hiding players from all "Politics Panel" tabs
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@Cernel said in: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/5315
By the way, can you add an option for hiding players from all "Politics Panel" tabs (at the discretion of the mapmaker, similarly to the "isHidden" option)? For example, for cases like the GameSetup and MinorClans of Feudal Japan or Dutch, Mongolians, Neutral_Axis and Neutral_Allies of WWII Global. I've also a map that could really use this, though not released yet.
@Cernel I think that might not be too difficult to add. Do you have an ideal XML that would define this? When you say 'all politics' tabs, is that just politics tabs/windows, or are there side-bar windows too? Do you know any current maps that would benefit from such an update, or just maps that are still in the works?
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@LaFayette Well, yeah, as I said, I believe that all the (many) Global games and Feudal Japan would benefit from it, but I don't think there is really anybody currently maintaining them.
For example, for cases like the GameSetup and MinorClans of Feudal Japan or Dutch, Mongolians, Neutral_Axis and Neutral_Allies of WWII Global.
I've actually a map where each "neutral" territory is a single player, cause I want the players to be able to choose if to attack of walk friendly over each one, but I cannot even say when I will be even uploading that on GitHub.
In general, I just assume that it would be pretty easy having political map with some utility player or such; so I surmise this option would get used.
Though, it much depends on the format of the window. Under the current format, you could hide some players from the table, if you think they are not important to see, but still being able to do political actions with them, while in a more integrated format this would be reserved only to players you don't directly make any actions with, I suppose.
So, I would wait on this feature request until the display format is fairly stabilized.
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a map where each "neutral" territory is a single player, cause I want the players to be able to choose if to attack of walk friendly over each one
It is probably easier to leave them as neutrals. You could still use political actions to change the units and territory ownership. You also have the options of a PU penalty for attacking any neutral or making all neutrals impassable, forcing the player to choose an explicit political action before attacking them.
If you post your scenario or just the XML code, the community can probably find a solution for you.
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This would be very useful on many of my maps, with alot of non-player nations, especially my work-in-progress map World of War Heroes. In the current political panel there is about 1/10 of the information that is useful.
If I bring politics into play it will be very annoying to have all this useless info on screen. It would be nice to cut it down.
How about making it a part of the player list like this:
<player name="Humans" optional="true" defaultType="Human" isHidden="false"/> <player name="Bandits" optional="true" defaultType="AI" isHiddenFromLaunch="true" isHiddenFromTabs="true" isHiddenFromPolitics="true"/> -
@Frostion Yeah, that doesn't look very good...
I would go with expanding the (already available) "isHidden" (general sounding) option for the players that are meant to be hidden pretty much everywhere but on the board only, and that will make them follow the same display settings of the Neutral (null) player (comprising the fact that you don't see the "Neutral" player in the Politics Panel, for example, unless you define a player called "Neutral", of course).
This, of course, has the risk that there are games already using "isHidden", that may want to hide some players from the start game selection only, but not generally like the Neutral player, but that is a recent addition, and here we are talking only about visual, so I would not be too worried about it, and I'm pretty sure it will actually work well in most or all cases (@Frostion's "Dragon War"'s Pirates/Barbarians/Murlocs/Kobolds/Gnolls/Ogres come to mind).
However, before that, it would be necessary renaming the current "isHidden" as something meaning being only not selectable (as well as not influenced by the "Set All To" thing), like "isNotSelectable".
So to summarize, my suggestions:
- Expanding the current "isHidden" option as to generally hide the assigned players the same way the Neutral (null) player is hidden (thus comprising not displaying in the Politics Panels).
- Adding a new "isNotSelectable" option for doing exactly what the "isHidden" option currently does.
- Running a search in the repository maps for all games having
isHidden="true"in the xml, to ascertain the new behaviour is making sense for all of them (I can do this (I guess @Frostion and @Hepps will look for their games themselves, so I'll skip those)).
