Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
In addition to unit obsolescence, I would like to see, fairly soon, the possibilty of Activities becoming invisible, as described in the tech thread. This should be slightly easier to handle, since everything invested there is spent every turn. The order would simply vanish from the screen, with no other changes.

This should be fairly easy to do. Laurent, could you put a boolean into both activites and techs (just for generality) that says whether they should be hidden from the gui? If you can set up the xml on the tech end, I'll read it when I put up the econ gui and we will be able to ignore certain activites and techs as specified in the scenario. Does that work for everyone?

[LDiCesare]

Everything Richard asks for is feasible, so I'll try to get it done. Right now, you can only have one unit making another unit obsolete, so it needs code change, but it is not much work to allow several units and events.

[Richard Bruns]

Sounds good, thanks.

[Richard Bruns]

Obsolescense still does not work properly. While it does seem to function properly for foot units, it does not work for either Chariots or for any of the siege weapons, which should all make the previous weapon obsolete. To see this, download 7-6-1 and play Delenda as the Romans. They can build Chariots, which should be made obsolete by Chargers but are not, and they can also build all three kinds of siege weapons.

This is not the only case of foot units being treated differently than other kinds. While technology can improve the Movement and Mobility of foot units, I still get an error when trying to do this with any other category of unit. Somehow the category of unit is having a big effect on the code, where it should not.

[LFS]

I've dropped the size of the scroll bars.

I'll look at redoing the tree format.

I could do with an EconOrder or EconOrderInfo having a method to return an associated Icon to use on the row instead of the text (have the text as a tool tip) - that means icons ( artist anyone )

I havn't worked out a way of building up a tree of orders (by which I mean what top level categories we have and which categories are children of others) as I'm struggling to see where in the existing code there is any sort of relationship indicated I'm tending towards an XML file which holds a tree of ordernames - but this means an extra area to maintain as orders are added/deleted in the game.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Obsolescense still does not work properly. While it does seem to function properly for foot units, it does not work for either Chariots or for any of the siege weapons, which should all make the previous weapon obsolete. To see this, download 7-6-1 and play Delenda as the Romans. They can build Chariots, which should be made obsolete by Chargers but are not, and they can also build all three kinds of siege weapons.

Hi Richard, I'd seen the Chariot problem when I finished my code mods, and had meant to mention it in the readme for the testbed. Laurent said in an email that if the combate effectiveness vs cost of a unit was still nearly as high as the new one, and old-style unit would not be marked obsolete. You can try increasing the power of each of the siege weapons radically as tech improves, and see if that doesn't fix the problem. Horde was another one where in my version it should not have been there, but was still avialable.

I also have never seen a Trireme order, and would like to get that one squared away.

Lee said: I havn't worked out a way of building up a tree of orders (by which I mean what top level categories we have and which categories are children of others) as I'm struggling to see where in the existing code there is any sort of relationship indicated I'm tending towards an XML file which holds a tree of ordernames - but this means an extra area to maintain as orders are added/deleted in the game.

Hi Lee, good to see you back in the Clash sphere . What is wrong with the classes in GovtEconOrdersInfo?
FE there is a Military category with current sub-classes of supplies, army, and navy units. I think I already wrote you about these, but you may have forgotten, or disliked them for some reason. . .

[Richard Bruns]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Laurent said in an email that if the combate effectiveness vs cost of a unit was still nearly as high as the new one, and old-style unit would not be marked obsolete. You can try increasing the power of each of the siege weapons radically as tech improves, and see if that doesn't fix the problem.

Newer versions of siege weapons already have 1.5 times the power at no aditional cost. It is extra power for free, so the old ones should clearly be obsolete.

[LDiCesare]

The only things checked for comparing units are attack and distance strength, not brieching power. That can explain siege weapons. I'll have to investigate, anyway.

[Richard Bruns]

Could you just make a unit obsolete if the scenario designer says it is obsolete, and get rid of the code that overrides the xml file?

[LDiCesare]

Could you just make a unit obsolete if the scenario designer says it is obsolete, and get rid of the code that overrides the xml file?

No for 2 reasons.
One is if a unit is not seen as obsolete in the code it is because it is more efficient than what it makes obsolete, so the player should still be able to build it. An example would be early musketeers that are no better than crossbowmen when they become available, but become better afterwards as tech makes progress. Now if there are bugs in the evaluation of power, then I need to correct that.
The second reason is that a unit should not be obsolete unless something better is available. The way it is currently alows you to make sure that the unit is indeed better than its replacement when it kicks in.

[Martin the Dane]

I must say that I do gree with Richard on how to make a buildorder obsolete. IMO it should be the scenario-designers descission and responsibility to decide when an order becomes obsololete.

