Selection Keys Based On Tags, Not Categories?

[Evil4Zerggin]

Currently, SelectionKeyHandler decides if a unit is a commander or aircraft by looking at its category for COMMANDER and VTOL respectively. I would like it to look at the isCommander and canfly unit definition tags instead. My reasoning is as follows:

• Since categories are used for targeting, I do not think they should be entangled with other aspects of a unit as far as is possible.
• Modders would not be forced to use or know about these categories in order to have their selection keys work properly.
• This allows for more than one air targeting category while allowing air units to be selected as a group.
• It seems there is already a select-by-category keyword, which means that having keywords for COMMANDER and VTOL specifically is redundant.

I've attached a patch below which hopefully does what I think it does. I would like to hear any comments, objections, and suggestions you may have about this proposal and the patch.

[Forboding Angel]

Awwww Crap!

It's looking for a category??? Ungh the fail! No wonder ctrl+c is broken in Evo. I couldn't figure out why in the hell...

[trepan]

This can easily be implemented with a widget
(I even happen to have this one written, as
well as one that replaces uikeys.txt )

[Forboding Angel]

someone assuage my anguish... Is it honestly all my fault that I didn't know that. Is it documented somewhere obviously?

Am I the only one that didn't know htis?

[trepan]

Written, not released.

[trepan]

On a somewhat related topic, I should probably remove
the bindbuildtype uikeys.txt feature. It too can be replaced
by a widget, and serves as little more than needless
complication to the file format (I doubt that many even know
that it exists).

[Forboding Angel]

thanks trepan

[Evil4Zerggin]

Am I the only one that didn't know htis?

Nope. When I first did the CA category rework the COMMANDER thing tripped me up.

Also, NOTA figured this out only recently:

afaik those ota tags dont do anything in spring, i think its actually having the commander=1 tag in the fbi

edit: i did some research now, and the correct way is to put just COMMANDER in the category:

armbase:

Code: Select all

Category=ARM NOTAIR NOTSUB NOTSHIP COMMANDER;

corbase:

Code: Select all

Category=CORE NOTAIR NOTSUB NOTSHIP COMMANDER;

Is it documented somewhere obviously?

If by "obviously" you mean "Spring source + find in files" :p

Although looking through the wiki shows player-side documentation at http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190.

Actually, come to think of it, I should write some category documentation on the wiki. Not many people seem to know that you can have multiple categories in badTargetCategory / onlyTargetCategory / noChaseCategory, which is why we end up with all these messy NOTAIR, NOTSHIP, etc.

Edit: Here it is: http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Unit_Categories. Don't know exactly how noChaseCategory works, though.

[Gnomre]

Actually, come to think of it, I should write some category documentation on the wiki. Not many people seem to know that you can have multiple categories in badTargetCategory / onlyTargetCategory / noChaseCategory, which is why we end up with all these messy NOTAIR, NOTSHIP, etc.

Actually, I saw you mention that a few weeks ago and after that cleaned up all of IW. We're now running on five categories :)