Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Eric McDonald]

There seems to be a display glitch when playing either 
version of D&D Bolo with grid turned on (my usual way of playing). 
I have toggled terrain transitions on and off, and likewise with 
coverage and people views. Nothing seems to matter. Also, this 
problem does not show up in other game modules.

Basically what happens is that whenever a unit occupies a cell or 
covers it with a unit view, the grid lines surrounding the covered 
hexes become thick lines, instead of thin ones.

I looked through the ML archives but didn't see anyone mentioning 
this particular problem. Graphics stuff really isn't my cup of 
tea, and I certainly don't feel like tracking it down until after 
I finish the Bellum rewrite and help take care of some of the 
remaining movement/pathfinding stuff.

If it's not a bug, then it is a really ugly feature (and by no 
means an obvious one).

Eric

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Lincoln Peters]

On Sat, 2004-03-06 at 14:28, Eric McDonald wrote:
> Basically what happens is that whenever a unit occupies a cell or 
> covers it with a unit view, the grid lines surrounding the covered 
> hexes become thick lines, instead of thin ones.

I think I've seen this on occasion in the Standard game as well (at
least I saw it there a while ago).  So I'm sure that it is not specific
to bolodd2.g and bolodd3.g (unless the Standard game has been modified
within the last few months).

What surprises me is that I've seen the glitch in the Standard game (and
probably a few others that I can't remember), but I've never seen it in
bolodd2.g or bolodd3.g.  I've never been sure why it affects some games
and not others.

-- 
Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Jim Kingdon]

> Basically what happens is that whenever a unit occupies a cell or 
> covers it with a unit view, the grid lines surrounding the covered 
> hexes become thick lines, instead of thin ones.

This is a longstanding problem (I suppose an xconq bug, although I
don't know if we can say for sure that it isn't tk).  I'm pretty sure
I discussed it on this list a few years ago.  I think the result then
was "gee, that is strange" but no one was able to figure out the cause
(or even exactly what makes it happen).

The workaround is to zoom in/out a few times until it goes away.

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Hans Ronne]

>There seems to be a display glitch when playing either
>version of D&D Bolo with grid turned on (my usual way of playing).
>I have toggled terrain transitions on and off, and likewise with
>coverage and people views. Nothing seems to matter. Also, this
>problem does not show up in other game modules.
>
>Basically what happens is that whenever a unit occupies a cell or
>covers it with a unit view, the grid lines surrounding the covered
>hexes become thick lines, instead of thin ones.
>
>I looked through the ML archives but didn't see anyone mentioning
>this particular problem. Graphics stuff really isn't my cup of
>tea, and I certainly don't feel like tracking it down until after
>I finish the Bellum rewrite and help take care of some of the
>remaining movement/pathfinding stuff.
>
>If it's not a bug, then it is a really ugly feature (and by no
>means an obvious one).

It is definitely a bug, and it is specific to the tcltk interface. Seems
like the pen size is not set correctly before drawing the grid. I suspect
that the connection and border drawing code is involved since rivers are
drawn with the same thick pen size in the Bolo games. This might explain
why we have not seen this in games which use images to draw rivers.

I will take a look at the graphics code.

Hans

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Eric McDonald]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> don't know if we can say for sure that it isn't tk).  I'm pretty sure
> I discussed it on this list a few years ago.

Oh. Sorry if I overlooked it.

> The workaround is to zoom in/out a few times until it goes away.

Thanks.
The thick lines also seem to get cleared out at the beginning of a 
turn and when the map is auto-scrolled by follow-action.

Eric

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Hans Ronne]

>>If it's not a bug, then it is a really ugly feature (and by no
>>means an obvious one).
>
>It is definitely a bug, and it is specific to the tcltk interface. Seems
>like the pen size is not set correctly before drawing the grid. I suspect
>that the connection and border drawing code is involved since rivers are
>drawn with the same thick pen size in the Bolo games. This might explain
>why we have not seen this in games which use images to draw rivers.
>
>I will take a look at the graphics code.

It was indeed a bug in the connection drawing code. I have checked in a fix.

Hans

Re: Display glitch with bolodd2 and bolodd3?

[Jim Kingdon]

> It was indeed a bug in the connection drawing code. I have checked in a fix.

Nice catch - that might have been hard to find if you hadn't noticed
the other places that the thick pen size is used.  I was obviously far
from the bug, if I was browsing through tkconq.tcl rather than the X11
calls in the C code (which is my vague recollection of where I had
looked for it before).