unit selection count changed to 36

[Conzar]

So can you select an arbitrary unit count, or is it maxed at 36?

[ultifd]

I still think stacking would be the best. If it's faction specific, then I believe it should be 32...or 36, I guess. I suppose ultimately this wouldn't matter after the merge, though. Or this wouldn't matter because others would just set it in glestuser.ini...although I wouldn't set it too high.

[Omega]

What I think: So you don't like the ability to select 16 units. That's your opinion. Glest is meant to be versatile, and not just to modders, but to players. Create an INI option, and for all I care, make it default to 16, but, in truth, we can select any number of units we want. Everyone wins. Those who think they can do better with smaller selection groups are welcome to do so, while those who prefer the ability to select as many units as they want can also do so. By making it their choice, we're standing up for the freedom Glest was created in. The way I see it, tech specific limits things to the perspective of the modder, and that simply won't do.

And of course, in order to be able to select "unlimited" (probably not true unlimited, but have a cap so high that it would be unreachable in Glest), stacking of icons would be necessary.

[ultifd]

What I think: So you don't like the ability to select 16 units. That's your opinion. Glest is meant to be versatile, and not just to modders, but to players. Create an INI option, and for all I care, make it default to 16, but, in truth, we can select any number of units we want. Everyone wins. Those who think they can do better with smaller selection groups are welcome to do so, while those who prefer the ability to select as many units as they want can also do so. By making it their choice, we're standing up for the freedom Glest was created in. The way I see it, tech specific limits things to the perspective of the modder, and that simply won't do.

This was already done months ago   In fact, the only reason titi made some changes to the selection is because I noticed it in the Adrian Delpha mod; and then I reminded him about it.
Set this in your glestuser.ini in MG 3.4.0
MaxUnitSelectCount=X the max # of icons is still 32, but then you can still get around 28 to 29 icons there.

[John.d.h]

Regarding the size of the icons, Maybe you didn't got it right! Originally the icons are shown in NORMAL size!
Only if the selection is too big they get more and more shrinked to fit with the space. Thats done dynamically while playing!

Yeah, I got that, but if the selection size is 36 units, then the player is probably going to have a lot more than 16 selected most of the time, so the icons are going to be shrunk for most of the game.  For somebody who makes and appreciates good icons, it's bad to have the icons tiny and ugly for most of the time they're playing.  Plus, if they get really small and the icons aren't that much different, it becomes harder to tell the difference with what you have selected.  With a stack, you get to really see the artwork the whole time.

Maybe someone can try my way of selecting units? It looks like everyone only talks in theory about it!

Is it in SVN head, or is there something to enable in 3.4.0?

What I think: So you don't like the ability to select 16 units. That's your opinion. Glest is meant to be versatile, and not just to modders, but to players. Create an INI option, and for all I care, make it default to 16, but, in truth, we can select any number of units we want. Everyone wins. Those who think they can do better with smaller selection groups are welcome to do so, while those who prefer the ability to select as many units as they want can also do so. By making it their choice, we're standing up for the freedom Glest was created in. The way I see it, tech specific limits things to the perspective of the modder, and that simply won't do.

You also have to take into account competitive balance.  In single player mode, the player is free to do whatever (cheat, hack, modify stats, whatever) because the only person whose enjoyment has to be accounted for is that individual.  However, in multiplayer, you have to be able to restrict what people do to ensure fair play.

[ultifd]

Maybe someone can try my way of selecting units? It looks like everyone only talks in theory about it!

Is it in SVN head, or is there something to enable in 3.4.0?

It's SVN head.

[John.d.h]

It's SVN head.

If I can build it, I'll give it a shot.  Is there a compile guide somewhere, or do I have to wing it?

Edit: Nevermind, found it. https://docs.megaglest.org/MG/Development

[ultifd]

It's SVN head.

If I can build it, I'll give it a shot.  Is there a compile guide somewhere, or do I have to wing it?

Yes, it's fairly simple. Yes, it's always at the wiki. Join the Glest IRC Channel if you need help. Note that peformance might seem slower because currently we're having some problems with the pathfinder I think...better pathfinding but slower performance for some reason.

[Omega]

What I think: So you don't like the ability to select 16 units. That's your opinion. Glest is meant to be versatile, and not just to modders, but to players. Create an INI option, and for all I care, make it default to 16, but, in truth, we can select any number of units we want. Everyone wins. Those who think they can do better with smaller selection groups are welcome to do so, while those who prefer the ability to select as many units as they want can also do so. By making it their choice, we're standing up for the freedom Glest was created in. The way I see it, tech specific limits things to the perspective of the modder, and that simply won't do.

You also have to take into account competitive balance.  In single player mode, the player is free to do whatever (cheat, hack, modify stats, whatever) because the only person whose enjoyment has to be accounted for is that individual.  However, in multiplayer, you have to be able to restrict what people do to ensure fair play.

