So make them WoG incompatible by design?
Depends on what you mean by “incompatible”.
Providing our own crexpbon.txt where creatures won’t lose bonuses by upgrading won’t break anything - you still can use original .txt if you want to.
“Incompatible” means forcing inheritance on engine level. But removing view of (up|de)grade bonus from interface allowing at the same time to use original crexp config is not good too.
Thanks for the feedback so far. I see there’s still work to do… What do you feel about the rest (skills area, etc), especially about reducing the width at the cost of having less skills visible in one go? Shall we start considering 2 versions of the Creature Window: a fancy large one, and a smaller version, with info more concise (maybe not as cryptic as the Commander codes on the H3 in-battle window, but still…)?
Tried L-/R-Click and nothing (unless I’m missing something). See bugs.vcmi.eu/view.php?id=1140
Didn’t think of it. Good point. I’ll see how it can be added back.
TBH, in like 7 years of WoG, I never got to creatures with over 4-digit Health values. The magic of WoG was that it added enough flexibility for many gamer tastes. Fighting uber monsters was never my thing. But then again, I always had too little time to explore all maps out there… But another good point, I see now there’s reason/use in the wider boxes.
IMO it’s needed. It’s maybe again a matter of playing style, but I use the button quite frequently in my strategic planning for the type of maps I play and I’d find it frustrating if I could only check this in in the recruitment screen. To give just 1 example, for the decision of making the road back home for an upgrade or not.
Remaking bonuses is something else, but some WoG-fans may dislike the idea (the skills unique to base creatures was finally making them more than just an intermediary step to the “better version”). And it would solve the need of the button only partially (you’ll know you don’t lose anything, but not yet what you get, to know if you should plan for the upgrade of creature X or Y first).
Two upgrade buttons wouldn’t look good indeed. Options:
- New graphics, with a “1” and a “2” on the upgrade buttons. But I don’t find it ideal, as you’d still not know for which upgrade you go w/o enough experience or a manual next to you. And comparing your choices would be a real pain if you had to open/close the two windows one by one.
- Perhaps a better approach would be to keep 1 button, but pressing it would open a choice window. Either similar with the Recruit in town, where the upgrade is selected by default, but we can chose the base form as well, or full choice details, with both recruitment costs displayed, to make the comparative choice easier to the player (IMO most practical).
Zamolxis does have a point. Maybe there is way to merge it into other creature stats (attack/defence/shoots)?
Health: 1999999999(2000000000)Is there any need to show base value especially during battles? In most cases all you need is current value. What about some popup similar to luck\morale boxes that would display all sources of the stat?
- May be a good idea actually. But button should look like this:
--------------------------------
| [icon with] "Upgrade to" |
| arrows ] <creature name> |
--------------------------------Two rows of text may not fit - in this case “Upgrade to” text can be removed.
Cost can be displayed in status bar but comparing stats of upgrade won’t work. Shouldn’t be an issue - usually superior upgrade is obvious (Elves -> Grand -> Sharpshooters) or you can check their stats in town recruitment window.
- Custom dialog with upgrade options + cost is complicated code-wise (current “show confirmation window” is almost one-liner). Replacing current one with “select upgrade” confirmation window won’t show upgrade cost - bad idea.
As a continuation of this, creature window made without use of H3 graphics:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22372764/vcmi/dialog-creature-cc.png
Bakground source: picasaweb.google.com/publicdomai … inTextures
Similar quest window: dl.dropbox.com/u/22372764/vcmi/ … est-cc.png
Main panel:
Creature stats got one more field: remaining mana\spell casts.
Topleft icon: experience. Instead of displaying 3 numbers, icon and text it consist from:
a) Level-dependent icon (1 bronze chevron for lvl1 … 3 gold chevron for lvl 9, gold chevron + star for lvl 10). Icons deserve some improvement but this is all I can do.
b) Subtitle with current experience.
Everything else will be accessible on click (including upgrades preview or max new recruits)
BTW: max new recruits should be part of split screen (by displaying resulting rank) but not here.
Topright icon: artifact. Right click to show info, left click to give artifact to hero.
Bottom icons: luck & morale.
Possible use of free space:
- Label with “Rank X: Name” text, or just “Rank X” - need to check size in-game first.