If the replacing unit is not better than what it replaces it should be the designers responsibility to fix that. This could be done by raising the tech level that makes the unit obsolete, or by raising the new unit's base strength.

As to making the econ-order-tree dependant on an xml-file I like that Idea. It makes GUI-tveaking much easier and scenario-costumizing the econ-gui will be possible. An example: People that don't like the particulare placement of a given order can move it.

[LDiCesare]

I can do it but I want both: I want a unit to be able to be produced while its replacement is here too: Musketeers/crossbowmen. The current problem is mostly due to econ not showing obsolete units properly IMO. I would have to add a tag like:
<obsolete>
<name>Legion</name>
<force/>
</obsolete>
So we'd have both options available.

Another point: I am adding an isHidden() method in ActivityData class, so the econ should be able to ask an Activity whether it wants to be shown in the econ UI or not.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent:

Originally posted by LDiCesare
The current problem is mostly due to econ not showing obsolete units properly IMO.

I think I had fixed that with last weeks code. It relies on whether the thing is buildable. If there is a bug in my current code I'll sure fix it. Please do check though, and show me a case where it doesn't work. FE when the Buildable says its ok, but the econ doesn't allow the order.

[/QUOTE]Another point: I am adding an isHidden() method in ActivityData class, so the econ should be able to ask an Activity whether it wants to be shown in the econ UI or not. [/QUOTE]

I have also coded an alternative to this so that in the econ xml you can say "don't show 'Combat Tech' orders" (or Phalanx. . . for that matter). It seemed a more general method than just for Tech Activities would be useful.

[LFS]

What is wrong with the classes in GovtEconOrdersInfo?

I missed your change - I'll try and get going with that.


e-mail from mark.

Hi Lee, I finally had my code changes in a state where I thought I could add yours without inviting catastrophe. I checked out your new gui, and it looks pretty cool! For some reason the locked and unlocked images didn't make it, but otherwise it was quite serviceable. Seeing this I am almost certain the tree can be made to work well with your concept. But of course its a lot of hard work to get from here to there.

I think you could spice it up quickly by throwing in the appropriate military unit images, and possibly the economic special commodity ones also. Though if you think that'd be time consuming it could wait quite a while. And having it update when a turn is cranked would be good to see also. One other thing I noticed is that orders seem to be normed to 100%. That doesn't always work, FE you can spend a lot more than 100% if you have a big treasury you are willing to draw down and have orders like tech spending that only need services from the economy. (Since services = money in the Clash economy). We may need to discuss in detail what the right way to handle it is. For now it would be simplest not to normalize to 100% for this and some other reasons I don't want to go into now because I'm tired. Good Stuff!

Looking forward to the next steps. :-) Soon we'll be able to bury that old piece of you-know-what gui I cobbled together a long time ago...

I am done with much of the econ xml stuff. I will do a class to handle order category entry, and their placement in the gui, (and also precedence for spending if orders are more than 100%) fairly soon. Let me know if the lack of that starts to hold you up. Cya,

For some reason the locked and unlocked images didn't make it

Doh. I still had the image locations hard coded. fixed - I'll mail it out later.

and it looks pretty cool

glad you like it, I'm not so sure I do now (I hate designing guis, don't mind coding them - just hate designing them)

Seeing this I am almost certain the tree can be made to work well with your concept.

As I said a while back I had a tree originally - it's not hard to code it.

spice it up quickly by throwing in the appropriate military unit images

Thats what I would like to do, It really needs some method on the econOrder or OrderInfo class to return the Image or ImageName. That way all lines in the Gui would get an image if one was provided.

One other thing I noticed is that orders seem to be normed to 100%

I think that was the original discussion on the forum, but I can unnormalise it if you so desire.


The highest things on my list are the tree structure and the images.I'll should get a few hours later today to do some stuff (if I can see through my conjunctivitus).

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks Lee, everything sounds good!

Originally posted by LFS

Thats what I would like to do, It really needs some method on the econOrder or OrderInfo class to return the Image or ImageName. That way all lines in the Gui would get an image if one was provided.

Will do.

I think that was the original discussion on the forum, but I can unnormalise it if you so desire.

Sorry for the changes! Lets leave it not limited to 100% for now, and see what we can come up with later. One idea is to explicitily put inflows to and outflows from the treasury in it. That way if you have treasury at 30% everything else would add to 70% within norming to 100%. Also then if you want to spend more than 100% on orders you could just have treasury at FE -25% with all other orders summing to 125%. Ideas?

The highest things on my list are the tree structure and the images.I'll should get a few hours later today to do some stuff (if I can see through my conjunctivitus).

Sounds good, sorry to hear about the eyes.

Others: I also have put in a command line switch so that you can pick between showing the old and the new econ gui. That way we can get feedback from everyone as the new GUI evolves. (This ok with you Lee?)