Trade Route Screens, Tutorials, Questions, etc.

[Nightinggale]

I agree with Ray that an image, which is custom made for a specific screen will be best. However in this particular case I would say that the screenshot is pretty much spot on to catch the essence of what we want to display and I would say we should go for it and see how it works ingame. Worst case scenario is that it looks horrible once it's actually inside and all we have to do is to remove it again. That's not really a high risk test

I would have loved the dock to be closer though. I have this idea that dock placement can be written in XML and then the units can appear on the actual dock, just like in RaR. Sure it's eyecandy, but if the python code is flexible enough to handle that, we can do a much better job at hiding that all tradescreens in all mods use the same python file. Sure it would take a little more coding, but not an unreasonably amount of work.

Using the new debug settings screen, it could be made to reload the XML like the building XML and the units can be moved around when actually using the debug mode. Likewise it should be able to set the amount of units on the dock meaning you can test it with anything from 1 to 10 units without restarting the game. That would also be easy to add.

 

[Kailric]

You have a good point(@ ray). Although I think the screenshots I could generate through Anno would work quite nicely, especially if I could get the world builder to function. It is only in German and it can't find my installation of Anno, which is Dawn of Discovery in America. If I could do that, then I could set up almost perfect screen shots.

Anyway, I could add in a "dock" area like in R&R, but the screen really doesn't have to be life like. The 3D and sprite models don't match up perfectly artistically with the background art on any of the Trade Screens out there, but it still looks good and it's better than vanilla's nothing. Y'all should use my edited version of the Europe back ground. I fixed one or two of the buildings that where slanted in odd ways. Can't remember where I posted it, prolly in the thread for the new Europe Screen.

 

[Kailric]

I agree with Ray that an image, which is custom made for a specific screen will be best. However in this particular case I would say that the screenshot is pretty much spot on to catch the essence of what we want to display and I would say we should go for it and see how it works ingame. Worst case scenario is that it looks horrible once it's actually inside and all we have to do is to remove it again. That's not really a high risk test

I would have loved the dock to be closer though. I have this idea that dock placement can be written in XML and then the units can appear on the actual dock, just like in RaR. Sure it's eyecandy, but if the python code is flexible enough to handle that, we can do a much better job at hiding that all tradescreens in all mods use the same python file. Sure it would take a little more coding, but not an unreasonably amount of work.

I agree with both of you, but we probably don't have that luxury, plus we have plans to add even more Trade Screen. Like I mentioned with getting the German editor going for Anno, we could setup the screen shots to make them "spot on" like you say. Even have docks exactly where we want them. Even so, there are tons of scenarios with that game and plenty of Cities and angles we can setup to perhaps get exactly what we need. I think it would be easy to have a standard "dock" location as its all based on resolution, you just make the docks appear at the same spot in each shot. Or we can add that to xml values for TradeScreens