Reactivated Feature

Reactivated Feature

[Eric McDonald]

Hello Xconq Game Developers,

   I have just reactivated the 'stack-order' unit property so that it 
applies to unit views. All it took was a bug fix to get this one 
working. Bug fix + feature will be in the next file release.
   See the 'roman.g' and 'russian-rev.g' games for how it works. (It 
looks like I need to update the documentation in the game design manual 
since it is not entirely accurate.)

   To summarize how stack ordering should now work:
(1) Units are segregated according to side. Lower side numbers come earlier.
(2) Units are segregated according to stack order within each side. 
Higher stack orders come first.
(3) Units are segregated according to the order in which the unit types 
were declared in the game file, in the event that two unit types on the 
same side have the same stack order value.
(4) Units are segregated according to their internal ID numbers in the 
event that two units on the same side have the same unit type. Lower ID 
numbers come first.
   This applies to stacks in a cell and stacks of occs in a transport.

   Getting the above stack ordering to work properly was necessary for 
another GUI feature I have in mind.
   Although this is not the feature I have in mind, it would still be 
nice to enforce stack ordering during overrun actions.
   Another interesting feature would be to allow units of certain types 
on the player's side to appear out of their natural side ordering (in 
violation of stack ordering rule #1 above). Thus, they could appear in 
their natural ordering, before other sides (perhaps nice for transports 
so that potential occs can find them easily), or after other sides (nice 
for everything else, since you might want to be aware of all enemy units 
in the cell or transport before your own units).

Eric