TOAW 3.4 Interface changes

[ralphtricky]

There are a lot of changes to TOAW in the 3.4 patch, I'm going to talk about the ones that you'll notice right away.

The most obvious ones is the optional face-lift which tones down the graphics, and gives TOAW a new look. The new graphics system allows you to not just have a picture on a picture, but also allow you to have transparent pictures. Things like clouds that you can see through for the weather. I don't think we've seen the last of what can be done with the new system.

There are a lot of changes to the way that it can be played too.

The first time you start TOAW, it will ask you whether you want to play with 'Classic' defaults or 'Updated' defaults. Classic is the way that you're playing now.

Updated is just that, updated. It's intended for the player that is learning or isn't playing PBEM and wants a more casual experience. When you right click, it will move, attack, or bombard as appropriate instead of pulling up the menu. If you right click and hold, it will pop up the normal right-click menu. If you double-click on an enemy unit, it will open the combat planner dialog, which now allows you to assign artillery to direct attacks.

Both modes support dragging the mouse, either while on a unit to move the unit, or on the map to move the map (or the mini-map.)

I've found I use the Updated defaults, but I'm the only one on the Beta team that does, and play mostly against Elmer.

I've found that I've been playing a lot using the iPad and software called iTap RDP. It allows me to log in to my computer from the iPad. I can easily move units around, zoom in and out (using the iPad) and plan attacks. There are some things like setting the loss level, or putting units into reserve status which need to be done from menus, but a good 80% of what I do doesn't need the menu popped up each time, and I can always right-click on the unit to do those things. It's got some issue, but I'm not sure how many are due to the iPad, my learning how to use it, or the other things.

I believe that the updated interface is perfect for teaching anyone that has any interest very quickly what the fun is about.

The other major experiment is that there is a new play mode called 'Elmer Assist' (or whatever you want to call it[:D] ) You can let Elmer take control of certain formations, and set their formation tracks, aggressiveness, etc. You can then move the formations you want to control, and let Elmer move the rest according to your broad directions. You could (playing both sides) play a game of FitE within your lifetime. Elmer has shortcoming at the strategic level, but you can adjust for that. I'm still not sure if that idea is going to take off or not. I'm having fun playing Red Thunder, letting Elmer do most of the grunt work while I do the fine tuning like placing engineers correctly, ensuring we don't get encircled, handle attacks that are critical, etc. I made some mistakes, so I'm about to start over.

I hope you enjoy it,
Ralph

[Bamilus]

Sounds like some awesome changes/additions! Can't wait to play this patch, especially since I'm a new player and some of these changes sound very helpful. 

[rhinobones]

The first time you start TOAW, it will ask you whether you want to play with 'Classic' defaults or 'Updated' defaults. Classic is the way that you're playing now.

There is always the option to switch between "Classic" and "Updated" . . . right?

Otherwise, as always, Ralph gives us another reason to rejoice.

Regards, RhinoBones

[jmlima]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
...
The other major experiment is that there is a new play mode called 'Elmer Assist' (or whatever you want to call it[:D] ) You can let Elmer take control of certain formations, and set their formation tracks, aggressiveness, etc. You can then move the formations you want to control, and let Elmer move the rest according to your broad directions. ...

Now that is something useful.

[Panama]

Some other nice interface things would be:

Dragging a selection box with the cursor and then clicking to magnify only that area of the map that is selected to the next highest magnification level. Then you can do the normal game things there and click again and it closes. Make it so it covers only a section of the current map, not the entire screen. That window would be the focus and the rest of the map would be like a background window. Would really be nice on large maps. Or maybe even make it so the selected area could be magnified to whatever level you want.

Something to replace or compliment the text at the bottom of the screen. I don't think mouse over popups would be a good idea. But something. Maybe a player adjustable/movable window. Can resize it and move it where it's out of the way but more visible than what we now have.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Panama
Some other nice interface things would be:

Dragging a selection box with the cursor and then clicking to magnify only that area of the map that is selected to the next highest magnification level. Then you can do the normal game things there and click again and it closes. Make it so it covers only a section of the current map, not the entire screen. That window would be the focus and the rest of the map would be like a background window. Would really be nice on large maps. Or maybe even make it so the selected area could be magnified to whatever level you want.

Something to replace or compliment the text at the bottom of the screen. I don't think mouse over popups would be a good idea. But something. Maybe a player adjustable/movable window. Can resize it and move it where it's out of the way but more visible than what we now have.

The scroll wheel centers on the mouse cursor so you can easily zoom out to get the big picture and zoom in on the area of interest. On some controllers (the logitech trackball I have) the 4th and 5th buttons do the same thing.

Mouse over popups are what can be done, they now include terrain info. Making the windows movable and adding better scrolling/resizing require a rewrite, so those can't happen until the next full game.

Ralph

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

ORIGINAL: Panama
Some other nice interface things would be:

Dragging a selection box with the cursor and then clicking to magnify only that area of the map that is selected to the next highest magnification level. Then you can do the normal game things there and click again and it closes. Make it so it covers only a section of the current map, not the entire screen. That window would be the focus and the rest of the map would be like a background window. Would really be nice on large maps. Or maybe even make it so the selected area could be magnified to whatever level you want.

Something to replace or compliment the text at the bottom of the screen. I don't think mouse over popups would be a good idea. But something. Maybe a player adjustable/movable window. Can resize it and move it where it's out of the way but more visible than what we now have.

The scroll wheel centers on the mouse cursor so you can easily zoom out to get the big picture and zoom in on the area of interest. On some controllers (the logitech trackball I have) the 4th and 5th buttons do the same thing.

