14th, 2005, 5:04 pm

If this is a "feature" and not a bug, then it should be toggleable for certain scenarios or for multiplayer games. Just like the map "fog" effect you should be able to turn off the in-game help fog.

Post by **bruno** » November 14th, 2005, 9:47 pm

I complained about this before and had some discusion with Dave about it.
There are two reasons for why it is the way it is. One is that by not showing descriptions for every possible unit and terrain, we don't overwhelm new players. And by having people discover new units while playing adds some mystery to the game.
I have some issues with this, as it is nice to see what your level 1 units might eventually promote to before you make you recruiting decisions.
Having a preference setting may be doable.
Since I have some interest in this area I might make up a proposal and do some coding if the proposal is OK'd, but it isn't going to be high priority for me and since I haven't done any GUI changes yet, I may not be in a position to do this for a while. So it will probably just appear on my growing task list.

Destructicus · Post by **Destructicus** » November 14th, 2005, 10:01 pm

here are two reasons for why it is the way it is. One is that by not showing descriptions for every possible unit and terrain, we don't overwhelm new players. And by having people discover new units while playing adds some mystery to the game.

I agree, there is certainly some coolness to the mystery factor. But I have been playing Wesnoth for a while and I have leveled every unit to its max at one time or another. I cannot always remember how good a dwarvish fighter becomes or what his resistances and terrain defenses are when he hits level 3. I would like to be able to look at that stuff when I'm in multiplayer so I can make informed decisions.

As far as overwhelming goes... I seriously thought it was just an incomplete part of the game. You could say I was underwhelmed by the lack of info.

Maybe a good compromise would be a preference for multiplayer games (like Fog of War) and in the help it can be a tree type structure. So under Gryphon Rider when you click on it you'd have Gryphon Master. That would make the tree less cluttered while still giving access to all the info. For that matter, the Unit list as it is right now is pretty messy, why not tree it out based on faction/race/some other divider? Just some thoughts.

Post by **turin** » November 14th, 2005, 10:33 pm

My suggestions:

1. Sort the Units topic by race.

2. On the base level (i.e., as an entry in the Units topic), generate the unit tree.

3. On said unit tree, don't generate the units you haven't seen yet, but DO somehow indicate (with a questionmark or something) that there are more units than shown there. And show all level 1 units, not just the ones you've seen.

Post by **ott** » November 15th, 2005, 3:44 am

A tip for those who are irritated by not having all units available in help: run the game once in debug mode. All units will be made available in help, and next time round the game will think you have encountered all units.