Issues with the new map-movement feature

[Notabilis]

Since the title is a bit misleading: I mean the pretty new feature that clicks in the minimap-window zoom out, move to the position and move in again.

When clicking in the minimap a second time while still moving (i.e. zoomed out), the camera finishes the first movement and then zooms out again to do the second one. This might be intentional but personally I would prefer it when the first movement would be canceled when I click again.

What I consider a bug is that the "zoomed in" zoom-level is set on the second click. This means that when the second click is done while being zoomed out, the camera won't zoom in again when the second movement is finished.

A related observation is that the movement effect zooms out farther than it is possible to do with the mouse wheel.

I observed this in bzr8253[trunk]. Also happens when moving to/between messages.

[SirVer (sirver)]

> This might be intentional but personally I would prefer it when the first movement would be canceled when I click again.

It is intetional. This is up for discussion of course.

> [zoom bug]

I can repro this. I'll have a look.

> A related observation is that the movement effect zooms out farther than it is possible to do with the mouse wheel.

This is also intentional because I felt it gives a better feeling for the animation.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I am in favour of aborting the movement on second click (maybe then when zoom out level has been reached?) and immediately continuing in the new direction. The movement should also be slowed down - it is making me motion sick. Maybe the movement speed needs to depend on how far apart the 2 points are?

[SirVer (sirver)]

> I am in favour of aborting the movement on second click (maybe then when zoom out level has been reached?) and immediately continuing in the new direction.

The only thing we can easily do is discard the current animation and plan a new one starting from the current viewpoint, but targetting the original zoom. I had that implemented at some point and felt the sudden change in direction was not nice. I can bring it back if desired though.

> Maybe the movement speed needs to depend on how far apart the 2 points are?

I experimented a long time with the movement settings and the various heuristics involved. I also tried making the time dependent on the distance between points and felt this was sluggish for large distances. I made the code intentionally easy to tune (everything is done in mapview.cc), but I do not have more to contribute there. Somebody else with a fresh palette for these animations must look into tweaking the parameters.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

> When clicking in the minimap a second time while still
> moving (i.e. zoomed out), the camera finishes the first
> movement and then zooms out again to do the second one.

Just an opinion:
When will this situation arise? Ok, i don't use the minimap much often, but if i use it i want to go to a specific position and look what happens there (e.g. are my mines working?). To be honest: Clicking a second time on the minimap while the map moves is very difficult for me. I tested this on the Nile map and had to be very quick with the mouse move and triggering the second click.

In my opinion this isn't really a bug, since triggering a second click on the minimap while moving will not be done by a normal player, imho.

Regarding 'motion sick':
During testing this feature the jumps and moves are triggered very often. We should consider how often this jumps and moves are triggered in a real game. I guess mostly when cycling through the messages.

I think we should leave it as is right now and if some players are complaining we should find better values for the jumps and moves.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Would you be doing a second click on the minimap if the minimap skipped like it used to instead of moving, e.g. when you accidentally clicked in the wrong spot?

[kaputtnik (franku)]

For a long time i played only small maps for testing purpose. Yesterday i played the Nile map until the end (had some known bugs during the game)... on this big map i had to use the minimap very often. My personal observations:

1. Regarding of your question in #5: Clicking on the wrong place in the minimap does not happen. I remember doing wrong clicks on the minimap when i was new to widelands. But i remember also that i noticed the wrong click only if the move is completed and the main view shows not the place i want to look at.

2. The jumps (zoom out, move, zoom in) of the view is stressful to the eyes/brain. Mainly when zooming in after the move. I think this is because the eyes are concentrated onto the display on a particular distance. During zooming the eyes say "Hey, we go fast backward/forward" and the brain can't handle this informaton, because the brain says: "No, you're wrong, i am sitting here on this chair as before" :-D After some hours i felt that my eyes/brain got familiar with the fast zooming.
The feature is really nice so i want to play with the values, e.g. reduce the max zoom, so that the view will not zoom too much.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Tried to tweak the values in this branch:

https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/zooming_tweaked

See it as example and may adjust the values. GunChleoc: Is this better to not get sea sick?

But with those values the zoom of the jump is vice versa some times: When zooming the view out until the census text disappear and zoom in to that point they will appear again, the jump zooms in, instead of out. Surely i do not understand exactly what the values are used for or the math behind them, although they are described well.

I found another issue which is also in current trunk: The little red dotted rectangle in the minimap representing the current view is wrong here. With a game resolution of 1440x900 (more width than height) the width of that rectangle is smaller than the height. So it does not represent the current view. Has this effect on the distinction between panning and jumping?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I tried this on a few maps with defaults zoom and it now hardly zooms out at all and mostly pans. I'll need to compile this into a new branch for further testing. I suspect that SirVer did a really good job on tweaking the values though and that merging the branch he doesn't like would be the easiest solution.

[SirVer (sirver)]

> The little red dotted rectangle in the minimap representing the current view is wrong here. With a game resolution of 1440x900 (more width than height) the width of that rectangle is smaller than the height. So it does not represent the current view. Has this effect on the distinction between panning and jumping?

I do not think that this is incorrect. The minimap has one pixel per node, i.e. a field surrounded by 6 triangles. But since the triangles are only half as high as wide, it is correct that the aspect ratio of the red box does not represent the aspect ratio of your monitor.

> [Moving]

I think it is feasible to remove the panning for the minimap. After all, the user clicks on a place on the map and they know where they want to go. It is inconsistent though, since there are no immediate jumps in Widelands anywhere else anymore. Most important is the movement feature for the message box to increase understanding of jumps that are not directly impacted by the user.

That said, it seems that there is no clear consensus on the feature and what should change. How about we wait for more player feedback before doing anything?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

We have had 2 +1's on the forums for removing the panning for the minimap. Players are losing buildings becaose of them when they are being attacked on multiple fronts.

https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/2883/?page=1#post-20569

So, reopening this bug.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Reading through the thread one player mention frustration with the movement for the messages and jumping from building to building and wants the animations removed there. Together with your proposal the animations will be completely purged from the game.

The arguments put forward are:

> They cost you too much time if you are attacked on several fronts - you can loose military buildings because of those animations

I think this holds no water. The animations are 1 second at most, nothing in Widelands happens this fast.

> or if you are checking all buildings of a certain type, which should be fast...

Here I actually think the animations add the most benefit by giving you context where you are scrolling.

> And as someone who doesn't care a lot about graphics, I think that the animations don't have a big benefit

this is imho missing the point, the animations are meant to help, not look pretty.

I think they benefit new players to not get easily lost in their economy. I added them because it made it easier for me to know where messages take me relative to my current position.

I am unhappy about removing them with the current feedback which I have trouble following - I think they are handy for novice players, casual players and for scenarios.

Gun, this is your call: rip the feature out completely now? Or maybe this is worth one of the rare "Advanced options", with defaulting to animations on and waiting for one release on more feedback?

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I think an option is actually a good idea here - you make a valid point for novice players. And I think the feature adds a lot to scenarios, so it definitely should not be ripped out completely. What shall we call the new option? The naming stuff part of my brain isn't working right now.

[SirVer (sirver)]

The option is now merged. Closing this bug.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build20-rc1