[crossfire] skill window

[Brendan Lally]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:59:43 -0700
Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:

> On 04/14/10 12:10 PM, Brendan Lally wrote:

> > The aim is to enable access to all of the skills that a player has
> > without needing to type anything. (I would expect that sooner or
> > later, a player will want to bind use_skill praying to trigger a
> > dozen times per press of a hotkey rather than clicking repeatedly,
> > but if that is something that the player only needs to think about
> > after playing the game for a couple of weeks rather than on the
> > first day, then I'd consider that a win)
> 
>   One could make a compelling case that it shouldn't be necessary for
> the player to hit the same skill 50 times, but that is a more
> significant change (although one way could do it is some setting
> which basically has character doing the same activity under another
> command is entered, eg, character keeps playing until player hits
> some other command like north).

That could probably be implemented reasonably easily with a server-side
command, so you would have a syntax like 'repeat [command you would
normally issue]'

Then if the server stored a 'repeat command' then when the server comes
to process the command stream from the client, if it is empty, it would
use the 'repeat command' stored against the player. if it is not empty
(a new command has been given) then it would clear the 'repeat command'
string and process the new commands instead.

Client side, there would probably want to be a stat that is sent to say
'I am current doing your repeated command' so that the player knows
when they are no longer praying/searching for traps/etc

Might be necessary to mark a few commands as unrepeatable, since they
don't really make sense to run multiple times (quit would be an obvious
one)

> > Questions:
> >
> > 1) Can the skills and experience pane now disappear?
> 
>   Yes, I think so.
> 
> > 2) If it goes, should character, protections and core statistics
> > move into the same pane? (so one pane with 3 tabs rather than 2
> > with 2 each)
> 
>   This seems to be a layout specific issue - so there isn't a simple
> answer. For example, right now the gtk-v2 layout has a stat area
> (where the hp, sp, etc, bars are) and another area which right now
> has 3 panes - core stats, skills & exp, protections.
> 
>   I don't think there is any clear/best answer here.  If you have a
> large/wide window, have 2 pane areas half the width may be more
> useful than one pane that is the entire width but of of which most is
> just blank.

ok, so it probably comes down to being a question for the
creator/maintainer of each of the layouts. I've left them as they are
for now (other than adding the menu entry) it does mean that the
information is duplicated, but that's not a huge problem.

> > *The following are things I would like to add probably during the
> > next release cycle or the one after:
> >
> > Columns showing the keyboard shortcuts for the skills (ie looking
> > for shortcuts for use_skill or ready_skill) - not sure whether
> > those should be settable there, since that treads on the task of
> > the Keybindings window a little
> 
>   IMO, settable there would be good.   Likewise, letting the player
> do spell binding in the spell window might be handy.

Yeah, although with spells it is probably a bit more complex because
they have options that can be passed to them
 
>   My thought on this is that right now, the keybinding window is a
> bit archaic - you basically need to know the syntax of the command
> you are going to bind - hardly a simple/beginner thing.  But for
> skills and spells, the client knows what the command is, so can
> provide a nicer interface, something like the player selects the
> skill, then hits a 'bind key to skill button', and it pops up a
> window or something and says 'press key you want to use to have this
> skill used when you activate it', and all the player has to do is hit
> a key and maybe something like a confirm button (or maybe a bind to
> ready or a bind to use type thing).

That's more like a 'hot-key' setup
 
>   That's much better than having players have to know that they need
> to do a 'user_skill praying' syntax in the bind window.

Yeah, my inclination would be to say that the more advanced bindings
should still be possible, but that simple bindings should be simple to
set up

> > icons for all of the skills (implemented by sending a face number
> > along with the reply_info skill_info response)
> 
>   Yes - that would be nice.  I'm not 100% sure if there are currently
> suitable faces for all of the skills however.

Most of them don't have any faces at all currently, I'm hoping there's
someone who'd be prepared to draw them.

> > The 'character' pane on the client to show the icon for the skill
> > rather than the name, and clicking on the icon to trigger the
> > callback for the skill window in the same way that the menu entry
> > does.
> 
>   I'm not sure if I'd want the window to pop up, or just clicking it
> causes it to do the skill - I think the later may be more useful in
> most cases.

I can see that, maybe the best approach there is do both, use on left
click, select different skill on right click?

Brendan