M:C Main and City Screens

[Lib.Spi't]

yes I saw that with the immigration, it could be very useful.

everything else sounds very promising!

 

[Kailric]

Ok, next installment. I placed a Settlement Traders panel on the city Map view. I plan to add icons to the Traders so you know if they are buying or selling. Haven't looked into unit flashing on the map yet, but it may not be easy for sure.

EDIT: Cycling through my cities in my current saved game (that I haven't actually played in quite a while as I have just been testing things) I find that Hamburg has 3 Traders assigned to it that I didn't know about. Now I just need to get their type of Command Buy/Sell displayed and check if I can display their location.

If I can't display their location perhaps I can make their Button close the screen and zoom to their location that way.

 

[Nightinggale]

There is a vanilla function to make a plot flash on the map. It is used in multiplayer to tell positions to allied players. In other words there must be a vanilla function to make a plot flash. The question is where and if it is exe hardcoded (presumably not since it's activated from python GUI).

 

[Kailric]

There is a vanilla function to make a plot flash on the map. It is used in multiplayer to tell positions to allied players. In other words there must be a vanilla function to make a plot flash. The question is where and if it is exe hardcoded (presumably not since it's activated from python GUI).

Found it. More simple than I thought. Although, getting it to function as intended will take a little more time as right now I have all these red dots everywhere that want go away, but I see how to make it work just fine.

The way I plan to make it work is that you can Click a Unit in the Trader panel it will Highlight that unit, while Highlighted its location will flash on the screen. Then if you need to address that unit you can click the Map at that spot to zoom to that unit. You will also be able to give your unit Commands from the City screen, so if you could change him from buying to selling for example.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

nice!

 

[Kailric]

Here is a current screen shot of the two new Map and Export/Import panels. I moved the control buttons in order to make room for new info. You can't see it good but there is a little flashing red dot showing me where my Selected Trader is. You can select multiple Traders also.

I will at some point attempt to have the Export/Import panel expand but for now I am going to attempt to finish up any issues with Trade AI and go back to play testing my current game. We could actually add our own Yield Option Screen where you can get a quick overview in the Import/Export panel and tinker with a few settings, but if you really want to do some managing you bring up the Yield Option Screen where it list all the Options for each yield, a Map, and all of that Cities Traders, and perhaps other stuff like PlotGroup Prices and such.

Edit: We can change the Map sizes so I may tinker around with making it rectangle and bigger.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

That looks really good.

So I am guessing I am seeing all of the traders who have that city set as their home, does that include the domestic transports or just merchants?

Also is the little button on their images the switch from buy to sell or something else?

 

[Kailric]

That looks really good.

So I am guessing I am seeing all of the traders who have that city set as their home, does that include the domestic transports or just merchants?

Also is the little button on their images the switch from buy to sell or something else?

Note to self: I should make the Trader List Smaller as you don't need to drag goods to and fro the unit.

All Transport units that are assigned to that City will be listed there. Domestic Supply Trains who are just doing their rounds with no home city will not be listed.

The little button is one of the New Trader command buttons. Buy Wares has a Gold pile with a Arrow pointing to a cargo box and Sell wares has the opposite. You will be ale to click the unit button and bring up a list of commands for it.

Also, in vanilla if a unit was Automated in the City Screen it had the Automated Icon. I replaced that with the actual command Icon the Unit is performing. This will come in handy for Units you have sent to Trade Screens, as it will show which trade screen it is headed towards.

I just had the idea that we can also list the Units that are at Trade Screens in the Trader City List. Then when you click the Unit it will open that Trade Screen. Now that I think about it, it would be nice to have an over view of all your Units that are Inbound/Outbound/Visiting Trade Screens. You can then click a Unit to go to that Trade Screen. It would be much more handier than switching through multiple screens to find your units. Just where to put this info is the question. Perhaps a catch all Trade Screen, or perhaps it could be added to the new Yield Option Screen.

