Re: Bugs in SDL interface

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Lincoln Peters wrote:

> 4. When I change the zoom, the main panel shifts to display a different
> part of the map.  And strangely enough, it seems to shift to the same
> spot every time, although a different spot for each level of
> magnification.  I think we all agree that it should remain centered on
> the same point when the zoom changes.

I have fixed this in my sources.

> 5. In the Standard game, roads do not appear at maximum zoom.  They seem
> to appear properly at all other zooms (except the lowest, where they'd
> be an eyesore).  I haven't tried it with other games.

I was able to reproduce this. I am not ready to fix it yet.

> 6. There needs to be an easy way to tell which units have remaining
> ACP's and are not in Reserve or Asleep *without* clicking on them,
> unless the unit focus will automatically switch to the next such unit
> when the currently-selected unit cannot perform additional actions this
> turn.  Otherwise, making sure that all units have acted in a given turn
> is a real pain.

This was a remarkably simple fix. One line, in fact. The SDL interface 
in my sources now automatically selects the next unit to act, just as in 
the Tcl/Tk interface.

> 8. There should be some kind of feedback for combat situations.  Not
> necessarily explosions (although that might be useful, if done
> correctly), but some way to tell what happened without having to run
> Xconq from an XTerm and flip between the two windows up to 20 times per
> minute.  The best way I can think of to do this is by using a status bar
> for messages such as "Your * can never do this!", and a collapsible log
> panel for messages such as "You completed your *".

I think this feedback should go in a panel along the bottom of the 
screen. I have been somewhat tempted to move the panel with the unit 
info off to the right side of the screen to help square up the aspect 
ratio (as in TOAW), and make room for notices along the bottom. Still 
not sure yet, especially since it looks like a line or two could be 
squeezed out of the unit info panel on the bottom, and, depending on how 
text is rendered, there could be severe truncation of the unit info 
strings, if they were put on a narrower panel on the right side of the 
screen.

Eric