Spring RTS Engine

Surely there should be a way to write portions of unsynced code in a gadget, shouldn't there? There could easily be many other situations like this where the modder would desire it to be an always-on, background-to-the-user, but unsynced feature. Do widgets have a way to be auto-loaded and invisible in the list? If that is at least possible, I'm willing to concede that much. For a reload widget I don't mind being able to disable, but there are other cases I can think of where I would want them kept enabled.

Argh's slider bar is a bit more user friendly, but still not exactly ideal. IMO users have the right to not need to customize inclusion (or exclusion) lists. Most people are intimidated by anything not written in plain English (and even then...), and an interface for such a trivial feature is just clunky.

For this specific thing, we should follow the standard game patching procedure. The modder implements it, people give feedback, and the next version contains the results of the feedback. Honestly, it's much easier for a modder who knows what he's looking at to add a unit to an inclusion list than it is for someone here to waste time writing an elaborate end-user friendly customization interface for reload bars. The only user option should be to disable them entirely.

Like I said before, this is just one of those things that are more closely related to balance, and therefore should be the modder's prerogative. Healthbars are always necessary, but reload bars are not, and their necessity is always dependent on gameplay, how the unit is used, etc and need to be adjusted properly as such.

Gnome wrote:Surely there should be a way to write portions of unsynced code in a gadget, shouldn't there? There could easily be many other situations like this where the modder would desire it to be an always-on, background-to-the-user, but unsynced feature.

It is indeed possible. Gadgets usually have two sections, a Synced block and an Unsynced block. The Synced block is where the synced stuff happens (obviously ), while the unsynced block can be used to draw stuff to the screen. As it is a gadget, it cant be disabled, as is always on like you want.

So, in short, it's possible to have it run unsynched, be a Gadget, and obey a list, instead requiring UI control? I think that is really the question.

I'll take a look at the Healthbar Widget stuff when I'm not modeling like crazy, if nobody beats me to the punch here, and see if I can just port the graphical-display stuff to a Gadget that's already configured to use a seperate config file, and sort out the wheat from the chaff, and then it's pretty much done. I think even I can do this, and my LUA skills are still very weak. Dratted time crunches...

Gnome wrote:Like I said before, this is just one of those things that are more closely related to balance, and therefore should be the modder's prerogative. Healthbars are always necessary, but reload bars are not, and their necessity is always dependent on gameplay, how the unit is used, etc and need to be adjusted properly as such.

It's an interface issue. If you want it to be easy to update to get a decent list of units, use a widget in the mod and it can be overwritten by a local copy. I don't understand how seeing reload times is in any way a balance issue and why it should be forced upon the user with a gadget.

I'm fine with it having an on/off option for it, tombom. I'm saying user interaction with it should end there. It's bad design to expect the user to maintain a custom list himself and update it for every mod he might want to play and use the widget in, or even worse, enable/disable the widget constantly between mods (say he wants it in BA but not KP, or something). But if it's a gadget, it's pre-tuned to the mod and it's only there if the developer included it in the first place. The user just has to decide if he wants it on or not, and that's that.

And it's not so much a balance issue itself as it is related to balance. For example, say I made a TA mod with Lugers that were quite spammable and had long reload times, and then also had LRPCs as everyone knows and loves them. The reload bar would be a great addition to the LRPC, but it'd be an annoyance on the new spam Luger--hence the fallacy of a time system trying to blanket all mods.

so to end this (useless) discussion about widgets:

I add a reload bar to healthbars.

How it works: It searchs the weapon with the longest reload time of the unit and displays a bar for it, if the reload time is >5secs and the weapon is reloading.
If you don't like this way then make it better, else thank that there are lua devs at all, who program widgets for you. Cause else you would have to wait months to see such features hardcoded into the engine ...

Hey, thanks JK, on behalf of players