Switching out default units

Joe Pants

@Cernel is right, I wanted to standardize so all the Allies face left and all the Axis face right. It's cool for the US vs. Japan and for Germany, Finns, & Romania vs. Russia, but it is a bit odd for France and Britain.

Joe Pants

@Cernel You have a very good eye, it's a Renault R35. According to Wikipedia France imported them to to Poland, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia just before the invasion of Poland.

redrum

@Joe-Pants I'd add that if its pretty clear the units are better than the default, I'm pretty open to just updating the base map. @Cernel was the last person to make some improvements to the WaW units so if you can convince him then you have my vote. Here is also the map thread if you'd like to discuss it there: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/145/world-at-war-official-thread

Cernel

@redrum Yeah, well, if he makes a list in here, like the automatic list you get in GitHub when push changes, I can quote and give my opinion as like/indifferent/dislike over the current. It would also help if knowing exactly what the images are representing. Though the main concern is that if you make 1 infantry image per country, then it is likely hard to tell the elite and marine apart, unless you do it like @Hepps did in RSoC, or something, while there is not this concern at all for WAW40 (the ice's mod), that I see it is actually what he's playing. For the images themselves, it is very easy to get something better than the very blurry one used (that has the arguable value of being the traditional infantry of NWO, that is referenced in the WAW map itself, that was actually why I decided to leave it alone).

Theorically, of course, the best would be the opinions of the players. A mapskin could help with that, I guess.

Joe Pants

@Cernel Just for the sake of clarity here's what the US Infantry, Elite, and Marines look like. They're different but the special troops also have a symbol similar to what paratroopers get:

Cernel

@Joe-Pants Yeah, they are certainly very distinctive on their own, but I think the issue may be that, in the moment you have 14 different players, it may be challenging to memorize them all twice or trice. I'm not a fan of using symbols to tell units apart; that is what the images themselves should be doing, possibly, and here for this map they are not really viable, anyways, due to how zoomed the images are and how little space there is in some territories, especially the circles, where overlapping other units might hide the little symbols.

Well, the marine currently has only 1 image for all the Allies and another 1 for all the Axis, so here I'm assuming you would make them different, like you did for the infantry.

Personally, I think that all countries having marines should not have elites, as the marine makes the elite virtually obsolete, but that would be a gameplay relevant change.

For the integrated country roundels (TWW style), I'm tendentially neutral on that, and it would be best if the user could switch them on/off, but I know that TripleA doesn't support that well enough. If always showing them, I suggest doing it with (always true) unit icons.

Cernel

@Cernel I'm actually against roundels TWW style, because they make the images harder to eventually retouch (for example, recolourizing), especially if the roundel itself is not provided, for any future images to be added, but I'm neutral on the matter if the roundel is not part of the images themselves, but an icon, or if the same image without the roundel is provided, for each one, within that same skin (the original map, if we are talking about the original skin).

Cernel

Anyways, I want to make clear that, even as not a player of the map, I think it would be a major graphic advancement to get rid of those bad looking infantry images, substituting them with something better. My concerns are purely on the side of distinctivness, thus playability. My suggestion for anyone who would want to provide a set of infantry, elite and marine, so that each player (15 with Neutral) has a different kind of them, is to distinguish by the mean of pose. For example:

having all infantry holding the gun on their bellies while advancing,
all elite standing up and having the gun ready to fire,
all marines about to launch a hand granade.

In any case, the images should be distinctive enough not to need any additional symbols (I already don't like the red dots, and strongly suggest those remaining the only case).

Stohrm

@Joe-Pants I started doing the same thing: revamping all the units and adding a few of my own. That was two years ago and I managed to finish most of them. I chose to standardize them rather than having them be unique for each country (other than by color); but I, too, faced the Allies one direction and the Axis the other.
I created an "Engineer" unit, depicted by a shovel-in-hand instead of a rifle (which was slung over his shoulder), and required it to be present within any territory where structures were to be built. The Marine's hunched low. The (regular) infantry stand tall with rifle aimed. The Air-bourn Infantry have the chute pack on their back and rifle held firmly at their waist (plus an open chute in the lower corner). I even added a splash of color to the rifles and such; giving them wood stocks, etc.
But, that was two years ago and about the time my sister got me into playing World of Warcraft. So, the project fell to the wayside and failed to get finished.
December 7th rolled around again, though, and (unlike last year) it has prompted me to play once again. Luckily, everything's still intact and I just have to pick up where I left off. Even so, I'd love to find a repository of unit png's and such.

