Matrix Games Forums

Here are just the carrier air units. This screen shot is the companion for the previous one. You can switch back and forth instantaneously to check on which carrier air units you hae available for which carriers. That seems to work pretty well without needing any additional improvements.

Some commonality between all forms will help the players learn where to look to find information.

An excellent point.

Will a player be able to have multiple windows open at any one time? This would allow a person to have two (or more) instances of this form open at one time thus allowing a side by side viewing. At least if that's what they want.

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

Will a player be able to have multiple windows open at any one time?

I'd like to add to this.. .will we be able to utilize dual monitor configuration in any way ? I could have sworn this has been answered before but I searched and got nothing...

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

Some commonality between all forms will help the players learn where to look to find information.

An excellent point.

Will a player be able to have multiple windows open at any one time? This would allow a person to have two (or more) instances of this form open at one time thus allowing a side by side viewing. At least if that's what they want.

It depends on whether the form is modal or not. Modal means that the player (user - it is a Microsoft Windows term) has to finish with the screen before doing anything else. The scrap form is modal. You have to decide on scrapping units before the program can make a random selection for setting up the scenario.

Most forms are not modal and they can be opened simultaneously, overlapped playfully around on the screen and otherwise add to the general confusion (I personally do not like to have a lot of windows open at once). Some forms will only permit a single copy of that form - for various reasons. The detailed map, on the other hand, is available for replication to your heart's content. Each one can have a different zoom factor, unit resolution, dimensions, and focus on a different part of the world.

If I do the interface right, there should be very few occasions for multiple forms to be open at one time. If you find that to make decisions, you need to look at several different forms, then I screwed up (my personal standards for game interface design).

The game does support 2 monitors. I use 2 all the time. It also now permits the game to be played without requiring the entire screen display. That let's you run other programs simulataneously (e.g., music).

Could you maybe set the Unit Type subset button to toggle instead. A small point, but in a large list, the player can glance at the button group and see which one is depressed.

ORIGINAL: dhatchen

Could you maybe set the Unit Type subset button to toggle instead. A small point, but in a large list, the player can glance at the button group and see which one is depressed.

I really dislike buttons. When the artist gets around to it, I want them all reskinned to something that looks man made, not machine made. The selected button is slightly different from the rest. It is not noticable in the JPG, but is on the screen.

Here are just the carrier air units.

This arrangement is great.
I forgot that in CWiF the class displayed on the counter was always the current class. It's even easier to sort the CVP out by sight.

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Here are just the carrier air units.

This arrangement is great.
I forgot that in CWiF the class displayed on the counter was always the current class. It's even easier to sort the CVP out by sight.

Good, getting a design point past you is always a milestone. I still have to get them sorted correctly, but the Scrap Units form is ready for play test.

I jsut want to complement you Steve on all the effort you are taking to listen to experienced players and make the game excellent. It is a huge labour and you are to be commended!

ORIGINAL: Yohan

I jsut want to complement you Steve on all the effort you are taking to listen to experienced players and make the game excellent. It is a huge labour and you are to be commended!

Thank you. Moving this elephant down the road is hard but I am getting help from people all over the world.

I am back working on the setup units process and I have a question for you-all.

There are replacements for some units that occur later in the game. Mostly these are naval units that have received upgrades, (I believe). For the AIO I have the replacements always taken when they are offered.

The current setup process has this little side query asking the player whether he wants the replacements or not. I would just as soon skip the dialog and always give the player the replacement - perhaps with a message informing the player it has happened.

What do you think? Do you want to be asked or would you prefer to have the program automatically give you the replacement(s)?

I would like the replacement to occur automatically with a message stating as such.

I am curious, does the replacement occur at the port the vessel is currently at or does the replacement show up in the nearest home port to where to vessel is?

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

I would like the replacement to occur automatically with a message stating as such.

I am curious, does the replacement occur at the port the vessel is currently at or does the replacement show up in the nearest home port to where to vessel is?

