Viewports

[Koshling]

Was the center viewport on selected unit quick key ever implemented? If so which quick key do you use?

Yes it was (sort of). The regular center-on-selected-unit key (C) checks that its inside the 'centering border' of the viewport. This is one of the BUG option values, that defaults to 2 I think. The effect is to re-center the viewport on the selected unit if its within that distance from the current viewport edge. It ONLY has any effect when you press the center-on-selection key, so just set that value to a larger number if you want that to re-center the viewport also if the unit is a bit further away from the edge.

I can easily also add a force-center if you hold down some modifier key while pressing the center-on-selection key though if you need that as well (assuming ctrl-C, shift-C, alt-C are not all taken already!)

 

[ls612]

Yes it was (sort of). The regular center-on-selected-unit key (C) checks that its inside the 'centering border' of the viewport. This is one of the BUG option values, that defaults to 2 I think. The effect is to re-center the viewport on the selected unit if its within that distance from the current viewport edge. It ONLY has any effect when you press the center-on-selection key, so just set that value to a larger number if you want that to re-center the viewport also if the unit is a bit further away from the edge.

I can easily also add a force-center if you hold down some modifier key while pressing the center-on-selection key though if you need that as well (assuming ctrl-C, shift-C, alt-C are not all taken already!)

Would it be possible to make it so that SHIFT + direction key shifts the viewport x tiles (to be determined by a BUG option) to the direction of the direction key? Personally that would be my favored method of managing viewports, at least from my experience.

 

[Koshling]

Would it be possible to make it so that SHIFT + direction key shifts the viewport x tiles (to be determined by a BUG option) to the direction of the direction key? Personally that would be my favored method of managing viewports, at least from my experience.

Yes, if shift-direction isn't used yet that's easy to add.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What about the proposed mouse wheelbutton click? Would that be feasible to add as a hotkey for recentering?

 

[Koshling]

What about the proposed mouse wheelbutton click? Would that be feasible to add as a hotkey for recentering?

I don't think we get events for that from the game engine. Also how would that work for people without appropriate mice?

 

[Thunderbrd]

They wouldn't have access to the option. It does seem to be functional without it but that'd be the most preferred way to work with Viewports.

I'm not sure if we have a call for that hotkey or not...

 

[Il Principe]

Both center on cursor and the shift+ arrow key movement of the port sound quite nice to have

I would set the later to move exactley one vieport width

A probably already know bug I noticed with vieports just today: Landmarks are not displayed anymore with viewports enabled. They are still there, the extra commerce shows, and since I checked that option cities foundednear them are named after them, but they are not named on the map.

 

[Koshling]

I guess I'll have to work on viewports some more sometime soon :-(

They are the most frustrating, annoying, un-fun piece of work imaginable. Every time I spend a day on viewports I don't feel like modding for 3 or 4 days afterwards, but I guess they need some attention soon.

 

[Il Principe]

I guess I'll have to work on viewports some more sometime soon :-(

They are the most frustrating, annoying, un-fun piece of work imaginable. Every time I spend a day on viewports I don't feel like modding for 3 or 4 days afterwards, but I guess they need some attention soon.

Good news for you: The bug about landamrks resoveld itself
If I had to guess it was a conflict between the manually enabled viewports I had and the bug option for them you later added.
Because once I also activated them in the bug options landmarks showed.

Dotmap is still nonfunctional though. And take your time.. as convinient as the additional buttens would be, they are not exactley the most important thing ever

 

[Thunderbrd]

I guess I'll have to work on viewports some more sometime soon :-(

They are the most frustrating, annoying, un-fun piece of work imaginable. Every time I spend a day on viewports I don't feel like modding for 3 or 4 days afterwards, but I guess they need some attention soon.

They're definately a huge accomplishment though. Nevertheless, if it helps any, I actually get what you're saying. What coding I could tell you did there looked very... erm... unexciting to have developed. A lot of niggly little stuff all over the place.

Surely, though, a hotkey recenter and hotkey viewshift would be able to quickly plug into what you've already done wouldn't it? You already defined a number of ways to shift the viewport... If these are much more involved though I can't blame you for being reluctant.

 

[ls612]

I guess I'll have to work on viewports some more sometime soon :-(

They are the most frustrating, annoying, un-fun piece of work imaginable. Every time I spend a day on viewports I don't feel like modding for 3 or 4 days afterwards, but I guess they need some attention soon.

