Improve the visual cues in the Editor to help make a fair map.

[Teppo Mäenpää]

Expanding territory upwards requires less military sites than expanding the same distance downwards. This is most likely caused by the fact that it must be possible to place a flag below (but not above) a building.

This causes small issues like that in bug #1235562, or seemingly-balanced map https://wl.widelands.org/maps/unendliche-resourcen/ , where the red player is actually in a handicapped position compared to the blue.

Possible ways to improve the situation:

- Alter the vision range to compensate this in up-down

- Make additional tool to map editor, which shows which slots are reachable from a building (most likely from the building below the cursor). This would make the map makers more aware of this feature, thus leading to more balanced maps in the future.

- Do nothing, this is not severe.

There is also asymmetry in left-right direction (flag is southEAST of the building)

[SirVer (sirver)]

these asymmetries are unfortunate but I feel they are part of the engine. I think they are not too sever to be worth investing time into. I like the second suggestion either way though.

Other opinions?

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

I do not know how much work that will be (probably a lot), but what about being able to place buildings in the editor (they would be there from the beginning of the game, like it is currently possible with lua scripting). When the working area is shown (similar to building them in the game), this would solve the problem (just use a military building to the area it would conquer). Is something like that planned/wanted/useful/feasible?

[Teppo Mäenpää (kxq)]

Can I read SirVer's response like this: If I would find a way to improve this situation in one of the ways described above, then there would be a fair change that the patch would to to trunk (code quality permitting)?

This is not yet a promise to actually do anything!

wl-zocker: I did not get it. Do you mean that the placed buildings would be there during gameplay, too?

[SirVer (sirver)]

Sure - I mean I have no idea of a good solution - making the game asymetric might have issues of its own - for example extending the vision in one direction is also unfair. But if you can make a patch that adresses the issues and is fair, I see no reason why it should not go into the game. I have no good idea though - I just like the second suggestion because it could be useful in map making in general.

[SirVer (sirver)]

And i think wl-zocker meant placing player infrastructure (buildings, roads, and so on) in the editor and have it available at the beginning of the scenario on the map. I actually started looking into this for a bit - letting the editor place buildings and so on and then writing them into a lua script and rereading them when the map is loaded in the editor - this is much work. would be cool though.

[Nasenbaer (nasenbaer)]

Generally I do not see this as such a big problem either. The ideas listed sound reasonable, however the make the game (or the editor) more complicated in some way, so I wonder whether it is worse the trouble. Anyway if there is a good and simple implementation for one of the suggested changes - why not :)...

(I guess basically my statement above sounds a bit like "I don't care", but what I really would like to say is more along the lines of "we should think about and test changes on this behaviour very wisely before releasing them in a new version - never change a running system, it could become worse ";) )

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

@#3, #5: Yes, that is actually what I meant.
While in the editor, the map designer can see whether the player can reach the next buildable place (and whether he is able to expand further).
If wanted, the buildings can be placed and are there during gameplay. This can be used to help the computerplayer or to design scenarios. The advantage is that less lua scripting is needed and this feature is therefore suitable for people with no interest in coding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[SirVer (sirver)]

I changed this now to be about making the Editor more useful for fair maps as I do not see the engine changing for this.

[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 am closing this bug now. ixprefect added some code a while ago that made the symmetries less pronounced, and the plans for the editor are not actionable, so not a good bug.

If anybody feels strongly about any suggestion in here, please speak up or open a new bug.