Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation
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Cernel GLOBAL MODERATOR about 2 hours ago @LaFayette
@LaFayette I agree this is an annoying limit, especially for those (most?) people that play with sound off, as if you are scrolling around the map, or other stuff, and combat happens, the window stays underneat and you may not notice that you have it in a long time. I already said it in past somewhere: the combat window should always superimpose the map, just like the "Game Notes" one used to be. This should not be a problem, as it was in the case of "Game Notes", because you should not have need of clicking on other pop-ups while combat is going on.Off topic, the other side of the coin is that if you are chatting and combat happens you can easily be hitting spacebar at that moment, and confirm the casualty selection (like killing a bomber you didn't want to). You can turn off "Space bar confirms casualties", but you maybe don't want to not have that always either, plus most people don't manage the settings, I think.
LaFayette ADMIN about 2 hours ago
@Cernel said in Ideas for a 'show combat' button?:Off topic, the other side of the coin is that if you are chatting and combat happens you can easily be hitting spacebar at that moment, and confirm the casualty selection (like killing a bomber you didn't want to). You can turn off "Space bar confirms casualties", but you maybe don't want to not have that always either, plus most people don't manage the settings, I think.
It seems like it will take 2 clicks with space bar to do that. That's a lot of space bar clicking to be done accidently.prastle ADMIN 19 minutes ago @Cernel
@Cernel ya it occurs to many im sure if they are chatting while playing. Happens to me all the time.Cernel GLOBAL MODERATOR 15 minutes ago @prastle
@prastle said in Ideas for a 'show combat' button?:@Cernel ya it occurs to many im sure if they are chatting while playing. Happens to me all the time.
We should probably open something about that, since here it is off topic anyways. Spacebar should just never act as confirmation of anything if you are using it for typing. The problem is silly dramatic for confirming politics actions in live FFA (it just ruins the game). -
@prastle I actually like spacebar as its very convenient for quickly moving through combat. I'm guessing the problem you describe occurs only for lobby play though.
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@redrum Would it be possible to selectively disable spacebar from confirming anything only when you have a chat open and then having a button for show/hide chat log, with the spacebar never confirming anything (comprising also political action requests) when the chat log is enabled?
If that is not feasible, how about having "Enter" to confirm casualties and any actions (from politic or user), not "Spacebar". That at least would reduce the problem considerably, tho not totally, so I would prefer a total solution, instead.
I want to underline this:
The problem is silly dramatic for confirming politics actions in live FFA (it just ruins the game).
Meaning that you make a politic action for asking "Allied", while the other side is typing and, because of pressing spacebar, it automatically accepts. This is really a major problem for live FFA with politics and happens very frequently, especially (but not only) if the target player is dumb.
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@Cernel I believe it may be a bit different situation between combat and politics. I found recently that for combat, if you are actually selecting casualties, the casualty selection menu does not highlight the "okay" button. Meaning, the scenario of 1 hit between 1 bomber and 1 infantry - you will never space bar click through that. I think this takes away most of the reason stated for removing the space bar confirm on casualties. I found that on single player, if the game behavior is different with other options or game play types, I would be curious to know about those cases, but I think it may be across the board the final casualty selection requires a mouse click.
For the politics panel confirmation - maybe we should look at adding a confirmation dialog if an action is selected. IIRC, when looking at this some time ago, it was not trivial funny enough to remove the space bar activation, but that might have changed - it's another option. Really we should be looking at the two situations on their own, they are their own code paths and would have their own fix applied respectively.
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@LaFayette said in Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation:
@Cernel I believe it may be a bit different situation between combat and politics. I found recently that for combat, if you are actually selecting casualties, the casualty selection menu does not highlight the "okay" button.
?
I guess you had "Space bar confirms casualties" false.Anyways, I say that spacebar should never be used to do two different things at the same time; namely to create spaces and to confirm stuff. I think this is a basic principle. So, in general, when you are using spacebar for typing, that should not do anything else.
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@LaFayette This issue really only occurs when chatting while playing a multiplayer or chatting in lobby while playing.
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@Cernel said in Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation:
I guess you had "Space bar confirms casualties" false.
Using the last version, these are the settings:
Using the latest, we renamed this, and Space bar confirms casualties" is set to true:
Noting, on this screen the 'okay' button is not highlighted:
@LaFayette This issue really only occurs when chatting while playing a multiplayer or chatting in lobby while playing.
Indeed, but it seems it's only really a problem for politics where there is no second confirmation, an action is just taken. The 'bomber' case, you have to click that last 'okay' button. It is very common to click that pretty much blindly to then realize the bomber is selected by default, but that would be different problem.
