Unit Depictions on Screen

[Manic Inertia]

Hey Shannon ... I been away for a while, but am now delighted to be ogling the new MWiF graphics - utterly splendid!

Reading these recent entries on this thread about lend-lease/captured/borrowed 'stripes' being placed on counters, it struck me .. is it possible that such an arrangement might look odd on, say, flying boats that have a wide blue vertical stripe anyway? And what about a LL built plane that's subsequently lent to a third party - wouldn't it end up looking a bit psychadelic? Should I assume that changing the counter color completely to that of the new owner is out of the question?

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Manic Inertia

Hey Shannon ... I been away for a while, but am now delighted to be ogling the new MWiF graphics - utterly splendid!

Reading these recent entries on this thread about lend-lease/captured/borrowed 'stripes' being placed on counters, it struck me .. is it possible that such an arrangement might look odd on, say, flying boats that have a wide blue vertical stripe anyway? And what about a LL built plane that's subsequently lent to a third party - wouldn't it end up looking a bit psychadelic? Should I assume that changing the counter color completely to that of the new owner is out of the question?

Something I've wished for over a long time. Keep the unit identifiers the same, but change the nationality color, so all those ships you capture become the owners color. I think this only applies in just a few instances. Capture of ships during surprize impulse, Vichy collapse, losers production spiral during conquest phase, on map units during conquest phase (this one is the complicated instance I think need to check the rules on it).

edit:

Oh yea, what about the fiddly rule that you cannot rebuld a unit that's been captured I believe.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Manic Inertia

Hey Shannon ... I been away for a while, but am now delighted to be ogling the new MWiF graphics - utterly splendid!

Reading these recent entries on this thread about lend-lease/captured/borrowed 'stripes' being placed on counters, it struck me .. is it possible that such an arrangement might look odd on, say, flying boats that have a wide blue vertical stripe anyway? And what about a LL built plane that's subsequently lent to a third party - wouldn't it end up looking a bit psychadelic? Should I assume that changing the counter color completely to that of the new owner is out of the question?

Thanks.

Flying boats no longer have a wide vertical blue stripe. That's primarily for the reason you gave but also because I believe the new approach to be more in tune with how other things are handled in communicating information about the units.

What I do instead for flying boats is to place the air-to-sea numbers within a blue circle. You can see examples of that for the Catalinas and Mariner in posts #428 and #429 above.

You have an excellent point about the striping. It is always the intersection of concepts that produces difficulties. I had thought about the intersection of lend lease and captured units - the intersection is the null set because the former are planes and the latter are ships. But I hadn't considered ...

1 - lend lease planes that are on loan to another player, or

2 - captured ships that are on loan to another player.

There are a couple of solutions I can come up with off the top of my head:

A - do nothing about indicating which units are on loan.

B - place the loan stripe low and such that it abuts the lend lease strip immediately above it; with the captured stripe the same size as those two combined; and a captured ship that is loaned has the loan stripe superimposed on the captured stripe.

C - find a different way of indicating which units are on loan (e.g., text or symbol).

WIF FE did not worry about units on loan, because the players simply keep track of it themselves. For MWIF it is more of an issue, since the program has to know which player is expected to move which units. For example, if you are playing over the Internet, the players for Germany and Italy could be thousands of miles apart with different copies of the program running. It's essential for the program to know which units have been lent. Now, there is a separate form for lending units so the mechanics of lending units between players is in place. But that kind of begs the question of how does a player know which units he is suppose to move (other than enclosing eligible units in a green outline - as is done for all available units during a phase). The idea is that a player will want to know at a glance which units are 'his'.

Criteria that cause some of my solutions to this problem to get poor ratings: (1) don't mess up the basic unit information, (2) remember the color blind guys, (3) there are a lot of numbers and text already on the counters, (4), contrast is important for things to be legible, (5) stippling/dots might disappear at different levels of zoom.[:(]

And so it goes.[&:]

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

But that kind of begs the question of how does a player know which units he is suppose to move (other than enclosing eligible units in a green outline - as is done for all available units during a phase). The idea is that a player will want to know at a glance which units are 'his'.

This is mainly a problem with captured units only, lend-leased air units have the corrrect color of the phasing major power that built them, but simply have a stripe to indicate the original owner. This is an idea that has worked well with the WIF counterset.

Captured units are simply the wrong color. Changing border color on these units may be a good idea to help the players distinguish 'their' units.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
But that kind of begs the question of how does a player know which units he is suppose to move (other than enclosing eligible units in a green outline - as is done for all available units during a phase). The idea is that a player will want to know at a glance which units are 'his'.

This is mainly a problem with captured units only, lend-leased air units have the corrrect color of the phasing major power that built them, but simply have a stripe to indicate the original owner. This is an idea that has worked well with the WIF counterset.

Captured units are simply the wrong color. Changing border color on these units may be a good idea to help the players distinguish 'their' units.