Yeah, I can understand why that would be on of the most aggravating tasks to work on. But while you are at it you could also start adding more Multi-Map code, although it would be inactive until we actually did anything with it. It would make things easier to get started after V27 is released though.

 

[AIAndy]

Yeah, I can understand why that would be on of the most aggravating tasks to work on. But while you are at it you could also start adding more Multi-Map code, although it would be inactive until we actually did anything with it. It would make things easier to get started after V27 is released though.

There are still some significant decisions to be made about the actual implementation, especially in regards to coordinates. And then there is a large amount of work to be done to all the occurances of X and Y coordinates in the game code. Definitely not something for Koshling alone (it would burn out anyone to go through all of that).

 

[ls612]

There are still some significant decisions to be made about the actual implementation, especially in regards to coordinates. And then there is a large amount of work to be done to all the occurances of X and Y coordinates in the game code. Definitely not something for Koshling alone (it would burn out anyone to go through all of that).

I thought Koshling had said that the game already did that (the tile coordinates part). I agree that Koshling shouldn't do this on his own, but I thought a lot of the basic stuff like that was already in (from LyTning's old work). I'll move this discussion to the old Multi-Maps thread though, as this is a tad off-topic.

 

[Koshling]

Yeah, I can understand why that would be on of the most aggravating tasks to work on. But while you are at it you could also start adding more Multi-Map code, although it would be inactive until we actually did anything with it. It would make things easier to get started after V27 is released though.

The thing that makes viewports ultra-frustrating to work on, is that they interact too intimately with the graphics engine, which we have no control over, no documentation of, a very incomplete understanding of the behavior of, and inadequate APIs to get it to do anything it wasn't originally intended to do. The net effect is that nearly everything involves finding some arcane way to 'trick' it into doing what you want, and discovering the necessary methods is very hit&miss, and debugging them even more so.

 

[Vokarya]

I don't know if this is a known issue or not, but switching cities in the city screen to a city off the viewport causes a repeatable crash. Here is how I found the bug:

• Click on a city to go into the city screen.
• Use the left/right arrows to switch to a city outside of the current viewport.
• Click on a unit in the city -- causes crash.

I just thought I would bring this to your attention.

 

[Koshling]

I don't know if this is a known issue or not, but switching cities in the city screen to a city off the viewport causes a repeatable crash. Here is how I found the bug:

• Click on a city to go into the city screen.
• Use the left/right arrows to switch to a city outside of the current viewport.
• Click on a unit in the city -- causes crash.

I just thought I would bring this to your attention.

Thanks, I plan to have a viewports day sometime next week, so I'll look into this then.

 

[ls612]

Thanks, I plan to have a viewports day sometime next week, so I'll look into this then.

Could you please also look at the issue of the game crashing during map generation using Viewports then?

 

[Koshling]

Could you please also look at the issue of the game crashing during map generation using Viewports then?

So far I cannot reproduce any crash. I CAN reliably reproduce totally black terrain that requires a save and reload to cure it, but no crash. What are your precise settings to get it to crash (viewport size, map script, map size, anything else you think might be pertinent)

 

[ls612]

So far I cannot reproduce any crash. I CAN reliably reproduce totally black terrain that requires a save and reload to cure it, but no crash. What are your precise settings to get it to crash (viewport size, map script, map size, anything else you think might be pertinent)

The crash doesn't always happen, but normally it comes when I try and switch into the Military Advisor (triggering a viewport switch), or during the map generation itself (this one doesn't happen as much.)

 

[Cosmic Fox]

I don't know if this is a known issue or not, but switching cities in the city screen to a city off the viewport causes a repeatable crash. Here is how I found the bug:

• Click on a city to go into the city screen.
• Use the left/right arrows to switch to a city outside of the current viewport.
• Click on a unit in the city -- causes crash.

I just thought I would bring this to your attention.

I had this happen to me, I stopped using viewports and forgot to report this bug. Exactly the same as this player in fact! Sorry about that, I am trying to finish a game playing v26! Been rushing it to try to reach galactic, but I am only 28% done! :lol

There are so many bugs with viewports I got frustrated and stopped using it. I love the concept but the graphics and not centering when it should really drove me crazy, I tried it with 4 games, with updates from the SVN as well. No good.