So, in general, when you are using spacebar for typing, that should not do anything else.
Understandable. At the same time we need a streamlined way to get through combat, clicking buttons does not fly. I think it gets down to a possible Swing (technology) limitation, the 'space' selects is not our choosing. That means we need to be sure the chat dialog never loses focus while typing, or that there is a secondary confirmation in case an action is triggered with 'space accidently'.
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@LaFayette said in Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation:
we need to be sure the chat dialog never loses focus while typing
Please do this, if possible. In the moment you have the focus on the chat dialog, then spacebar is not doing anything else until you click out of it or something.
This is what I said:Would it be possible to selectively disable spacebar from confirming anything only when you have a chat open and then having a button for show/hide chat log, with the spacebar never confirming anything (comprising also political action requests) when the chat log is enabled?
Regarding the "OK" button not being selected for you, if you are sure that "Space bar confirms Casualties" is True for you, then my only guess is that you have a bug, because spacebar indeed confirms casualties (that is what the option itself says), meaning that, yes, you take out those casualties by clicking spacebar twice.
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@LaFayette said in Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation:
Indeed, but it seems it's only really a problem for politics where there is no second confirmation, an action is just taken.
Well, you have me and @prastle confirming that it happens for casualties selection too, based on experience.
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But, yes, for me the issue is enormously more problematic for political/user action acceptance than anything else, comprising casualties selection (also because you have an option for not confirming those with spacebar).
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If it is feasible, just disable spacebar from doing anything else than typing when in the chat thing right of "Send" you have anything already written down (meaning that it is not blank).
Basically, the engine would test if that is blank, and spacebar would confirm nothing if it is not.
No clue if doable.
Assuming nobody wants to start a chat message with spaces, then that would be fully safe. -
What I was trying to point out is the problem is really general, it can happen for whatever spacebar confirm. It is really dumb.
And even if it would be a 1 thing problem only (which is not), there is still the basic dynamic, thus at any point it can be a problem for whatever thing, since things can be changed and added.
For example, it can happen that you space bar click to continue combat, instead of retreating, if maybe someone went afk a bit and came back right before you hit spacebar to chat (maybe asking him if he was afk!).
I think this should be really seen as a general problem and a wrong design, in that a same thing should just not do two different things at the same time (chatting and confirming game stuff).Excluding removing spacebar totally, the main solutions I see are, preferably, having spacebar not doing anything else when you have focus on chat and the chat never losing focus automatically, or, if the previous is not feasible, having a general option for disabling the ability of spacebar to confirm anything (maybe expanding "Space bar confirms Casualties" as to apply to everything, not only casualties confirmation, and renaming it).
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@Cernel sadly unless they play live they will not see the problem. But it can also happen while chatting to someone and bored waiting for the other player to finish their move. But u and I both know this. Hopefully one day they get it.
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@Cernel not sure how this is a bug, at least for Ubuntu latest released version (3635) space bar never confirms casualties when there are multiple units to select from. My point is that the accidental bomber selection does not fall into this.
(notice the 'okay' button is not selected here)
It is not feasible to remove space bar. 1. The OS uses that for controls, it part of basic OS navigation where you can use tab and space bar to select controls and activate them. 2. We need a keyboard control to quickly confirm selections, it's too slow to force point and click all the time.
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@LaFayette What "Space bar confirms Casualties" say is that "When set to true casualty confirmation can be accepted by pressing space bar. When set to false, the confirm casualty button has to always be clicked.".
Based on that, and on how it always worked, as far as I remember, I guess that either space bar never confirming casualties when there are multiple units to select from is a bug or what this option does should be explained differently.
I tend to think it is a bug on your end, as I'm fairly sure that spamming spacebar allows you to confirm casualties when there are multiple units to select from, and it always did.But, again, this is only one of the problems of having space bar both for chatting and for confirming. So, even if that would not be a problem, that doesn't remove the spacebar problem in general.
I will explain more in detail the "continue" misclick, but this is really only one of the several case where spacebar causes issues for live gameplay.
You are making a combat as the attacker, and your opponent is unresponsive.
He needs to confirm his defensive casualties, so the game is stuck.
You start chatting wildly.
He comes back and confirm his casualties selection, making the battle windows proceed to the continue or retreat option.
You are still chatting, and by pressing spacebar you continue the battle, and immediately roll the dice, while maybe you intended to retreat.
