Changelog - picture heavy

Started by Andy ONeill, January 02, 2018, 02:08:07 PM

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bayonetbrant

Santa and his Elves, huh?

Seen at Origins this year ;D

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Andy ONeill

They can be very dangerous them elves.
It's the little fellers you have to watch.

Andy ONeill

Army Editor

Added user message mechanism.

Added base Accuracies editor.
This is available off the Preferences menu.
You click "open" to pick which file you want to work with.
You're then presented with a sort of graph of the values.
This is 100 vertical sliders, one per percentage range.
0% range is the left origin and 100 the right.
As you mouseover each, the relevant data is displayed to the right of the graph.
You can alter the values for any you like using their slider.

If you use a pc, you will have used sliders. Just maybe not realised you've been using them.
Because sliders are used to scroll browser windows.
There are sort of 3 obvious parts to any slider.
There are two repeat buttons and a thing called a thumb which is the value pointer.
The thumb on a desktop browser is usually quite a big rectangle.
They also mostly have extra repeatbuttons at each end ( with a chevron on them ).

For those unfamiliar:
You can click, hold and drag the thumb up or down.
Once a slider is focussed (click or tab ) you can alternatively use the keyboard and the arrow keys will make it go up or down.
Alternatively you can press one of the repeatbuttons.
These are the parts you see on either side of the thumb.
One click moves a bit.
Click and hold repeatedly click ( hence the name ).


Andy ONeill

Army Editor

Added name of accuracy file being edited to title bar.
Clicking on the slider above or below each of the crosses now moves it 0.001 per click.
This makes smoothing a curve a lot easier than trying to drag the thumb by teeny amounts.
You can click and hold to do this repeatedly.



Added tooltip to each of the accuracy curves in the combobox telling you which they are.

Added edit unit accuracies.
This changes just the accuracies for that one unit - not the base files or other units.


It's accessed by clicking the button with the pencil icon on it.
And... looks remarkably similar to how you edit the base accuracies.



Any changes made are only copied over to the unit when you click save.
Even then, if you made a mistake the values are not saved to disk until you save the army you're editing.

Andy ONeill

Army Editor

Changing positioning of unit stats so more will fit.
Adding Swords Reload Time and Range.



Bug fix: Part of the ui wasn't responding to change of font preferences.

Sitnam

The updates are great, Andy.  How close is this project to completion?

Andy ONeill

Thanks.
The idea of a changelog in software development generally is so you can track changes between versions.
Obviously, people don't have a working product to track any changes on yet.
At the moment the idea is partly to re-assure people we're doing something.
But mainly... to explain decisions, show how stuff works, provide a basis for documentation and to entertain.
If you've been following along it should be easier to get started when you install the finished thing.

It's guesswork when I'll finish the game module.
Not actually started it yet.
Maybe December.
Future plans and wild guesses have a different thread.
http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=22324.0

Andy ONeill

Scenario Editor

Looking at the distance things shoot and where units would be, it became obvious that one piece would be on top of another when they are at musket ranges let alone in close combat.
Previously, the icons in a piece kind of fill the entire circle that is a piece.
This is problematic because the frontage of a line battalion should be a straight line.
To address this, we decided to move the symbols down inside the piece so their front is across the central line.
That then means some will stick out the back of the circle.
That depth is a bit of a problem so reducing that would be good.
Of course regular nato symbols don't have any arrows indicating facing.
Removing those thus reduces the depth of the symbols and reduces our depth problem.
What about indicating facing?
Facing is often reasonably obvious - but I have a plan to indicate facing separately as well but that's for later.
The first step was to take those arrows off and clean the mess up when it all then fell apart.



I was then surprised to notice you can't set the formation on a unit you drag onto the map.
Ooops.
Add combo to set formation to piece contextmenu

Added "Small" unit formation for HQ so it has a valid formation.

When testing that I found Formation wasn't being persisted when saving a scenario.
Probably not so surprising since you couldn't set it I suppose.
Fixed that.

Still need to sort out column square and make sure all symbols end up in the right place.

Once done units will look OK in common battlefield positions.
There will still be a bit of an oddity if one unit moves into close combat with another from it's rear - because one will be on top of another.
The defender is probably done for in that situation anyhow.

Actual frontage for shooting and close combat stuff will be calculated rather than depending on the pieces you see on the board representing units, so any weirdness should just be cosmetic.

Andy ONeill

Bug Fixing

Fixed points of "triangles" for light infantry and cavalry projecting slightly beyond their rectangle.
Army editor fix problem due to null accuracies when adding a HQ
Set default accuracies for new unit.
Fixed extra underline indicating two shortcut keys on load blue.

Scenario Editor

Completing changes to allow pieces to face each other in close combat without the icons on one being on top of the other's.