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I think it boils down to whether we just need to:
- Expand isHidden to hide those players from other areas (tabs, politics, etc)
- Need separate player properties like isHiddenFromLaunch, isHiddenFromTabs, isHiddenFromPolitics and whether you would really ever want to hide the players from only certain areas
The other piece is deciding what areas players can be hidden from (right now its just the set up screen):
- Game set up
- Politics panel
- Right side panel tabs
- ???
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@redrum Definitely expanding "isHidden" to hide the player just as much as the Neutral player is hidden. I'm fairly certain most of the players you surely don't want to offer in starting selection would be of this kind.
I'm not sure if there is much of a need for anything else. Making a player not selectable but still wanting to show it fully or partially in the information and statistics is probably rather marginal a matter, and I'm not sure if there are any games that could use that at the moment. It would also likely create a highly subjective field; for example, players meant to be always played by AI (like China in Cold War 1965) may be preferred as not selectable or may be preferred just assigned to the AI default, leaving the player the ability to houserule another type for them (also since who knows what will be the deal with the AI 10 years from now, while maps and games tend to remain untouched virtually forever, once one is done with them; so having more options is an assurance).
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@Cernel I dont disagree totally. But I can imagine many scenarios where AI players should be hidden from game setup but not info tabs and politics. Like if the map is very coop or single player oriented and the AI players play a major role, in a way where you should be able to do politics with AI or keep an eye on some AI score, resources etc. Or if the AI is handling minor nations that can be influenced by politics or resource trade. Or if an AI player was used more as a counter, for settings or some other mechanism thing. If you hide an allied AI player from the info tabs, but the AI's victory locations or PU score still counts towards an allied victory count, how can human players get to see through the calculations?
I would say that both solutions are useful, but the latter with the most flexibility would be most useful and future proof.
Semi-of topic, but I would just as much like to see a unit attachment option that could hide specific units from the unit help screen
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Anyways, I don't recall what I said about it back then when this option was made, but I really dislike the "isHidden" naming. As it is, it should be renamed to "isNotSelectable" or something. "isHidden" is so generic it makes me think that player is even going to be hidden on the board, like some fog of war thing.
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Agree @Cernel on isHidden
Ignoring that some of the names are existing (I suppose we could create aliases), perhaps these attribute names would be more ideal/logical:
<player name="Bandits" optional="true" defaultType="AI" displayOnLaunchScreen="false" displayedOnTabs="false" politicsEnabled="false"/> -
@LaFayette Is it not a pretty limited number of maps that uses ishidden as of now? I think it would be possible to just change those XMLs.
Also instead of mentioning or naming an option to something with "tabs", maybe it should be like DisplayAtInfo, DisplayInUI, DisplayInStatistics etc. At some point in the future, maybe the UI changes to some form that doesn't include tabs, compared to the way it is now.
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More is not always better and I really see no good reasons to split between different kind of information, being them relationships, statistics, or whatever. Just an option for not giving any information that it is not given for the Neutral (null) player (thus comprising not being in the politics panel and in the players tab) should be good enough.
This doesn't even need to be an option, by the way; it may be related to the player having no phases assigned (which would be consistent with the player being, thus, alike to the Neutral one).
Also multiple options, side by side, would give pointless possibilities. For example, I don't think you'd ever want to hide any information about a player while offering it as selectable, do you?
At most, the levels are going to be 3:
1- Players you want to select and have info.
2- Players you don't want to select, but still want to have info.
3- Players you don't want to select nor have info (like the Neutral player in NWO etc.).I still wonder if number 2 is even much of an item. What's the problem about assigning those players to the AI (maybe even to Nothing) and leaving them selectable, even if you are not supposed to ever select them. Telling a player it is supposed to be not selectable is already done by having it defaulting to an AI, isn't it?
Then, we could add no options at all, but I still believe the "isHidden" option should be renamed into something more consistent and definite.