This is virtually impossible to come back, as you rolled the dice, thus you would have a hard time telling your opponent you wanted to retreat, especially if the dice were against you.But I actually think that the auto-confirm political and user action is the worst of the worst!
And there are other cases in which, by chatting, you get to confirm stuff at random.
Also considering that there are people that play ladder live, this is something that may cause serious issues.
The problem is really that this spacebar confirm thing is a huge problem for playing live games and chatting in it, and can't be ignored, as it is really silly.
As_now_the_only_way_to_get_around_the_problem_is_to_make_sure_to_never_use_spacebar_while_chatting;_for_example,_using_underscores. This_is_what_I_actually_suggest_everyone_in_politic_FFA,_but_it_is_not_a_popular_solution.
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I tend to think it is a bug on your end, as I'm fairly sure that spamming spacebar allows you to confirm casualties when there are multiple units to select from, and it always did.
"Bug on my end", I am not quite sure what that means, I am pasting screenshots from the official release version. I had a similar recollection, but when checking the bomber death case I have not been able to reproduce it. I was wonder if a double space bar press was that easy to do, but not even that I found was sufficient to have a problem. I suggest you check the actual game engine behavior @Cernel , it would be interesting if there is a difference by OS, or if it is a different look and feel that is the culprit. Understanding if you see different behavior and why would be important for us to fix the reported problem properly.
The politics case still needs to be scoped out, we could employ a similar option where a confirmation window appears before you take an action you cannot undo. Or maybe we just allow undo so it's not just a big deal (one issue is that the confirmation windows can be on clients, we should scope this out better).
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@Cernel I understand the additional cases you outlined and do not disagree. Though each one needs to be considered in turn I think. To one extent we do need natural hot keys for UI selection, and to another space bar and tab and so for forth have OS built in defaults that we would not necessarily be wise to simply turn off.
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@LaFayette I confirm that for Windows with 1.9.0.0.3635 space bar always confirms casualties when there are multiple units to select from (and, as far as I recall, it always did), as long as "Focus on own casualties" is selected. Here you can proceed through the whole battle by doing nothing else but clicking spacebar:
Doing that is also what the option says, as I read it:
"When set to yes, the default casualty selection can be accepted by pressing space bar. When set to "no", you will always have to click a button to confirm casualty selections.".If that doesn't happen for you, it has to be either a bug or something is not clear about that option's description.
I also wonder, then, what it is different on your end when having "Focus on own casualties" set to "no", instead of "yes"?
For me, your behaviour is just what I would experience when having it set to "no".Anyway, now it is up to the developers. You can easily have the various cases yourselves by playing live games and chatting while playing them. It is relevant for whatever things that can be confirmed with spacebar, not only what I pointed out. Even two-clicks things (requiring a double click on spacebar to be irreversible) can be easily misclicked.
Actually, confirming casualties is one of the least important problems here, in my opinion, and hardly a problem at all, since there is already the option for disabling that. It would be good at least having that option expanded to cover any spacebar confirmation cases (like avoiding having focus on the "Remain" button in "Retrat?" window, etc.), if other ways to address this problem are not feasible.
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@cernel yes i can confirm (using windows 10 and .6298 with space bar deselected) it still selects casualties by tapping the space bar sadly.
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@cernel said in Remove Space Bar for casualties confirmation:
If that doesn't happen for you, it has to be either a bug or something is not clear about that option's description.
Well, I posted the screenshot of the setting and tried the alternative. The two variables I can think of are:
- OS, I'm running Ubuntu 16
- Look and feel, currently set to system default instead of substance.
I'll need to check if either of those two are the reason. Thank you for confirming that @Cernel and @prastle
For combat, you need to hit space bar twice for a mis-confirmation, and politics once. I would suggest it's a majority use case where two players are spamming space bar to get through a combat phase rather than either one chatting. If you play multplayer games instead of 1v1, you may have a different experience, but looking at lobby games at any time less than 25% to less than 10% of games are more than 2 players.
So, we need to be sure:
- we keep combat fast, players need to be able to confirm casualties with keyboard shortcuts quickly. We need to keep in mind that space bar is an OS default to activate the currently selected control. Getting the UX correct here may be tricky.
- we need to keep in mind there are cases where players are chatting, single click confirmations are effectively broken, double space bar confirmations not as bad but still can lead to accidental confirmations.
Summarizing that, I cut a tracking ticket so we don't forget this: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/2293
Please add any 'requirements' to the list if any are missing, the problem at least is well defined, the task I documented is mainly to investigate possible fixes and to propose something that fits the listed requirements.
