1.0 Feature List

[quartex]

However I really hope we don't leave the wesnothpedia by the roadside. I worry that when things get delayed, the people working on them leave, and we forget they were ever going to happen. It's not a critical feature, i admit, but as we are constantly increasing the number of units (which is a good thing) a window that shows all the units you have seen and displays their stats could be REALLY useful (like it was in civilization).

It's also a feature which doesn't sound impossible to implement. The UI is the biggest problem. I'd suggest a big window with unit's name and icons (in case the player doesn't remember the name). A smaller window can display the stats, and the player can click on "more info..." to learn about the unit's terrain modifiers and description.

Okay...maybe we'll resurrect this feature post 1.0, but lets not forget about it.

[Combatjuan]

Do we have any idea how the Wesnothpedia is going to be implemented in code? I would be happy to start working on putting the data and links together if I knew how the format would be read in and displayed. Will it look a lot like a civiliopedia? Maybe more like a Windows help document? Will is just have a couple indices and links? Will it be a collection of pages such that each page is its own file? I think it'd be a terrific addition to the game. I would also suggest that it be implemented using some new WML tags, and be done as a single file. Perhaps wesnothpedia.wml which could be loaded by the game.

An example of what it might look like:
[wesnothpediaentry]
id=WesnothPedia_Elvish_Fighter
[image]
file="images/elvish-fighter.png"
[/image]
[text]
[font]
size=big
[/font]
"WesnothPedia: Elvish Fighter"
[font]
size=regular
[/font]
"The Elvish Fighter is a level 1 unit that..."
"It has movement:"
{WOODLANDFOOTMOVEMENT}
"And defense:"
{WOODLANDFOOTDEFENSE}
"When an Elvish Fighter gains a level it can become:"
"Captain"
[/text]
[image]
file="images/elvish-captain.png"
link=WesnothPediaCaptian
[/image]
[text]
"Hero"
[/text]
[image]
file="images/elvish-hero.png"
link=WesnothPediaHero
[/image]
[/wesnothpediaentry]

I don't know. Something along those lines. Maybe we'd be "reinventing the wheel" that is HTML. Whatever. But if someone gives me a format, I'd work on that. Doesn't seem impossible to code either and it would be an incredibly useful, professional, and appreciated feature.

[Combatjuan]

Should have previewed that. It destroyed my indentations in the WML. Sorry about that.

[Darth Fool]

I think you would probably want to auto-generate it from the other cfg files. For inside the game, you wouldn't even need to have a seperate wesnothpedia file to read, since all the info would already be loaded. There are two big hurdles that I see which would need to be added to the current code. First a way of saving in games what units, items, terrains, etc that you have encountered. Second the code to add the UI. Both seem to me to be large jobs, which is probably why this keeps getting put off to post 1.0 development...

[Dave]

First a way of saving in games what units, items, terrains, etc that you have encountered. Second the code to add the UI. Both seem to me to be large jobs

The mechanism for saving units/items/terrains encountered is not difficult. The UI is (potentially) difficult.

@Combatjuan: You are welcome to propose and even implement a Wesnothpedia system.

My biggest comment about your WML example is that I think it's focusing too much on layout. Just give the content and let the game engine work out how to lay it out.

However I agree with Darth Fool that most/all of the content for units at least can be extracted from the unit's configuration files. Terrain doesn't have any documentation yet, and we'll probably want entries for things like weapon types and abilities.

If we do have to have WesnothPedia entries I would suggest they only need a few entries:

- id -- identifier of the entry for internationalization and to refer to other entries
- name -- the name of the entry -- displayed as a title
- image -- an image to display with the entry
- text -- the text to display which describes the entry
- see_also -- comma-seperated list of IDs of other entries which this entry relates to.

David

[Combatjuan]

I was concerned with the format because my vision of the WesnothPedia includes in-text hyperlinks. I also thought it might be nice to "see" what future upgrades look like. Formatting could be handled, I suppose in a general way, but perhaps it would be better to make it just a bit more specific and have the engine know how to handle it in a few different ways:
1.) A template for units
2.) A template for abilities
3.) A template for terrains
4.) A template for race information
5.) A template for history/geography information
6.) A general template (like you described) for anything else.