Added facing "triangle" to piece.
This is rather like the triangle you get indicating facing for an individual figure in combat games.
It appears only when the unit "lights up" due to mouseover of it or a piece in the same command.

This triangle will probably become different shapes in the game to indicate status.
Details of that as yet to be firmed up decided.

Moved the units down within the piece so the front face is across the center.
This involves changing a number of things rather than just one due to kriegsspiel showing multiple icons for strength. And column.

Icons can now extend past the circular edge of a piece which is particularly necessary for kriegsspiel units strength 2+ in column.


I still need to decide a good way to represent square.

Just to repeat something I think I mentioned earlier.
The icon is just a representation of the piece on the board.
Calculations deciding range, who can see and shooting will be completely abstracted from the visual representation.

Andy ONeill

Scenario Editor

Added Square formation representation.

In Simulation mode, there's an empty square


In Kriegsspiel mode the strength is shown by the number of bands.
The pieces below are KS 2 and 3


Although these have a smaller frontage than a line formation this is still over scale.
Squares were actually relatively small formations since there are 4 sides and they'd usually be 4 deep with command and a reserve in the centre ready to plug any gaps.
They also tended to be closer order than line since the whole idea was to discourage horses from seeing a gap to get through and to ensure there were many more infantrymen than cavalrymen in any contact in order to drive them off.

Involved in this work for various arcane technical reasons was a refactor of how several attributes are handed down the layers of a piece.
This refactor is also a move towards making this more generic which will be necessary for the game.
There are probably still a few things broken in the process though.

Andy ONeill

Scenario Editor

Test - fix cycle turned up less problems than I was expecting. Maybe I just missed some :^)

Minor fixes on unit icon.

Increase height (length) of column when in Simulation

Only show formations combobox on unit context menu when it has more than one option.
EG HQ can only have formation of "Small" and supply wagons are always column.

Andy ONeill

Army editor

Various minor changes to improve look and readability.
Vertically centering edit textboxes so the numbers sort of line up with the label.
It's impossible to guarantee exactly lining up, partly due to the two different controls of textbox and textblock involved but also due to fonts.
Cursive fonts and our Victorian ones measure differently to what the viewer might expect and their centre isn't always where you might expect it to be.
Added tooltips explaining some of the fields.


Bug fixes
Avoid error closing unit accuracy window
Without any preferences chosen, no fonts were loaded and therefore the fonts used default windows ones.
( I hadn't noticed this because personally I prefer readable over fancy ).

Andy ONeill

Army Editor

Removed the "Swords" which was just a Boolean on-off switch and added.

  • Shooting
    Close Combat

These are measures of lethality and hence a multiplier on effect.  A full 12pdr battery can now be more effective than a 6pdr battery. *
We can now differentiate between a unit which has no bayonets and one that does. ( AWI ). Or gunners with pokey sticks and hussars with sabres or lances.

( Exactly what weapon these are and weapon reach is a step too far at this level of representation though. )



*
EG at Isandlwana the British forces had a third of the unit of 7Pdr  - 2 out of 6.
This will allow you to try finer grained what-ifs.
Maybe
Chelmsford leaves all his 7pdr at Isandlwana.
Reno doesn't wrap his one gatling gun round a rock on the way to Little Big Horn.

Andy ONeill

Added Skirmishing.
A unit has serveral options regarding skirmishing which are set in army editor
These SkirmishOptions are:

  • Never
    Optional
    Always

Never is the default.



If you select optional then "Skirmish" appears as another formation in the context menu for pieces once dragged onto the map in scenario editor.
Selecting skirmish in the scenario editor or the default when Skirmishing Always is set on a unit then the icon is 0.6 of the height as you see below.



Skirmishing is an infanty sort of thing and a unit is more dispersed.  The unit will take less casualties when shot at BUT will be worse in close combat and when charged. Rallying skirmishers is harder.
Particularly in the ACW, some cavalry would dismount and act as a skirmish screen to slow down advances and the like. I've therefore not limited which unit types can skirmish.

Andy ONeill

Army Editor
When choosing save of a new army there was no default name so it errored. Set name to "default".
Changed menu File > Quit to Exit ( windows standard ).

All

Changed the folders and standardised internal methods to access these.
In localappdata there is now a /GeneralStaff/Blackowder folder which contains all the files and folders.
This is because we intend releasing general staff for different periods as well.

Renamed the exe.
The various exe are now prefixed GSBP which stands for GeneralStaff Black Powder.
There will be different versions of the editor and game for each period and hence each module should have a unique name.
This won't be noticed by the vast majority of steam users but early supporters will be getting installers before I do steam integration. There are also some people prefer to control where steam installs apps and run them just from links rather than via steam.