Notes on rev 5013

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

Moderator: Oberlus

Forum rules
Always mention the exact version of FreeOrion you are testing.

When reporting an issue regarding the AI, if possible provide the relevant AI log file and a save game file that demonstrates the issue.
Message
Author
User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Notes on rev 5013

#16 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:* What sense does it make to say a system in which you have ships is "unexplored"?
It's making a distinction between having a ship in a system and actually being able to "explore" it and see the system object's details.
What details? Star type? How is that supposed to be being hidden? And how are the scripts hiding it?
A system's name is an arbitrary and uniform designation -- it doesn't reveal anything. Also the other planets proclaim that this system is "Hertzprung", so what is the point?

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I presume the planet name is hidden to avoid showing the empire color and thus revealing the owner. Still as is, it looks broken.
I suspect it's hidden because the player's empire doesn't have sufficient detection ability to see the planet's details; the client doesn't know what the planet name is (or that there's an empire controlling it).
Except for the details he can see-- the size and type, (by text and image) and the fact that it has orbital buildings. Orbital buildings only happen on imperial owned worlds (is it even possible that this is unowned? If everybody died it would still be an outpost, right?). He can also see that the "hidden" planet is the first, so he knows the name will be "Hertzprung I", unless a player renamed it.

In short, details are hidden one place and revealed another. Useless information is hidden, and useful information is revealed. This is what i mean by looking broken, aside from first impressions.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Perhaps "Obscured System" and "Obscured Planet" would be clearer, though it's a bit tricky to know when to use these labels in the client.
For "Obscured System", i question weather the game (or at least the game as it is scripted to be) should have such a concept.
For "Obscured Planet", that would simply be used whenever the name is concealed.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Regarding the unexplored system, is it really important to have a distinct label depending on whether or not an empire has, at some point, had a ship spend a turn in a system?
It's not that that info is important, but the current implementation looks broken, and feels like a bug.

Also what's going on with H ii and H iii? They look unusually dark, but they don't have the scan-lines.

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Notes on rev 5013

#17 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Regarding the unexplored system, is it really important to have a distinct label depending on whether or not an empire has, at some point, had a ship spend a turn in a system?
As the game is now, yes it is important, because actually putting a ship in a system is the only way to guarantee that you know of all the planets in the system. Of course there is the whole moving planets thing, but I'd rather deal with that by turning planets into ships than by actually moving planets.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Zireael
Space Dragon
Posts: 429
Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:33 pm

Re: Notes on rev 5013

#18 Post by Zireael »

I'm back, so:
1) I agree with Bigjoe in the above post.

2)
In short, details are hidden one place and revealed another. Useless information is hidden, and useful information is revealed. This is what i mean by looking broken, aside from first impressions.
Seconded.

3)
Also what's going on with H ii and H iii? They look unusually dark, but they don't have the scan-lines.
Probably a side effect of me converting the screenshot to gif (it wouldn't fit in the upload limit otherwise)

4)
* What sense does it make to say a system in which you have ships is "unexplored"?
It's making a distinction between having a ship in a system and actually being able to "explore" it and see the system object's details.
Most people will understand "unexplored" as "one you haven't visited yet". Therefore, my suggestion of introducing a new label in the situation we are discussing. Doesn't matter if it's Stealthy or Unknown or Obscured, but it has to be different from "Unexplored".

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Notes on rev 5013

#19 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Zireael wrote:3)
Also what's going on with H ii and H iii? They look unusually dark, but they don't have the scan-lines.
Probably a side effect of me converting the screenshot to gif (it wouldn't fit in the upload limit otherwise)
They are dark because the star type is unknown (see the ?), so it's defaulting to a very dark star light colour for planet rendering.

Post Reply