Clarify meaning of icons in editor terrain preview

[wl-zocker]

In the terrain preview, there are some icons next to each terrain type that shall probably help the map designer. Unfortunally, not all of them are good to recognize neither is explained what they mean. They are
- house: "normal" land (buildings, trees walking)
- mountains: mines + resources, walking
- tree?: trees can grow
- skull: even the border cannot be touched (no walking)
- crossed out (?): you can touch the border, but not walk into it?
- water drop: water (touching the border, not walk on it)

Are these icons still needed?
If yes, they should be clarified and explained somewhere.
If no, the should be removed. The easiest way to find out how different terrain types behave is to place them and/or to use them in the game.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I don't see why you would want to remove them. If anything that would make it harder to know, especially for edge-case behaviour such as skull vs crossed out. I sounds way easier to tell the mapmakers up front what each terrain does, than expect each and everyone of them to test all in order to figure out which is the most fit.

I agree there should be some better way to discern the features of different terrains/discern the meaning of the icons than presently, though. Maybe display the features in form of a tooltip for the terrains or listed beneath the name of the currently selected one?

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

Moving the information to a tooltip seems a good idea. They will always be present, when they are needed, but do not need additional space. I think there should only be short sentences in form of an itemization, and not in form of a text.
In this case, the icons would help the map maker more.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Setting to incomplete for bug sweeping.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for widelands because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[SirVer (sirver)]

I think the icons should be explained in the help.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Can we add a tooltip to each icon? That might be the fastest way for the user to get info/refresh their memory on each icon.

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

Please note that the symbols are not up to date anymore: While the symbol on the mountains seems to be a crossed out tree, it is possible (at least on some mountain types) for trees to grow.
I still like the idea of tooltips (we have more and more tooltips in Widelands, and I have never noticed them in a negative way, so let us make more of them).

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>Please note that the symbols are not up to date anymore

That's interesting, I thought the symbols were added/drawn depending on what the terrain in question specified. Or is the terrain stating trees won't grow, but the forester code ignores it? Someone should look into this and make sure the terrain description/pictograms are in sync with how the terrain behaves, but that might be a task for a different bug report.

+1 for tooltip. See also comment #2 for an alternative display method (below the name).

[SirVer (sirver)]

> Please note that the symbols are not up to date anymore: While the symbol on the mountains seems to be a crossed out tree, it is possible (at least on some mountain types) for trees to grow.

the icons are generated on the type of terrain, so they are never outdated in the editor. they are maybe confusing though :).

giving them tooltips is not trivial though - they are just pictures right now, getting drawn on top of the textures. I guess they could be converted to a UI element, but that is not trivial.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

We could concatenate the info that's in the images into 1 string that gets added as a tooltip to the main terrain picture. This way we don't get tooltips for each terrain type image, but the user still gets the info.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Sgtm.

> Am 23.09.2014 um 10:29 schrieb GunChleoc <email address hidden>:
>
> We could concatenate the info that's in the images into 1 string that
> gets added as a tooltip to the main terrain picture. This way we don't
> get tooltips for each terrain type image, but the user still gets the
> info.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to
> widelands.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1174075
>
> Title:
> Clarify meaning of icons in editor terrain preview
>
> Status in Widelands:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> In the terrain preview, there are some icons next to each terrain type that shall probably help the map designer. Unfortunally, not all of them are good to recognize neither is explained what they mean. They are
> - house: "normal" land (buildings, trees walking)
> - mountains: mines + resources, walking
> - tree?: trees can grow
> - skull: even the border cannot be touched (no walking)
> - crossed out (?): you can touch the border, but not walk into it?
> - water drop: water (touching the border, not walk on it)
>
> Are these icons still needed?
> If yes, they should be clarified and explained somewhere.
> If no, the should be removed. The easiest way to find out how different terrain types behave is to place them and/or to use them in the game.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/1174075/+subscriptions

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Tooltips are done.

Adding the terrain types to the terrain name on the bottom is not trivial, because the tool hooks into a general class that is using the descname there.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build19-rc1.