TOAW 3.4 Interface changes

[larryfulkerson]

So um.......I've found some spare time and re-wrote the Losses Charter program so that it has a GUI "window" to view while you're running the program. It's in Java still so you'll need the Java-run-time on your machine to run it. The attached file needs to have the ".txt" dropped off the end of the file name so that it's a zip file. Inside the Zip file is the executable "Losses Charter.jar" and 8 of the input files that Ralph supplied me with and a sample output file. Lemme know if you have any problems running it or maybe a suggestion for improvement. So far I haven't yet implemented a way to change the color of the [fore / back ] ground but I will. But at least it will read all of the input files you select and process them all. And you get to choose the output file name and where it's supposed to be written. I'd show you a picture of the output but it's similar to the output seen above ( except it's no longer yellow on purple ).

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a picture of the Losses Charter up and running with the color chooser dialog open to show the colors that are available. I just chose 15 of the most popular ones to use here.....it's customizable what color you can have for the foreground and background now. This one is the South Vietnamese colors.

[Bamilus]

Awesome job, Larry!

[pionier]

Will it be today??? [:)]

[larryfulkerson]

so um.........I got busy and did a version of the losses charter program that will output a barchart kind of display so you can get at a glance which of the equipment types had the highest proportion of losses. I'm thinking of re-writing this application so it's an applet so that users can go to my site...upload their file and get the barchart output on their browser. Which can then be saved to a file or whatever.

[pionier]

Sounds verry verry good.#

Would you like to think about following things: Make it possibile to make a checkbox which equipment should be listet?
An easy option would be also something like a limit (Show only Equipment with at least X (exsample: X>200) on map?)

Whats about a sum? like Overall tanks, overall Airplanes ? This would be the two most important I think.

regard

pio

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: pionier
Sounds verry verry good.#
Would you like to think about following things: Make it possibile to make a checkbox which equipment should be listet?
An easy option would be also something like a limit (Show only Equipment with at least X (exsample: X>200) on map?)
Whats about a sum? like Overall tanks, overall Airplanes ? This would be the two most important I think.

Hey those are really good ideas. I'll get to work on them right now. Thanks for your input.

EDIT: I decided to post the source code to the Losses Charter program in case anybody wants to look it over. It's not much but it works.

[morleron1225]

Hi Ralph,
    I realize that it's likely too late to do anything about this but could you possibly move the initial position of the cursor on the "Air Unit Report" screen a few pixels to the left. [&o]   As it is now the screen comes up with the cursor sitting on the left edge of the "Air Staff Assistant" toggle button and I've inadvertently pressed that by mistake a couple of times.  It can be a real PITA to go through and have to manually change all of one's air units back to whatever they were prior to the button being pushed - especially for large scenarios such as FITE.  Anyway, I just thought I'd get this off my chest and maybe on to the Wishlist for next time around.

Ron

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: morleron1
Hi Ralph,
   I realize that it's likely too late to do anything about this but could you possibly move the initial position of the cursor on the "Air Unit Report" screen a few pixels to the left. [&o]   As it is now the screen comes up with the cursor sitting on the left edge of the "Air Staff Assistant" toggle button and I've inadvertently pressed that by mistake a couple of times.  It can be a real PITA to go through and have to manually change all of one's air units back to whatever they were prior to the button being pushed - especially for large scenarios such as FITE.  Anyway, I just thought I'd get this off my chest and maybe on to the Wishlist for next time around.

Ron

It's in for the next patch. If we have to do another code change for this patch, it may make it in. I can see where that might be frustrating.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: pionier
Sounds verry verry good.#
Would you like to think about following things: Make it possibile to make a checkbox which equipment should be listet? An easy option would be also something like a limit (Show only Equipment with at least X (example: X>200) on map?)

Yes, this option is possible. I could open a dialog window where the user could check/uncheck whatever type of equipment he/she wants listed in the output. Those left unchecked could be excluded from the output. One minor catch to this scheme is the number of equipment types. At last count there were about 256 different types of equipment and each and every one of them would have to be listed in the dialog I open to the user....which might make a huge dialog panel....unless it's a tabbed type of dialog where the different tabs have different types of equipment on them. Cool idea by the way, thanks for your input.

ORIGINAL: pionier
Whats about a sum? like Overall tanks, overall Airplanes ? This would be the two most important I think.

This option is going to require some work on my part. The problem is that the program has no idea what kind of equipment is "airplane" or "tank" without some input file or hard-coded verbage in the program to designate which equipment types are "airplanes" and so on. It's doable but time-consuming. I'll get busy on this right now.

ORIGINAL: pionier
Something else that just occurred to me: are the bar chart reports going to be "historical"? In other words, will they show losses per item per turn of the game?