Of course, the plain and simple approach with "just the facts" works too. A unit screen, however, may need to display special stats about movement and defense (ones changed from its default movement) and those would most easily be posted in with the unit itself.

I was planning on using the text files to auto-generate most of the data. You think I have that much free time on my hands? (-8

-Charles

[Dave]

I was concerned with the format because my vision of the WesnothPedia includes in-text hyperlinks.

This would be rather difficult to implement, although if we could do it, it'd be cool.

1.) A template for units
2.) A template for abilities
3.) A template for terrains
4.) A template for race information
5.) A template for history/geography information
6.) A general template (like you described) for anything else.

Sure, but this could be done in-code or as 'style sheets' in WML.

I was planning on using the text files to auto-generate most of the data. You think I have that much free time on my hands? (-8

But I'm not sure this redundant data would be better/easier to manage anyhow.

David

[enki]

I've been hacking a little bit more on my wesnothpedia idea. Don't have much time though. It will now display all units that you have encountered so far in the game. It's also possible to just look at the units in the current scenario. I've also added simple support for description of different topics. It uses a simple wml format.

[topic]
id=
title=""
description=

[subtopic]
title=
text=
[/subtopic]
...
[/topic]

I'm thinking about adding some support for links, but not general hyperlinks. It should be possible to follow "See also" links and "Unit upgrade" links at least.

The code isn't in the best shape though, since I'm mainly testing ideas. The layout and text is also quite crude.

/ enki

[enki]

Ah, and some screenshots. The title of the "topic index" is wrong and the layout is quite bad, but the main idea is there at least.

[turin]

IMHO the organisation of the units should not be alphabetical, it should be first of all by race, they maybe by level, then by letter.

But the overall idea looks good, and it looks like this could be a neat thing for wesnoth to have.

[enki]

Maybe "Back" and "Forward" would be better that the current "Previous" and "Next"? The former is probably more useful, e.g. when comparing two different units. The latter is only really useful when you want to go through all units or similar.

[enki]

IMHO the organisation of the units should not be alphabetical, it should be first of all by race, they maybe by level, then by letter.

But the overall idea looks good, and it looks like this could be a neat thing for wesnoth to have.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that as well. At least sorting the units by rase and then alphabetical. I'm not convinced about sorting based on the level though. Should all races be displayed at the same time or should you have to choose which one to view?

[turin]

Choose which one to view. It is better, IMO, to have to click links to get to the page you want than to have too much information on one page. Since there are over 100 units, i don't think it would be wise to display it as one page.

And, if you don't want to sort by level, you might want to just have an advancement tree, with all first level units at the top of the page, branching down. Each page for each race would look pretty good then, IMO. all you would need, on the tree page, is the name and image. Also, if you sort into individual races, you might be able to ues the images at full size.

[enki]

Choose which one to view. It is better, IMO, to have to click links to get to the page you want than to have too much information on one page. Since there are over 100 units, i don't think it would be wise to display it as one page.

Yeah, sounds reasonable.

And, if you don't want to sort by level, you might want to just have an advancement tree, with all first level units at the top of the page, branching down. Each page for each race would look pretty good then, IMO. all you would need, on the tree page, is the name and image. Also, if you sort into individual races, you might be able to ues the images at full size.

Advancement tree would be cool, but that will have to wait. I'm glad if I find the time to finish what I've started coding any time soon. If I understand correctly, a wesnothpedia wouldn't be added before 1.0 anyway, so I guess there is no real hurry. I'll see what I can come up with though.

[Darth Fool]

If I understood the previous posts, It's not that a completed Wesnothpaedia wouldn't be added before 1.0, just that none of the lead developers were going to devote their time to doing the coding of it. My guess is, if you get it working and it looks good, it will get added.