SK

Joe Pants

@Stohrm I'd love to see your files! I loaded all of mine into the old repository before the forum moved. Not sure what happened to them. Any thoughts from anyone as to where they might be?

Stohrm

@Joe-Pants I've been running up against Murphy's Law, in ALL aspects of my life lately. "Anything that can or could go wrong: will go wrong" and has been. Plus, my OCD doesn't help, either.

Right now, I just want to be able to have Germany's Harbour be placed along the northern coast line. However, it's 12th in line and not first (like it should be). I can't find a way to change that and it's bugging the heck out of me. Of course, people without such compulsions just don't understand; after all "it's just a game".

One would think: okay, it's 12th in line... So, just place it in the 12th spot; but it's only 12th in line if all 11 of the other units are on the map! None mobile structures should have their own placement handler or be placed first. I don't care if an infantry unit or armour unit stands in front of them: one would expect as much, I'd imagine.

Okay so what has that to do with your comment? Well, it's preventing me from progressing any further with my project. Which means it won't be uploaded any time soon. However, I'll figure out some way to get those units to you; but you'll just have to be patient.

redrum

@Stohrm So where a unit gets placed within a territory is based on 2 things:

The unit placements defined for each territory (where and the order of them). This also is then used for unit overflow.
Where the unit is sorted to which I think is based on some of its properties and the order in the XML file: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/681/group-and-sort-units-onto-placements-logically

Grouping/sorting:

Unit owner: territory owner, not at war with territory owner, player order in XML
Unit type: 0 movement, can't combat move, sea, air if sea territory, land, air if land territory
Within each of those groups sort the units by XML order in UnitList

So for placing say the harbor in the first slot of a territory, as long as its owned by the territory owner, has 0 movement, and is the first unit in the unit list then it should appear in the territory's first placement slot.

Cernel

@redrum said in Switching out default units:

So for placing say the harbor in the first slot of a territory, as long as its owned by the territory owner, has 0 movement, and is the first unit in the unit list then it should appear in the territory's first placement slot.

@redrum I wonder if this is intended, and I want to add that, from testing, I believe that movement 0 units that cannot combat move are prioritized over movement 0 units that can combat move. So I think he should also look out that either all movement 0 units can combat move or at least the harbour cannot.

It would probably be good to exactly document this matter somewhere official, but I think it doesn't belong to pos2, since it is purely a view matter.

Cernel

@Stohrm I'm starting thinking you are using a very old version of TripleA, maybe 1.8.0.9. What one I wonder?

Stohrm

@redrum The issue was that I hadn't upgraded to the latest version of Triple-A. I just did that and it works fine. That having been said (and achieved): I've been giving it a lot of thought and was wondering if the Harbour should be considered a naval unit as opposed to a land unit?

Think about it and take Novgorod for an example: It only has one harbor; but it has two sea zones that are not attached to each other. The map I'm currently revamping still shows it in the midst of the territory; but I gather that it's effect will apply to either sea zone (and it really shouldn't).

It's a tough call, though; as one sea zone is often attached to two territories and they may or may not belong to the same faction. So, perhaps there needs to be a new distinction called "coastal" that would apply to harbours , shore batteries, dry-docks and other such structures.

It might be worth exploring. For now, though, I thank you. Even though you didn't say to check the version I've been running; your response did help me to realize that I needed the updated engine.

Stohrm

@Cernel said in Switching out default units:

@Stohrm I'm starting thinking you are using a very old version of TripleA, maybe 1.8.0.9. What one I wonder?

Yes, I had just realized that as well. Thank you.

Hepps

@Joe-Pants I have a copy of your unit folder.

Joe Pants

@Hepps I still have it as well; is there a new group repository?

Hepps

@Joe-Pants Not sure. One of the technocrats may know.

redrum

@Hepps @Joe-Pants I believe this is the new repository we are using for map maker unit images: https://github.com/triplea-game/map-maker-assets

I think we are trying to consolidate all the various map maker links here: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/918/map-maker-resources