AAR Mode

[Marshall Ellis]

Hey guys:

A small look at the AAR mode that we are adding in 1.07! this will give tracking arrows to all units, all your units or the selected unit! Now it should be a lot easier to see who moved where in PBEM when loading a turn. (JPEG is a little blury) Thoughts...

[obsidiandrag]

Looks pretty good, now is the computer going to be better at figureing out the moves it said I can make?  ie.. clicking to an area it says it can reach that it can't figure out how to, as it goes through the mountains or swamp first because it started closer to that area??
 
OD
 

[Jimmer]

Looks very good.
 
Very nice! I like it!!!
 
Other features that would be nice (all as toggle options):
 
Remove terrain effects
Remove forage numbers
Remove ownership coloring and hashes
Allow a "spread view", where all of the corps in an area can be seen at once. It would like like someone holding a hand of cards.
Allow a version to be printable and used for planning sessions. I used to make black and white versions of the map and then color them in based on who owned and and where the forces were. That could be done by the computer nowadays.

[obsidiandrag]

Ownership coloring and hashes can be removed by double clicking on it or the mini map, something like that.. I have done it before and wondered what happened...
 
OD

[Jimmer]

Cool!

[Marshall Ellis]

ORIGINAL: obsidiandragon

Looks pretty good, now is the computer going to be better at figureing out the moves it said I can make?  ie.. clicking to an area it says it can reach that it can't figure out how to, as it goes through the mountains or swamp first because it started closer to that area??

OD

I hope that 1.07 will have somewhat better pathing but that's not to say that you won't find an obscure situation where it takes a goofy path.

[Dancing Bear]

Marshall, this looks very good. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[NeverMan]

I'm sure I'll get blasted... but this looks clunky.

[eske]

LOL NeverMan...

When you present yourself like this:

        
... don't be surprised of the next thing your hear ....

/eske

NB: And Marshal ... plz. go on with this great feature.
Clunkiness can get reduced later, when it has seen a bit more use.

[Dancing Bear]

Actually I think with a tuned down colour, a thinner arrow, and perhaps an archaic type arrow, it would look pretty good. (What type of arrow would someone have drawn in the 18th Century, is anyone here a history major and can provide an example?). Like Eske says, this is a prototype. I’m all for the idea, so let’s get it out and improve it as we go.

For the future, Marshall, does the map work on Cartesian (X and Y) coordinates? Because if so, you could program the 3 separate arrows to appear a single curve passing through the point you have selected for each territory. This would generate a single smooth curve, which is more or less unique for each route, instead of three separate straight arrows (you might add dots where the curve passes through each territory, and save the arrow head for the end). This would make the map look like a map I imagine you might see in a WW1 general’s headquarters. Somebody on this site must be able to give you the formula for a parabola passing through one to three points.

[Marshall Ellis]

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

I'm sure I'll get blasted... but this looks clunky.

Imagine my surprise!

Turn it off.

OMG LOL!

[Marshall Ellis]

ORIGINAL: Dancing Bear

Actually I think with a tuned down colour, a thinner arrow, and perhaps an archaic type arrow, it would look pretty good. (What type of arrow would someone have drawn in the 18th Century, is anyone here a history major and can provide an example?). Like Eske says, this is a prototype. I’m all for the idea, so let’s get it out and improve it as we go.

For the future, Marshall, does the map work on Cartesian (X and Y) coordinates? Because if so, you could program the 3 separate arrows to appear a single curve passing through the point you have selected for each territory. This would generate a single smooth curve, which is more or less unique for each route, instead of three separate straight arrows (you might add dots where the curve passes through each territory, and save the arrow head for the end). This would make the map look like a map I imagine you might see in a WW1 general’s headquarters. Somebody on this site must be able to give you the formula for a parabola passing through one to three points.

Agreed DB!
Funny! I have been looking at arrow formulas/funtions for a while so if anybody has any leads in this area I am interested. These are straight and do not look the time. They are manually drawn with some use of sin/cos functions (clunky sin/cos functions ) and could use some curves!

[Dancing Bear]

So, is the map set up with X and Y coordinates? We'll need to know to find a formula.

[Marshall Ellis]

XY is Correct!

[obsidiandrag]

I would think something like the first version of the PC Axis and Allies arrows.. they would go from area to area while you held the unit (or undid each individual movement) and on completion of the movement would make a smooth line through all areas encountered with the arrow on the end..

On another note.. would that make the "Undue" command for movement better if it could undue one space at a time?? I have had several disagreements with the game over movements that could not be undone due to something that was done on the first or second movement but cant undue the third position location.

ie.. move - drop garrison - move 2 more times.. you can not undue to change where your final move is as soon as you dropped that garrison any moves stuck.

Sorry for the sidetrack (ADHD and all) but the undue on Axis and Allies brought that to mind.

OD

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

XY is Correct!

It's just hard to which space that first arrow is in, it kind of points to the line between the two spaces.

Also, your little sample looks fine; however, now take that and do this with the movement of war all over the prussian/french borderlands and see how fast you get lost.

I apologize if I don't just shut up and say "Oh, what a great job, looks great, I'm happy with anything you guys do" but I think that's what got us to where we are now in the first place. [X(][X(][X(][X(]

[Marshall Ellis]

Oh Neverman! Don't apologize. I have come to expect most of what you say BUT that does not mean that I ignore it or even disagree with all of it. You have good ideas. You just tend to deliver them differently I make attempts to respond to the community with code that I hope fits the bill but I have no illusions that it does in all cases.

BTW: To prevent the getting lost portion, I am allowing a few different options in the AAR mode:

1. Only see units from your nation
2. Only see the selected unit's path.
3. Only see the units' paths from the selected unit's nation.
4. See all

Make sense?

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Oh Neverman! Don't apologize. I have come to expect most of what you say BUT that does not mean that I ignore it or even disagree with all of it. You have good ideas. You just tend to deliver them differently I make attempts to respond to the community with code that I hope fits the bill but I have no illusions that it does in all cases.

BTW: To prevent the getting lost portion, I am allowing a few different options in the AAR mode:

1. Only see units from your nation
2. Only see the selected unit's path.
3. Only see the units' paths from the selected unit's nation.
4. See all

Make sense?

Yes, but I still think this is too clunky looking (it looks like bad 80s graphics) for the "see all" option. Make sense?

[Odysseus]

Sweet feature! I'm very likely to use it, IF it is intuitve and easily applied. The IF is because I just don't have the time I used to have before my baby daughter was born...

But it would also be sweet if more people started fleshing out their AARs abit more. That forum is pretty dead these days, I'm sorry to say. So many games I'm curious about what happened...

[Marshall Ellis]

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Oh Neverman! Don't apologize. I have come to expect most of what you say BUT that does not mean that I ignore it or even disagree with all of it. You have good ideas. You just tend to deliver them differently I make attempts to respond to the community with code that I hope fits the bill but I have no illusions that it does in all cases.

BTW: To prevent the getting lost portion, I am allowing a few different options in the AAR mode:

1. Only see units from your nation
2. Only see the selected unit's path.
3. Only see the units' paths from the selected unit's nation.
4. See all

Make sense?

Yes, but I still think this is too clunky looking (it looks like bad 80s graphics) for the "see all" option. Make sense?

I'm playing with it a bit to see what works best. They look better without going through the screen paint JPEG conversion but they are manually drawn arrows. I need to find an arrow drawing tool kit to make it look the time (Lines simply weren't that straight in the 19th century). I see what you're saying though. If there are a ton of moves then it could become a bit confusing in the ALL mode but I haven't seen that yet. It's a a start. I believe Jimmer had this idea a while ago???