But, john, that's not the issue. Titi believes that gameplay would actually be harder:

Of course first it looks like gameplay will get more easy when you can select more units, but in fact it gets more complicated!
Why this?:
It will be much harder to group small groups now! Small groups are something you really don't want to miss when you are a bit more advanced and have to manage a fight! You typically group your units to the number slots 1-10 and then you switch like mad while fighting and give attack orders to each of the groups. 16 units was a good size regarding the whole game! Too much in the beginning, but ok in the end. You just double clicked a unit before and you got the perfect amount of units selected.
Now you have to double click to select typically all units of this kind in range. Then you let them walk to another place where you  use the selection box to define your smaller groups. All in all very complicated!. And don't tell me you want to manage a fight with 36 units in selection! If you do this its just letting the units attack for themselves, not really manage the fight which is the most fun part when playing glest!

Thus, I stand by my proposal.

[John.d.h]

After trying it out in the game, I still think it looks really bad.  It's even worse than I expected, actually.

[titi]

ok whatever, for me is ok whatever is choosen, I will reduce the amount of units to 16 anyways so it will not effect me in megapack/glest anyways.

[John.d.h]

Does this look okay?


Just a little mockup I made in GIMP, no actual coding.

[tomreyn]

Fow what it's worth, I like the shrunk icons much better than how it is now (think 3.4.0). And I would like stacked icons even better.

[titi]

reminds me heavily of windows7 and I hate it because I never know what going on! The difference here is the number and the fact that one unit type really is one unit type in the Display, not like in Win7 where you know nothing and there can be anything in the same list ...
So yes its ok, I like this way to display it too.

for the moment I will keep my implementation, because the formaer one was really critical regarding memory access....

[Omega]

reminds me heavily of windows7 and I hate it because I never know what going on! The difference here is the number and the fact that one unit type really is one unit type in the Display, not like in Win7 where you know nothing and there can be anything in the same list ...

You're being biased... Assuming your refering to the taskbar icons, those, unlike your ingame selection icons, can be modified by the user (in my case, they replicate the older windows and most linux's task bars).

I think it looks great John, and that's exactly what I want to see in future versions of Glest! Relatedly, there should be a limit to how many "stacked icons" are seen, so that if you (hypothetically) select 50 units, the stack won't run of the screen. Eventually, the stack would just stop displaying the icon and display the number.

[Conzar]

Does this look okay?

I think it looks nice (graphically); however, it seems that it might take up too much space (horizontally).  Would it be better to just show 1 icon with the number of units in the corner (maybe highlight the icon with some special flag to indicate its stacked)?

[Ishmaru]

Do we really need to stack them? i don't like the stack graphically due to the repeat of 4 rows of pixels at the edge of the icon. Wouldn't it be ok  to just use one icon with the number counter?

titi for you initial idea Would there be any way to sharpen the image as it shrinks? so smaller version wouldn't be so blurred? Or perhaps you could have custom icons for small medium large?

[titi]

blurred? I think that is related to your monitor resolution or maybe the driver. Its simply an opengl plane which gets smaller dimensions, I don't shrink the image itself. If its blurry on my screenshots its just because its heavily compressed for the web.

For the stacking:
I think we should just paint some of the stacked images. More than 5 is useless.
By the way how will it be handled if you have selected 8 dfferent units types?

[John.d.h]

I think we should just paint some of the stacked images. More than 5 is useless.
By the way how will it be handled if you have selected 8 dfferent units types?

In that case, maybe go with this instead?:

Would it be better to just show 1 icon with the number of units in the corner (maybe highlight the icon with some special flag to indicate its stacked)?

Here's my quick not-very-good mockup of what I'm picturing in my head:

[Omega]

I think the highlight would be unnecessary. My version of the quick mock up (note the outlining of the white number, to ensure it will always be readable. Otherwise, unmodified for simplicity).

[ultifd]

I suppose just having an icon + a number would be cleaner and more simple, but the one problem that I have with that is that it seems that would leave that it would seem kinda too empty compare to if icons were being stacked...But maybe I'm wrong.

[Omega]

I suppose just having an icon + a number would be cleaner and more simple, but the one problem that I have with that is that it seems that would leave that it would seem kinda too empty compare to if icons were being stacked...But maybe I'm wrong.

What if we can make the icons bigger (without resizing?). I think in game, the icons are displayed as 32x32, even if the original size is bigger.

[tomreyn]

Regarding the solution which is currently implemented (in SVN): would it be possible to sort icons so that icons of units of the same types are listed next to each other?
Right now, if you group 3 priests, 12 spear throwers, and 3 mummies, they will display all mixed up which doesn't help when you are trying to quickly get an idea of what units you have selected...