Expand UserActionAttachment & PoliticalActionAttachment To All Resources

Cernel

@redrum said in Expand UserActionAttachment & PoliticalActionAttachment To All Resources:

And if something has a chance to succeed then whether it does or doesn't I'd expect the player to pay for it. Similar to tech tokens.

There is also the other case in which the action's success is dependent on a player's acceptance.

Cernel

The only games currently using "costPU" are @Frostion's

Age_of_Tribes_Classical.xml
Age_of_Tribes_Cold_War.xml
Age_of_Tribes_Modern.xml
iron_war.xml
iron_war.xml
iron_war_europe.xml

Hoping @Frostion agrees to delete the already deprecated costPU from them all, I would, then update only:

Civil_War.xml
Civil_War_Eastern_Campaigns.xml
Domination_1914-Weltpolitik.xml
Domination_1914_Blood_And_Steel.xml
Empire.xml
FeudalJapanWarlords3Player.xml
FeudalJapanWarlords4Player.xml
FeudalJapanWarlords5Player.xml
Greyhawk_Wars.xml
pact_of_steel_2.xml
Total_World_War_Dec1941.xml
Total_World_War_Dec1941_Beta.xml

and related properties, to tell the resources,

and remove all occurrences from:

another_world.xml
FeudalJapan.xml
Napoleonic_Empires.xml
Napoleonic_Empires_FFA_5player.xml
Napoleonic_Empires_FFA_8player.xml

These last 5 ones have only this useless code:
<option name="costPU" value="0"/>

Since @redrum already agreed with both my suggestions and and I am just waiting for @Frostion, if anyone owning any of the games above don't want me to touch them (preferring to do it himself), please let me know in here.

Also, if someone else, especially @redrum, wants to double check I'm not missing some games, that'd be good too.

p.s.: @Frostion I believe you shouldn't keep an xml outside the games folder, referring to your iron_war map (or I've no clue why you want that).

Cernel

@cernel I think I will first do civil_war only (2 games in 1 map). If I get the feeling that goes decently enough, especially referring to dealing with GitHub, I will do the rest, otherwise nevermind. The more of those games are removed from my list because others want to do it, the better. It would be also good if someone plays a game of Civil War after the changes and see if it appears working fine.

General_Zod

@redrum @Cernel

I use costPU extensively for diplomacy in Bad-Ass 4 Nation FFA. I also use it in my existing Big World 3, but only a few there so far.

Cernel

@general_zod And you plan to stop using it, in favour of "costResource"?

General_Zod

@cernel Only if it is (costPU) being removed entirely. Otherwise no need.

Or if the changes you guys are discussing will mess with my current functionality.

Cernel

@redrum Whatever is deprecated (like "costPU" already) should probably give an error message, I tend to think. I don't even know if there is a list of anything deprecated somewhere, or how mapmakers are supposed to know it.

redrum

@cernel Well, I don't really want to display a bunch of errors to the end user because the map is outdated or the map maker used deprecated options. In theory, we'd have more of a map review process and a map refresher process to ensure deprecated options get replaced and aren't being used in new maps.

Cernel

@redrum I recall that in the past there used to be two levels of errors. Those that would give a pop up and those that were tracked in the console without presenting it upon occurring. I tend to agree that it would not be nice to throw a warning for deprecates as, for example, "isInfantry" is deprecated, and you would get it in a lot of, if not most, maps. Likely if you would get an error for any deprecates, most games you have would have tons of errors; so, yeah, that would need to be hidden from default users.
A first step would be to actually know what the deprecates are, but this is off topic, I'll open a ticket.

redrum

@cernel What is deprecated is generally tracked in POS2 XML. I have a few updates to still add to it based on the last couple of features I've implemented over the last few weeks but other than that it should be up to date.

Cernel

@redrum A search with non case sensitive "deprecate" in pact_of_steel_2.xml returned only "isInfantry".
Anyway I opened this ticket:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3462

redrum

@cernel POS2 XML should be updated through the latest changes now.

Frostion

@redrum @Cernel
I have been offline a lot lately because of real life work. And for some reason I recently have not gotten any info-mail from TripleA forum.

I am totally fine with cost PUs being changed to cost resources, and will update my maps, if the Pact of Steel 2 xml is updated and I can see what to do.

Is it final how those buttons and cost/outcome info will look like? I would prefer if the engine maintained some kind of consistency across maps, like if cost was always displayed the same way somehow. The political action outcome is another matter as there are so many possibilities and probably can't be automatically generated.

@Cernel I can't see why I would want to have two XMLs in the Iron War map. It must be a mistake. I am not home and can't see what and where this second xml is located. But will check it out asap.

redrum

@frostion POS2 XML is updated with an example and the first post of this thread has an example and a screenshot. I'm open to adjusting how it displays if folks have better ideas.

Cernel

@redrum What I understood we already potentially agree is to remove that entirely, after I've updated all the properties to tell the cost themselves.

What I plan to do is just adding the thing like it looks now in all except I'm thinking for Civil War to change so that like, regarding what the user sees:

[25 PU] Finance Debt
would become
Pay $25 Debt Installment.

and:
[25 PU] PRIORITY: Debt Backpayment
would become
PRORITY: Pay $25 Debt Arrear.

Really, that is not done the right way. Instead of having a big "PRIORITY" mark on it, it could have been just coded that first you get only the arrear, and then you get the regular instalment after you clicked on (paid for) the arrear, since you don't want to pay the regular but not the one that would default you, obviously (thus the priority warning), but I don't plan to do that.

I personally don't like and don't agree with using "$" (vel similia) to mean "PUs", unless the scale makes sense (1 PU is actually representing 1 $); just going that way for coherence with the rest, as is.

There are no reasons whatsoever to display that cost or anything mandatory in the buttons. The mapmakers can customize it as they want, also exactly like it looks now (possibly better).

At most, we can think about some sort of tooltip that tells the various things (chance success, number retry allowed, cost resources...), but I'm not advising it.

General_Zod

@cernel

A tool tip for the user/political actions buttons sounds like a potentially very useful feature. Since the majority of these actions will likely not be intuitively self explanatory actions, a space saving informatory description sounds great. Perhaps in a .properties file.

General_Zod

@redrum

Do we have to replace "costPU" in existing maps to launch error free?

Frostion

@All
I have removed all instances of costPUs in my maps at GitHub. I have not given the maps a new version number or edited the yaml file, because no alterations have been made to the game besides this minor edit.

Is it necessary for me to give new version numbers and edit the yaml? Can new downloads of the maps (with this edit) play with old downloads without conflicts/errors?

Cernel

@general_zod That may happen after I convert all, if Civil War stops swamping me with its endless issues.

Cernel

@frostion Well, I can answer you about this.
Since the costResources didn't exist before, people using engine not having it yet will get a whole bunch of errors and will be unable to now play your maps.
Normally, when adding a new feature, at the next stable release at least, you would increase the triplea version and, then, you would just need to set that version in the triplea minimumVersion of the xml, to avoid people with old engines getting errors, but we are stucked at 1.9.0.0 since a while...