Mouse over popups are what can be done, they now include terrain info. Making the windows movable and adding better scrolling/resizing require a rewrite, so those can't happen until the next full game.

Ralph

Oh, you made me think of something else that might be cool. You could have multiple movable map windows. If you have a big map you could use these smaller windows to focus on areas of importance. As you got done with each area you could close the window and move on to the next one or switch between them. That way you wouldn't be so likely to forget something.

To be honest, there's really several things that could be done given infinite time or multiple Ralphs. [:D]

What you've got so far is very very nice. [&o]

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Panama
Oh, you made me think of something else that might be cool. You could have multiple movable map windows. If you have a big map you could use these smaller windows to focus on areas of importance. As you got done with each area you could close the window and move on to the next one or switch between them. That way you wouldn't be so likely to forget something.

To be honest, there's really several things that could be done given infinite time or multiple Ralphs. [:D]

What you've got so far is very very nice. [&o]

I think Total Annihilation did that years ago, although I may be thinking of another RTS.

Once I do the rewrite, it's something to play with. The technology I'm looking at would allow for multiple windows that can be moved onto multiple monitors, so you could leave the 'Group' window up, along with a couple of different sized map windows, and possibly the Unit and Formation windows (assuming you've got a couple of monitors.) As long as I set things up so that the default looks something like what we have now since it's reasonable.

That's a ways off, though.

Ralph

[pionier]

Hey Ralph,

will you fix the window for the weather report? It doesn't fit correct for larger scale scenarios!

greetings pionier

[pionier]

This is what it should look like!

[ralphtricky]

You can zoom out all the way on the main display instead. It's great for planning on the larger maps.

[larryfulkerson]

you got a lot of application open there Ralph

Hey Ralph:

Um.....a while back we spoke about a CSV file that TOAW could output that would contain the losses for the turn for each attack that I could use as the input file for an application that I would write to output a losses chart. like the one in the picture below. If you would supply me with such a file I'll get busy writing an application.

[ralphtricky]

Those are a windows 7 thing. You can paste commonly used applications on that bar. I editied the message to trim it from the picture to avoid confusion.

I'm attaching the logs for a game of Arracourt. Let me know how it goes.

Ralph

[larryfulkerson]

Hey Ralph:

I'm just guessing what the columns C -> H represent. How did I do?

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
Hey Ralph:

I'm just guessing what the columns C -> H represent. How did I do?

Don't quit your day job[:D]. You're one for 5. OK, one you couldn't have known, so make that 1 for 4, which isn't too bad.

X,Y location of the combat.
Equipment Lost/Equipment Assigned.
Image number (I wouldn't have expected you to know this one) You can use it to look up the image in the equipment256.bmp file, or in the ixxxxx file.

Ralph

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

Don't quit your day job[:D]. You're one for 5. OK, one you couldn't have known, so make that 1 for 4, which isn't too bad.

X,Y location of the combat.
Equipment Lost/Equipment Assigned.
Image number (I wouldn't have expected you to know this one) You can use it to look up the image in the equipment256.bmp file, or in the ixxxxx file.

Ralph

That seems a lot more complicated and less helpful than if it were structured like Larry's interpretation [:D]

[pionier]

Yeah it would be quite cool for our AARs if we could simply generate a log with for example strg + shift+ F7 with the actual total losses? /assigend etcpp that would be nice too

best regards

pio!

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: pionier

Yeah it would be quite cool for our AARs if we could simply generate a log with for example strg + shift+ F7 with the actual total losses? /assigend etcpp that would be nice too

best regards

pio!

If you turn on the sitreplog, it will generate a txt file with the news from the combat results dialog, and a csv file that you can open in Excel with the losses for that turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie.....I wrote an application in Java that will parse the sitrep_log files that version 3.4 will output and ran it and got some acceptable output. It's console application, which means it runs in the background while you're doing something else and doesn't have a "window" to watch or anything like that. I'm attaching the executable, with a batch file to start it up and an input file so anybody who wants to can play with it. Right now it has produced an html file that doesn't have any pictures of the equipment and I'm still looking at making a different version that will indeed have some pictures of the different kinds of equipment. But that might mean that I'll have to break out the separate pictures into files and there's 15 X 9 of them which is about 135 different files to produce. I guess I'll do that in my spare time.

Just download the attachment, clip off the ".txt" from the end of the filename so that it's a zip file....unzip it and if you have the java runtime installed all you have to do it double click on the ListCharter.bat file and the test.html file will be produced ( hopefully ). I've included a test.html file that I produced just now and you can look at that and compare it to the CSV input file if you want to. I have already glanced over the product and it looks good to me.

Maybe Ralph can incorporate this code into the 3.5 version or the 4.0 version or something so we might have this facility within the TOAW program instead of a stand-alone application to do this.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought it prudent to post a picture of the html output file that LossesCharter produces so far. Notice that it doesn't have any pictures of the various equipment types. That's for a future version. Plus I want to make it a multi-threading program with at least two threads ( one for force 1 and one for force 2 ) because it takes at least 1/10th of a second to run at the present time and that's about 20 nanoseconds too long. Also, I want to modify the program so you can input more than one file at a time and have them all preocessed at the same time. And to top off the cake, I want to produce an applet with a loader application so that users can just browse to my web site and click on a link, have a simple bootstrap program download to the users web browser so that the user can upload an input file to my program, where the program will run automatically using the user's file, and have the users browser display the resulting file. Or we could just distribute the executable as a jar file that anybody can use to process their own file(s) at their leisure.

Just a thought.