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Topic: Ship Waypoint

xorx
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Joined: 2020-12-12, 22:36
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Posted at: 2020-12-28, 21:33

Hi,

I was wondering whether it would be possible to add a new functionality to ships (and remove the current buttons to position a ship): choose a destination. You would clic on it and then on another part of the map (preferably water face-smile.png ) and the ship will set a course there and once the ship arrives, it could send a message. Or maybe it already exists? The only way I have found it is to clic on the 8 buttons to move the ship, and is a bit unconvenient and time consuming as it needs constant assistance.

Thanks!

Edited: 2020-12-28, 21:33

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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-12-28, 22:08

xorx wrote:

(and remove the current buttons to position a ship)

Which button do you mean?

: choose a destination. You would clic on it and then on another part of the map (preferably water face-smile.png ) and the ship will set a course there and once the ship arrives, it could send a message. Or maybe it already exists? The only way I have found it is to clic on the 8 buttons to move the ship, and is a bit unconvenient and time consuming as it needs constant assistance.

You mean for expedition ships? This would probably be rarely used as you can not usually see the place where you want to build a new port, so I'm not sure it would be worth the implementation effort. When would this feature be useful?


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xorx
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Posted at: 2020-12-28, 22:28

Nordfriese wrote:

xorx wrote:

(and remove the current buttons to position a ship)

Which button do you mean?

There are 8 buttons surrounding the anchor button that settles a port when a space is found. These buttons allow you to move the ship.

: choose a destination. You would clic on it and then on another part of the map (preferably water face-smile.png ) and the ship will set a course there and once the ship arrives, it could send a message. Or maybe it already exists? The only way I have found it is to clic on the 8 buttons to move the ship, and is a bit unconvenient and time consuming as it needs constant assistance.

You mean for expedition ships? This would probably be rarely used as you can not usually see the place where you want to build a new port, so I'm not sure it would be worth the implementation effort. When would this feature be useful?

I'm playing a map with several islands and 6 players (Astoria). I want to create a port and I know where the port space is, but bringing the expedition ship there takes a lot of time as I need to manually move the ship, insted of just clicking on the closest water position and let the ship trace the route and navigate it.

Edited: 2020-12-28, 22:29

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-12-29, 09:11

Yes, sometimes it is tedious to navigate a ship to a specific point (probably unseen) on the map.

  • On a new game a player has possibilities to find to new port spaces: 1. Exploring (counter-) clockwise the coastline from the first port. 2. Let the ship sail one of the 6 directions until it found a new coast.
  • Say you have a big map and already some ports elsewhere. During delivering wares to the new ports, the ship may pass some coastlines which are unexplored but the player can see that there is an additional coast. In such a case it would be nice to let an expedition navigate automatically to the unexplored coastline.

But i have no idea how to implement it. Maybe something like "Click a destination on the minimap to naviagate to". But i don't know what should happen if the players clicks on a point of the map which is not water then. Let the ship navigate to the closest spot which is navigable?

The buttons to navigate the ship might be superfluous if this get implemented. So a ships window has only four buttons: "Explore clockwise", "Explore counterclockwise", "Found a colony", " Choose destination on minimap".


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-12-29, 11:18

The minimap is sometimes very small and it would then be impossible to navigate precisely. I expect it would then happen often that your ship goes to a spot near a coastline but not close enough to allow circumnavigation. The directional buttons would still be necessary then, so they need to stay. But having the new button in addition to the others, ok fine if someone would implement it.
Instead of removing the six directional buttons, we could unclutter the window a bit by adding a checkbox "Detailed Navigation Controls" that toggles them visible or hidden (default hidden).


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xorx
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Posted at: 2020-12-29, 14:06

Nordfriese wrote:

The minimap is sometimes very small and it would then be impossible to navigate precisely. I expect it would then happen often that your ship goes to a spot near a coastline but not close enough to allow circumnavigation. The directional buttons would still be necessary then, so they need to stay. But having the new button in addition to the others, ok fine if someone would implement it.
Instead of removing the six directional buttons, we could unclutter the window a bit by adding a checkbox "Detailed Navigation Controls" that toggles them visible or hidden (default hidden).

Yes, I agree that the mini map is quite small. I was thinking more on moving the screen to the desired position and clicking there (like in some RTS games where you select any unit and right click on the desired destination). With right-click we might not need to add any extra button. Would it be possible to use the right-click? I'm not sure now if the right-click does something already.

Thanks!


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-12-29, 21:05

Right-click is already used for map movement. We could enter "Pick Destination" mode with the new button where a left-click is then used to set the destination; internally this would be similar to the Road Building or Pick Starting Position modes, where left-clicks on the map are also interpreted in a non-default customized way.

I have put the feature on the wishlist: https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/4574


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