To answer your question I looked up the rule (WIF FE 4.1.4, SIF option #9). I think that answers my question too.

You will need to build the replacement unit (1 year + build points) so there will definitely be occasions when players will want to keep the old unit.

If the old unit is in the forcepool or still in its first year of construction, the replacement goes to the forcepool. I will only automate the former.

If the unit is in the construction pool, repair pool, on map, or in its 2nd year of production, then the replacement goes into the construction pool. I will only automate the first instance.

By my count there are only 10 of these units in the game: 8 for the Japanese and 2 for the Germans.

I firmly believe the replacement ships should be offered to the player but not automatically taken. The game situation when the replacements become available can often be such that one does not want to take them. In my own experience playing WiF many years I have seen them taken less than half the time.

Lars

The current setup process has this little side query asking the player whether he wants the replacements or not. I would just as soon skip the dialog and always give the player the replacement - perhaps with a message informing the player it has happened.

What do you think? Do you want to be asked or would you prefer to have the program automatically give you the replacement(s)?

It's a bad idea to give the replacement to the player automatically.
If you prefer your battleships and are happy with the carriers you have, no need for replacement. The replacements are only for those who want to go carrier crazy.
Anyway the player need to be presented the choice.

It is as if you skiped the choice for land combat and automatically chosed Blitz when it was available. Sometimes the attacking player will want to choose assault, even if he could have chosen blitz, so the player need to have the choice.

I agree with Lars and Patrice on this one, replacement will not always be taken, some of the Japaneese battleships are replaced with rather poor carriers, so you might want to keep the allready onmap battleships.
When it comes to Shinano you will make sure taht he is allready in the constuction pool and have him replaced there, so you not waste any build points.

/Nicklas

Thanks everyone. Replacements will remain totally at the discretion of the player. This is a new rule that I have never played with. There certainly is a lot of code dedicated exclusively to dealing with those 10 replacement units.

Yes, but it used to work fine in CWiF.
I was prompted for the replacements when I had my test games, and it worked ok.

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Yes, but it used to work fine in CWiF.
I was prompted for the replacements when I had my test games, and it worked ok.

The CWIF beta only had 3 scenarios. The replacements always arrived during the game in those scenarios.

Some of the additional 8 scenarios have to handle the situation where the replacements are part of the starting setup.

Also, though the program may have executed ok from the player's perspective, it was a very twisted path it followed to achieve that result.

When making changes to the interface, I have to decypher exactly what the code does. In more than one instance I have found code that is totally irrelevant and I have excised it from the listing. Most of the time I rename variables so they make more sense to me. I frequently split large program units into pieces (e.g., what use to be one unit called SetupScrap is now 6 different units for scrapping units, setup data, setup data types - F2, F3 - , setup groups, setup variables, and the setup form). I always add comments to the code I examine - there were virtually none when I started. Case in point, there were no comments at all in the code for setting up and scrapping units.

When I work on the code I constantly break it - the program no longer runs. And I then fix it so it does what it use to do but with my changes in place. The reason the program breaks is because the code is very intertwined.

As an easy(?) to understand example, there are separate files for: (1) the terrain in each hex; if the terrain is an all sea hex, then it has an index identifyng (2) the sea area; if the terrain is a coastal hex, then there is an index to the sea areas to which it is (3) adjacent. When Chris helped me renumber the sea areas from 1 to 83 (they use to be from 1 to 142 with gaps in the sequence), he wrote a special routine to modify all the different places the sea area indices were used in the program.

There is code about the replacements in a lot of different locations. I needed to understand how the players relate to that aspect of the game in order to integrate it into the new interface.

In the CWiF 7.71 Global war scenario the replacement ships arrived as electable ships, the player had the choice whether to accept or decline any or all of the replacement units.

From your last entry I get the impression that you may not be working from the latest CWiF 7.71 which had the global war.

I still have a list of my own detailing the bugs in that program that I was aware of when development stopped.

I can post it here if you so desire.

Lars