From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3359 invoked by alias); 20 Aug 2004 15:26:21 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 3352 invoked from network); 20 Aug 2004 15:26:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailrouter3.execulink.net) (199.166.6.58) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 20 Aug 2004 15:26:20 -0000 Received: from diamond.ansuz.sooke.bc.ca (ppp140.ac2.56k.execulink.com [209.213.229.140]) by mailrouter3.execulink.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i7KFQId01216 for ; Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:26:19 -0400 Received: from localhost (mskala@localhost) by diamond.ansuz.sooke.bc.ca (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id i7KFP0I07119 for ; Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:25:01 -0400 Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 16:22:00 -0000 From: mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca To: xconq7@sources.redhat.com Subject: Three thoughts Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg00970.txt.bz2 I've been busy with other things and not really playing or thinking about Xconq much recently, but here are three interface thoughts, two of them TCL/TK specific: * If firing at specific units were to be a big part of some game, then it would be nice if it were easier to designate specific units when there are many of them, or nested occupant/transports, in a cell. As it is, even at the deepest level of zoom it's quite difficult to click precisely on one unit if there are a lot of them in the cell. One way to deal with this might be for an interface to be able to give me a dialog box with a list of units in the cell. * In the current TCL/TK interface (well, current as of my last CVS update), connection terrain is sometimes not drawn when at the highest zoom level unless "grid" is turned on. The "Lord of the Rings" game is a good one for observing this - zoom in on a section of the map where there are roads, and the roads suddenly disappear when you hit maximum zoom. They can be made to appear and disappear by turning "grid" on and off. And yet it seems to work correctly in the standard game regardless of the state of "grid". * I would really, really like to disable the automatic scrolling based on mouse position in the TCL/TK interface, and I sure hope that "feature" hasn't been incorporated into other interfaces. It makes games that require close-in zooming almost unplayable. This will probably be my project next time I have time to spend hacking on Xconq. As a general principle, I *never* want mouse position (without click) to change my interface state, especially not in a way that's hard to reverse. It's especially annoying because common actions require me to move the pointer between the map area and the menus or action buttons, and every time I do that I have to move the pointer through the magic scroll zone and risk getting a scroll that I didn't want. Making the auto-scroll user-settable would be okay, I suppose, but I'd keep the setting turned off all the time myself. Why can't we have scroll bars like everybody else? -- Matthew Skala mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca Embrace and defend. http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/