"Captured units are simply the wrong color. " Well, that's a matter of opinion actually.[:)] You clearly believe that the background color of a unit should reflect who currently owns it, without any need to know its ancestry. I sort of like knowing that it is a captured French sub the Italians are using to cause the British so much trouble in the Mediterranean.

My previous plan was to do what you prefer: simply recolor a naval unit's background color to reflect any change of ownership. The bitmap images of the naval units precludes that option though. Because anti-aliasing is being used for the bitmaps, there are many gradations of the background color employed to heighten the clarity of the ship's image. I cannot achieve the same effect for any replacement background color. In fact, if I were to try to do that, the image would be instantly ugly. Rob and I played around with these possibilities a couple of months ago and decided the improved imagry for the bitmaps was worth the loss of the ability to change a unit's background color. Notice that this also means the players will be unable to change the background colors of bitmapped units (air and naval units when viewed at high resolution).

I have an improvement to my previous solution:

1 - Since only naval units can be captured, and naval unit bitmaps do not intrude up to the top of the counter, I'll place a wide horizontal stripe at the top to indicate the major power who currently owns a captured naval unit.

2 - Since only air units can be lend leased, I'll place a narrow horizontal stripe through the center of the bottom numbers of a lend leased air unit to indicate the major power who originally owned it.

3 - For units on loan from one player to another, I'll place a narrow horizontal stripe at the very bottom of the counter (underneath the numbers) to indicate the major power that is currently is moving the unit.

This results in 3 possible stripes, that will not overlap. It will be very rare for a unit to contain 2 stripes at the same time and that will never include the combination of the frst two listed above.

I'm pretty happy with this design concept, though I will have to see how it turns out in actual practice.

Your thoughts?

[Froonp]

Seems ok for me too.
Another idea you could use, for example for captured units : Make a zone a few pixels wide near the outline of the counter the same color as the capturing country, all around the counter.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Seems ok for me too.
Another idea you could use, for example for captured units : Make a zone a few pixels wide near the outline of the counter the same color as the capturing country, all around the counter.

That would not scale well through all levels of zoom unless I made the number of pixels at least 4. Then I would be running into numbers, text, and the bitmap image. Things are tight!

[Zorachus99]

units on loan? what rule(s) are you referring to? I did a quicksearch of the latest manual, and it doesn't seem to talk about loaning units (as far as I could find).

In what cases do you have loaned units that are controlled by a different phasing major power (excluding communist china w/russia)?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99
units on loan? what rule(s) are you referring to? I did a quicksearch of the latest manual, and it doesn't seem to talk about loaning units (as far as I could find).

In what cases do you have loaned units that are controlled by a different phasing major power (excluding communist china w/russia)?

Oh, ADG has nothing to say about loaning units. But then not again, they don't specifiy whose hand should touch each unit either.

It is common practice in over the board games for a player to 'give' a unit to another player for the purposes of deciding when to move it. Now this has no effect whatsoever on the limitations imposed by choice of Action. If it is a German unit, then using it applies against the German Activity Limits.

Besides the typical exchanges of unit control between Germany and Italy in Russia and North Africa, the USA often lets the Commonwealth player decide on positioning convoys in the Atlantic - which may involve repositioning some US convoys. Or, letting the Commonwealth decide on the use of strategic bombers. Again, the WIF FE rules are fully in effect. I am just talking about whose hand moves the unit.

So, the goal is to provide a comparable capability in MWIF. Since the computer is involved, this means formalizing the procedure and working out various particulars - such as marking the units that are on loan.

[Zorachus99]

It's great to see such an informal rule allowed. It's how play works in real life to a large degree.

However how do you deal with the limitations of the phasing player?

Example of real game:

Italy is running the Med Theatre and wants to use german air missions to fly air units to a sea area. Since the naval action comes before any land actions, Italy asks the German player if and how many air missions they can use from the German player. If the italian had four units on loan and flew all four out to sea areas, germany would have 0 air missions for their land impulse. Heck I've had the italians ask whether the German is doing a land because land moves could be limited.

Will the player with loaned units have full control of the lent units, or will they have to request permission before they use a unit that has limited activities, such as air, naval, or land units - all of which could have limits depending on the type of impulse which is declared...

When working with an italian player I often get questions on how many air missions they can have for the turn - not to mention them trying to talk me into using some sort of combined action. I envision some sort of dialogue alerting the phasing ally, whether or not a unit with a limited number of activities can be used, or better yet a request for activities that are limited (this wouldn't force the map to refocus). This both keeps your head out of a theatre you aren't paying attention to, and allows you to keep a tight grip on your activities which are so limited during a turn.

If the loaned unit is affecting activities allowed in a turn without alerting me, I would personally not have any units on loan - defeating the idea.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99
It's great to see such an informal rule allowed. It's how play works in real life to a large degree.

However how do you deal with the limitations of the phasing player?