 

[orlanth]

I have always wondered, is there a way to have an option that the minimap appears rectangular with normal scale, rather than forced into a round shape with somewhat distorted scale like in vanilla? This could be used for any scenarios where the game map is supposed to be a normal map area not representing the entire globe of the Earth, which is actually the case for many uses including M:C and 2071.

 

[Kailric]

I have always wondered, is there a way to have an option that the minimap appears rectangular with normal scale, rather than forced into a round shape with somewhat distorted scale like in vanilla? This could be used for any scenarios where the game map is supposed to be a normal map area not representing the entire globe of the Earth, which is actually the case for many uses including M:C and 2071.

The answer to that is a yes. The City map and the World map are the same maps, it just gets moved from once place to the other, but when it is first initialized it is setup to be Round.

Other screens have maps that are setup to be rectangle, and all it takes is turning a true value into a false value in the initiation. If someone wanted to work up a Square Map holder for the Main Screen, I'd be happy to drop it in square.

To change the City Map to a Square map, or rectangle we would have to initiate another map and hide/show it. It may be time consuming to initiate a map each time you swap from City to World view and that is why they just move it instead.

 

[Nightinggale]

All Transport units that are assigned to that City will be listed there.

I would prefer to narrow it down a bit more. I would like to only show units, which are set to foreign trade. Even if a domestic transport is set to use this city as home city, it will not show up in the list of foreign trade units.

 

[Kailric]

I would prefer to narrow it down a bit more. I would like to only show units, which are set to foreign trade. Even if a domestic transport is set to use this city as home city, it will not show up in the list of foreign trade units.

Perhaps a filter to sort them as I do like the idea of Ships calling the city home being listed. If you have several ports cities all with Ships set up to transport their goods to trade screens you can get the status on each one.

 

[orlanth]

Yo check this out playa! Wouldn't some of these be awesome as interface buttons?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Three Up from bottom left looks like a drunk fencer!

"Yeah come on! I'll take you all on slags!!!!!!"

 

[Kailric]

Here is a screeny of the new setup for Import/Export popup. Until we have an official Yield Option Screen I am going to let these be the options we have. I added a graphical separator between each Yield so you can better see what yield you are modifying.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

noice!

 

[Kailric]

OK, another function I want to add is the ability to assign Import/Exports to multiple cities at once. I am thinking this can be done with the single Yield Option Menu best. When you are done setting options there is an Ok Text button, I am thinking we can add new Text buttons for things like "Export from here", then that yield will be assigned to Import at all other cities. Or another option would be to "Import to here", then all other cities will be assigned to Export that yield. This will help if you want to have a base of operations, a place to send all your weapons then as they arrive have your units equip them. That may be a good time to introduce the delayed Profession that Night talked about.

 

[Nightinggale]

So you are saying that you want a "gather all yields in this city" checkbox for each yield. If one is set, all other cities will automatically enable export and clear the gather status if any other city has that one set.

That sounds doable. In fact I think it would be surprisingly simple to implement. The only tricky part is building a new city as this one would have to loop all cities to find their gather settings. Maybe we should cache if it is used or not.

 

[Kailric]

No, not a check box but new Exit buttons. Instead of pressing the OK button when you are done, you can also press one of those other buttons I mentioned and it will close the popup and also issue commands to your cities.

In my current game I have one city producing Chain Mail and I was moving it around manually to my rally point, but now that I am at peace I don't need than any more and I would like for that city to start distributing its Chain Mail everywhere. So, I had to go to each city and turn on Import for Chainmail and I thought it would be better if I could do that with one click. Also, this would benefit to have the Feeder service turned on right, so perhaps the command could turn this on instead?

For the record, please post what exactly feeder does again and also consumption and I'll place that at the start of this thread. The help text for feeder says it turns it on at 75% and off at 100%. I don't quite understand why 75%?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I think this is where the text becomes confusing and 'inaccurate' I remember mentioning that the language should be changed slightly.

I think it turns on at less than 75%, rather than at 75%