Maybe you could give folks the option to click on a particular item and have that expand to show the losses per turn. That would avoid generating a huge report with one line per turn for each inventory item but would still allow the player to get that level of detail if he wants.

I like the idea of being able to click on a particular item and have a new web page open showing the detail(s) for that item. The problem is that the item you click on ( in an html webpage ) is going to
have to be an anchor ( <a href="someother html page.html"></a> ) and that anchor needs to point to the next web page to open which implies that there would have to be another new output file for THAT detailed info to be displayed. Which could be each of the different equipment types. So we could end up with some 200 output files from each program run. Which isn't a showstopper....I could group all the various html files in a new directory that is programmatically created or something.

Alternately, we could just put the output in a table ( or a list or something ) to be shown in a dialog window that opens before the output is written to a file. The user could then click on any of the entries in the list or table and get another dialog window open to show the details on that item. With the option to print the details or not I suppose.

[parzival]

ORIGINAL: Bamilus

Awesome job, Larry!

Did u get a ban on PI forums cause u are a refugee? [;)]

[ralphtricky]

Larry,
I don't remember if 3.2 has the equipment.eqp file, but you can use the one from 3.4. It contains a list of all the equipment with separators for the equipment type. It's an XML file.

Let me know if you don't have a copy.

Ralph

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: parzival

ORIGINAL: Bamilus

Awesome job, Larry!

Did u get a ban on PI forums cause u are a refugee? [;)]

My 2007 account was banned but not my 2004 account. This isn't the time or place to discuss the rampant moderator abuse that goes on there (especially for customers who have supported that company for over 7 years and hundreds of dollars). Needless to say it is not a healthy posting environment.

[parzival]

ORIGINAL: Bamilus

ORIGINAL: parzival

ORIGINAL: Bamilus

Awesome job, Larry!

Did u get a ban on PI forums cause u are a refugee? [;)]

My 2007 account was banned but not my 2004 account. This isn't the time or place to discuss the rampant moderator abuse that goes on there (especially for customers who have supported that company for over 7 years and hundreds of dollars). Needless to say it is not a healthy posting environment.

I know that this is not a proper place but I still want to say that I have also been wondering their moderation policy. One of my friends with whom I have been playing multiplayer games was also banned there recently. He didnt post there anything that would have been against their forum rules. He wrote a detailed post where he explicitly revealed all the problems that the new HOI III extension Semper Fi has and all the bugs and flaws that still remain in HOI III even after this extension. And because of this he got a ban. It is very pathetic from them that they cannot stand justified criticism and that they ban people who havent broken their forum rules.

EDIT:I have heard rumours that PI is in difficult financial situation and that is maybe why they dont want that the truth about the problems in their games is revealed. And I dont wonder at all that they have financial problems because no one wants to buy their games when they are released because they are so horrible at first release. Everyone buys them later when they can get them cheaper.

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: parzival

I know that this is not a proper place but I still want to say that I have also been wondering their moderation policy. One of my friends with whom I have been playing multiplayer games was also banned there recently. He didnt post there anything that would have been against their forum rules. He wrote a detailed post where he explicitly revealed all the problems that the new HOI III extension Semper Fi has and all the bugs and flaws that still remain in HOI III even after this extension. And because of this he got a ban. It is very pathetic from them that they cannot stand justified criticism and that they ban people who havent broken their forum rules.

EDIT:I have heard rumours that PI is in difficult financial situation and that is maybe why they dont want that the truth about the problems in their games is revealed. And I dont wonder at all that they have financial problems because no one wants to buy their games when they are released because they are so horrible at first release. Everyone buys them later when they can get them cheaper.

They've banned a lot of people for no apparent reason. The list includes long time members and even the leaders of huge and successful mod projects. Many people got fed up and that's why most large mods for PI games have separate websites/forums.

The HoI3 forums are policed like a Soviet state. You can't say anything bad about the game or they will delete your post for "trolling." Not to mention that it is not uncommon for Johan and the other PI staff to frequently ridicule members and make absurdly arrogant posts.

PI was once a good company. But those days are long (very long) gone.

[hoerbinator]

Hello Ralph!

I would like to make a few suggestions for an update (if there should be another one).
I think it would be a good feature not only to scroll the map, but also kind of "jump" a full-screen, eg using Page up/down for vertical and Pos1/End for lateral movements of the map. Scrolling large maps is very time consuming.
It would also be great to put one (or more) markers on the map, to where it should be possible to jump.
In particular it would be great if we could draw directly on the map, for example where the player wants to build a front line and what units he wants to place there. This could be achieved by using a layer similar to the weather layer.
It would be useful if the player could select several units at once which could then receive several orders simultaneously, eg all selected units get the orders to dig in and to ignore losses.
I think this would save time, improve the usability of the game and reduce mouse clicks, but I don't know how difficult this would be to implement.

Thank you very much for supporting this excellent game [&o]