On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 10:42:49AM +0300, Lari Nieminen wrote: > >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. >
I think you fail to see some extra side effects that does the opposite effect of improving the overall look of the game, or have bad effects on the interface : - units that goes outside of the hex : this causes ingames graphical glitches. See for example what happen with the Goblin Rouser in 1.3.1 (althrough it is a really small glitch in that case, btw it would be more an issue with units with a large part outside the hex). - it makes less clear on which hex stands the unit : this is more a gameplay issue. You know, some people tend to consider the grid and the ellipse invasive, thus graphically bad for their taste, so they disable them. Yes they have a problem with determining which side are a few units, but this will probably be fixed in the future, as almost every normal unit has/will have TC. Also simply clicking on the unit will no longer work in all case when you simply want to select an unit. This can lead you to attack the neighbour unit instead of the target, and if they are similar it is really a problem. - it makes the grid more invasive since it cuts in half some units - Also for most terrains sorry, i don't really see a huge improvement. For me it doesn't really make a difference on most terrains (outside of some like castles and bridges). Btw for villages, the multi-hex solution you already was rejected for various reason, in particular because it goes too far outside the hex to make clear which unit is in the village... My conclusion is it does improve the ellipse position, but with a lot of side effects. IHMO this requires a lot of work (remake all the village and a lot of scenery/object) for something (the ellipses) that is becoming more and more useless with TC. Do we really need this ? I don't think so... _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