Example of real game:

Italy is running the Med Theatre and wants to use german air missions to fly air units to a sea area. Since the naval action comes before any land actions, Italy asks the German player if and how many air missions they can use from the German player. If the italian had four units on loan and flew all four out to sea areas, germany would have 0 air missions for their land impulse. Heck I've had the italians ask whether the German is doing a land because land moves could be limited.

Will the player with loaned units have full control of the lent units, or will they have to request permission before they use a unit that has limited activities, such as air, naval, or land units - all of which could have limits depending on the type of impulse which is declared...

When working with an italian player I often get questions on how many air missions they can have for the turn - not to mention them trying to talk me into using some sort of combined action. I envision some sort of dialogue alerting the phasing ally, whether or not a unit with a limited number of activities can be used, or better yet a request for activities that are limited (this wouldn't force the map to refocus). This both keeps your head out of a theatre you aren't paying attention to, and allows you to keep a tight grip on your activities which are so limited during a turn.

If the loaned unit is affecting activities allowed in a turn without alerting me, I would personally not have any units on loan - defeating the idea.

This falls into a category I have loosely labeled "to be worked out by the players". Having MWIF enforce agreements/arrangements between allies, seems to me to be outside the scope of the game design. Primarily that is because when people reach agreements (verbal or written) there are always a bunch of odds and ends that are 'understood' yet not formally agreed to. Enforcing the RAW rules make MWIF a whole lot like writing a law dissertation already. I've no taste for more of the same.

More to your point, you will see all the moves that a player on your side makes, as he makes them. The team leader is in charge of sending off all the moves to the other side, once they have been completed by everyone on his side. You will have the opportunity to intervene between the time that your ally moves a loaned unit and the team leader sends off the moves. To intervene is rather simple: as the original owner, you just reassert control of the loaned unit. At that point you can undo its move, should you so desire.

----------------

Dan Hatchen and I have been working out the specifics of recording moves on all the different computers participating in an Internet game - and keeping them synchronized. What we have come up with is that there will be Entry #s, Transaction #s, and Interside Communication #s (ICs). An entry number is associated with each atom of detail that changes the game position. So if you move a land unit several hexes, there will be a unique entry # for each hex it traverses. When it has stopped moving, the sequence of entry #s associated with its full move will be recorded as a transaction. Indeed, the associated transaction # is part of the game record log for each entry #.

Now, when a side has moved all its units and is ready to end a phase and pass control over to the other side, an IC# will be created and all the entry #s for the phase will be sent to the other side. Oh, I forgot to mention, each transaction will be sent to every player on the same side when it is completed. This works out to entrys not being sent to any other players until a transaction has been completed. Once a transaction is done, all the players on the same side will see it. The players on the other side won't see anything until all the moves for the phase have been completed. There are details of the non-phasing player's decision making I am intentionally glossing over here.

In practice, I expect each player to have two detailed map windows visible at all times: a big one on which he makes his own moves, and a smaller one on which any moves by his allies are displayed upon receipt.

One of my intentions with this design is to give players the opportunity to show their allies what they are doing. In combination with chat messages, you should be able to work out how to coordinate forces. I would like to provide more capabilities along this line but I am reluctant to do so because: (1) until we actually start playing games over the Internet there will be too much guesswork required as to what should be created and (2) I could see this becoming almost a whole new interface in and of itself (i.e., a ton of work).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Rob has given me the complete set of counters for counter sheet 7 (PLanes in Flames). Aside from the background colors on a few of the minor countries, these are done.

I have adjusted the positioning of almost all of them. Here are the USA fighters with a few flying boats.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The second half of the USA fighters from counter sheet 7. I have removed the black hairline outline from around the units, but I need to put it back as a light green outline when the unit is selectable in the phase.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are some more USA naval air units and a bunch of their bombers. I've been fairly successful at getting the airplane image to not be occluded by the text and numbers.

Though there are still a dozen or so that need some more tweaking.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Most of the remaining USA bombers from counter sheet 7.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Back in December, when we were working on the terrain for the map, several forum members wanted more colorful terrain (e.g., a brighter, more diverse color scheme). I argued against that, preferring more muted terrain so the units would really stand out. WIF has a very bright set of counters and if the terrain were bright too, it would most likely be discordant to the eye (mixed metaphors, I know).

Here is one in a series of 4 screen shots to reinforce my point.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I haven't gotten to repositioing the air images for the minor country units. Throw in some Germans and Brits and this section of the map won't need dazzling mountain terrain to catch your eye.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The color for the Netherlands air units is off. It should (and will) match the land unit background colors perfectly.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Last in the series of 8 posts this morning. Some of these planes are lend lease. Next on my list is to put in the stripes for the lend lease planes. When I get that done, I'll post some screen shots for you to see.

[Froonp]

The color for the Netherlands air units is off. It should (and will) match the land unit background colors perfectly.

Didn't you say previously that you had the ART units square transformed into a circle ?