You may have noticed in trunk the ellipses have changed, and units are
standing in the center of the hex. It was an experiment to try to
improve the appearance of the game. In a field of grass the difference
isn't obvious. But it matters in other circumstances.
My evaluation on (mostly) the major points given by eleazar:
- currently a unit's entire hex is a button for attacking it and all the
rest eleazar already wrote about it. Someone estimated that it would
probably be hard to implement the selection so that hovering over the
unit image would select that unit even if the part you hovered above was
outside the unit's hex, which would have been my ideal fix. So yes, I'd
count this as a problem, although not a huge one.
-/+ having unit images overlap multiple hexes/terrains muddles
things...well, not really, IMO. I don't see it myself, since the main
way I spot where units stand is by where they stand, which is amply
highlighted by the ellipses. Of course, if you have those set off, then
I'm pretty sure things are muddled up (see the next one for my opinion
on ellipses). The graphics are already drawn from an isometric
perspective which implies that things overlap, so I don't think that
there can be any confusion about which terrain the unit stands on that
isn't caused by looking at the current/old Wesnoth long enough and
having to adapt to a change. I'd dare to bet that any newbie who'd look
at the game for the first time would find that the centered units looked
more pleasant and natural than the current/old lowered units.
+ the modified positioning looks a lot better on all terrains (except
villages, obviously), not just bridges and castles. Do note that this is
probably partially dependant on having the ellipses being set on.
Without them, the difference is probably much less or the new position
might actually look slightly worse. Personally, I'd like to remove the
option for setting ellipses off.
- villages and items such as altars and trees look a lot dumber
currently (when a unit is standing there). My solution for villages
would be the multi-house villages I've proposed before. If the unit
centering should be kept, basically all villages and items which
represent buildings and such would need to be changed. Villages would
need to be heavily edited into multi-house villages and items such as
altars would need to be moved from the center of the hex to the edges
(such as the top of the hex).
+ fixes the fundamental perspective flaw of having units stand in the
bottom of the area on which they're standing on, instead of in the
middle of it. Of course, most of this fixing effect is probably due to
the enlarged ellipses, which are more in line with the perspective of
the terrain, which in turn closes the gap between the perspective of the
terrain and the perspective of the unit graphics, which are indisputably
different. I couldn't really cram similar enlarged ellipses to the
confines of the bottom of the hex, and I don't think they can be moved
to leak over the south parts of the hex in order to have them there
since that'd look extra silly.
My summary: lots of work especially with villages (and slightly less
with items and other scenery) and sorting out the other issues, but with
a huge benefit in the overall look of the game. Being the main
instigator of the idea, I don't need to say that I think it should be
kept and worked on ;). The thing that I'm mostly surprised to hear from
people is that the benefits are slight or dubious. To my eyes, the
benefit is huge or at least grand; everything looks much more in place.
Of course, this is a matter of taste, and if enough people agree that
the current/old way is truly better, then so be it.
--
Lari Nieminen a.k.a zookeeper
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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