Playing with the reticule
Posted: 21 Nov 2017, 03:02
Q: What the heck is a reticule?
A: I have no idea. The word is used throughout the codebase to describe this thing: However, google searches find nothing appropriate. It might be weird spelling of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticle, but who knows.
Q: Why am I playing around with this?
A: I've long tried to find some way to visualize common unit actions for the player, to avoid depending on memorization of hotkeys from not easily accessible documentation and/or options. I think this is a very big problem for new and regular players both. I've tried various variations of the existing GUI widgets, but none looked even remotely acceptable to me. So I wondered if maybe the reticule could be used for this purpose.
Q: How would it work?
A: When you select a droid, the reticule switches from the normal view you can above, to a droid menu instead. Unselect the droid, and the regular menu re-appears. Since we now can control the reticule buttons from scripts, toying around with this was actually quite easy (with some improvements to the code that I'll push later). I had to make some new icons, but don't judge this idea based on my non-existent artistic abilities - pretend that these placeholders actually contain something a competent pixel artist would draw instead.
My first fear was that there would not be enough buttons to go around. But once I merge various orders into meaningful buttons, I was surprised the problem was actually a lack of things to use buttons for, rather than the opposite.
Some mock up examples (mouse cursor disappeared...): Q: Can we use this on bulidings, too?
A: Well... Maybe. Buildings do actually have some actions. The lassat has its strike ability. The factories have production, delivery point, show obsolete and loop buttons that are now somewhat hidden. Repair facility also has a delivery point, and research stations have research. But that's about it. Of course, this allows to easily add more building actions, since we would have a decent framework to add them into.
Q: How did it work in-game?
A: I got a semi-working mockup working, that made the new buttons appear/disappear whenever I selected and de-selected droids. It seemed quite elegant to me, and each of the menus were easily accessible, and very unobtrusive (unlike all my other attempts to add something like this). The reticule behaviours would be controlled from the rules.js script using script callbacks whenever a reticule button is pressed.
Q: So what do you think about this idea?
A: I have no idea. The word is used throughout the codebase to describe this thing: However, google searches find nothing appropriate. It might be weird spelling of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticle, but who knows.
Q: Why am I playing around with this?
A: I've long tried to find some way to visualize common unit actions for the player, to avoid depending on memorization of hotkeys from not easily accessible documentation and/or options. I think this is a very big problem for new and regular players both. I've tried various variations of the existing GUI widgets, but none looked even remotely acceptable to me. So I wondered if maybe the reticule could be used for this purpose.
Q: How would it work?
A: When you select a droid, the reticule switches from the normal view you can above, to a droid menu instead. Unselect the droid, and the regular menu re-appears. Since we now can control the reticule buttons from scripts, toying around with this was actually quite easy (with some improvements to the code that I'll push later). I had to make some new icons, but don't judge this idea based on my non-existent artistic abilities - pretend that these placeholders actually contain something a competent pixel artist would draw instead.
My first fear was that there would not be enough buttons to go around. But once I merge various orders into meaningful buttons, I was surprised the problem was actually a lack of things to use buttons for, rather than the opposite.
Some mock up examples (mouse cursor disappeared...): Q: Can we use this on bulidings, too?
A: Well... Maybe. Buildings do actually have some actions. The lassat has its strike ability. The factories have production, delivery point, show obsolete and loop buttons that are now somewhat hidden. Repair facility also has a delivery point, and research stations have research. But that's about it. Of course, this allows to easily add more building actions, since we would have a decent framework to add them into.
Q: How did it work in-game?
A: I got a semi-working mockup working, that made the new buttons appear/disappear whenever I selected and de-selected droids. It seemed quite elegant to me, and each of the menus were easily accessible, and very unobtrusive (unlike all my other attempts to add something like this). The reticule behaviours would be controlled from the rules.js script using script callbacks whenever a reticule button is pressed.
Q: So what do you think about this idea?