Topic: Soldier sorting in the Attack dialog box

SandJ Topic Opener Joined: 2015-05-08, 22:46 Posts: 14 OS: Linux Pry about Widelands Location: UK	Posted at: 2024-11-29, 22:36 When attacking a site, the dialog box where you select who is attacking and who is not, has me wondering. How are the soldiers sorted? It is not by any of the attributes (Health, Attack, Defence, Evade) since heroes and rookies are all mixed up. It does not appear to be by distance from the target, I think. It does not take into account whether soldiers are still healing. And what makes we really curious is the way the list of soldiers re-arranges as you move one from one section to the other. It makes the list shuffle again. So it cannot be an internal ID number for each soldier. How are they arranged? (And I will have follow-up comments such as "It would be nice if we could sort them by distance / skill / injured.") Top Quote

mxb2001 Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49 Posts: 288 OS: Linux Version: 1.2 Tribe Member Location: The land of the thirsty spider	Posted at: 2024-11-30, 01:00 I think it is by order of arrival in the forts. Not a clue how it sorts the forts if there is >1. What I've seen is that returning soldiers line up at the end of the queue. I think... -- To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before Top Quote

Nordfriese Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07 Posts: 2054 OS: Debian Testing Version: Latest master One Elder of Players Location: 0x55555d3a34c0	Posted at: 2024-12-01, 17:00 The soldiers are sorted by air distance to the attack target. Equally distant soldiers are always in arbitrary order, although they usually end up grouped by building and soldiers within a building typically in order of arrival. Note that air distance does not account for obstacles so it may not accurately reflect actual walking distance. This is an optimization for performance. Healing and skill are not currently taken into account. +1 for more sorting options. This is the code where the sorting takes place: https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/src/commit/73c82e1e1a93c13677578b29cc9ecd4d7d12a239/src/wui/attack_window.cc#L702-L722 Top Quote

kaputtnik Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48 Posts: 2547 OS: Archlinux Version: current master One Elder of Players Location: Germany	Posted at: 2024-12-01, 17:12 Do the slight background colors of the soldiers show this? I wonder what the coloring shows... Top Quote

Nordfriese Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07 Posts: 2054 OS: Debian Testing Version: Latest master One Elder of Players Location: 0x55555d3a34c0	Posted at: 2024-12-01, 18:09 Yes, the background tints indicate soldiers who are in the same building, or on the same warship. https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/src/commit/73c82e1e1a93c13677578b29cc9ecd4d7d12a239/src/wui/attack_window.cc#L46-L64 Top Quote

mxb2001 Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49 Posts: 288 OS: Linux Version: 1.2 Tribe Member Location: The land of the thirsty spider	Posted at: 2024-12-01, 18:17 I usually send fully healed best trained soldiers (I imagine that's the usual) so options to sort by training/healing would be nice. It's not a big deal though, scanning through them for the ones you want is not exactly the most tedious chore... On the other hand I recall doing it too quickly and misclicking. Although that might be my poor hand eye co-ordination (which is why I play strategy/thinking games and eschew arcade games!). -- To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before Top Quote

SandJ Topic Opener Joined: 2015-05-08, 22:46 Posts: 14 OS: Linux Pry about Widelands Location: UK	Posted at: 2024-12-05, 15:09 Nordfriese wrote: Healing and skill are not currently taken into account. +1 for more sorting options. Sorting by the number of soldier upgrades would be nice. Although someone might say "I want them sorted by Attack because I have loads of soldiers but I do want them to kill the enemy" and another time "I want them sorted by Defence or Evade because I can't afford too many losses". So it could be a can of worms. When I want to capture a large military building that is surrounded by small ones, I will send some soldiers to each of the small ones first to bring out all the defenders, then send a force of my best troops to capture the big one, now that the defenders are all distracted. So I want to sort by distance and skill! Maybe there is no satisfactory universal solution to this. Regarding wanting to only send full healed soldiers, perhaps a toggle would help: Include injured soldiers? X Top Quote

SandJ Topic Opener Joined: 2015-05-08, 22:46 Posts: 14 OS: Linux Pry about Widelands Location: UK	Posted at: 2024-12-05, 15:11 kaputtnik wrote: Do the slight background colors of the soldiers show this? I wonder what the coloring shows... I had never noticed that. On my monitor that shading is so subtle as to be near invisible. Top Quote