- Button to pass artifact back to hero
- Print current experience below icon instead of embedding
Spell effects panel:
8 slots for spell effects, Will not be visible outside of battles
Commander panel:
Commander primary skills, only for commander and commander level-up dialogs.
Abilities panel:
Only if creature has any abilities.
Variable size, will be hardcoded to some limit. IMO 3 rows is the best choice.
Description box became narrower but it also became a little higher and can fit one more line of text
Slider to the right will become active when scrolling is needed (black rectangle will be visible always for ease of coding this)
Buttons panel:
Visible only on left click. Consists:
a) Dismiss/Exit buttons
b) “Upgrade unit” text, visible if any upgrades are possible (army in town or hero is upgrade specialist)
c) Upgrade buttons.
Unavailable upgrades (no gold) will be grayscaled and not clickable (or tooltip with required sum)
Ignore empty image - in-game UI won’t have unused buttons
Status bar
Likely will be disabled for popups - no need to waste 20 pixels on it 
Black horizontal lines between panels may not look good but are necessary for seamless enabling\disabling of panels.
Any complains\propositions\nitpicking?
Looks very good to me. Layout and separation into subparts is clean.
Some questions:
- Do I miss sth. or why don’t you used the OH3 upgrade button?
- Black border near abilities and commander abilities icons are just placeholders aren’t they?
- Can a creature hold an artifact in OH3 or is it an addition to WoG? I never gave a creature/stack an artifact:)
-
To allow multiple upgrades to different creatures - Elves with Gelu in town, Cove, other mods.
Another issue is that it has a bit different size compared to nearby exit icon. Result of slightly different layout in H3 where these different sizes were actually a feature. -
Narrow horizontal lines are for seamless connection between panels. There won’t be separate image for every possible option (Commander, creature in battle, creature outside battle, etc). Instead I want to split this into one image per section and compose final one in runtime.
Wide vertical black block is for slider (too lazy to draw it - will be placed in runtime)
For example this is what you’ll see when r-clicking a creature outside of battle:
dl.dropbox.com/u/22372764/vcmi/ … battle.png
- No active spells outside of battle
- Not a commander
- R-click so no buttons panel.
And I forgot to remove status bar
- That’s WoG. Same for experience.
One thing: Commander can wear up to 6 artifacts.
Also, passing artifact on click may be not intuitive. We can add confirmation window, but it will make that operation slower.
Yeah. I’m thinking of button similar to current “hero head” but with better size so it won’t look out of place. And with “cancel” icon instead - hero head is too complex to draw for me.
Does not looks like “one thing” to me 
Window is already quite high (~ 460px for commanders in battle) - I can’t find good place for 6 art slots. Current <> buttons are not very intuitive and don’t show total number of slots.
Those commander skill icons are too big. Smaller 32-44px icons would fix too big window perfectly but I can’t find anything suitable.
Another option is to make this window ~550 pixels in height. Will only affect commanders so shouldn’t cause any major problems.
Stack experience, commanders, etc… are disabled by default in defaultMods.json. Is it possible to use the classic creature window by default, too? If WoG features are disabled or if you use VCMI along with SoD, the new creature window which is primarly designed for WoG additions is a little bit confusing. I would suggest to enable classic creature window on VCMI + SoD installation and new stack exp creature window on VCMI + WoG. Additionally the ingame option to enable/disable the classic creature window should be available from WoG mod settings only.
I think it’s bad idea.
Experiencs of creatures and commanders come from modding system.
Many mods use commanders. Experience levels of creatures are used very rarely (I saw experience setting now in Cove only), but in future it’s completely possible to prepare mods with experience levels and without WOG.
So this window must stay even if there is no WOG.
You also forgot about stack artefacts. So this window is also for their management. And this is another option it depends on. And it’s completely out of WOG.
I don’t think there is no reason to check Experience/Stack Artefacts option and to show standard window, if no options are selected.
So if mods depend on global modding system settings (commanders, creature exp), then let the creature window be dependent on these settings too. If any of these options are enabled, then enable new creature window, otherwise display classic creature window.
New creature widodw also displays all abilities of new and old creatures that would be not known otherwise. Original window does not tell that Pikemen are immune to charge or Troglodytes are immunte to Stone Gaze, for example.
If someone wants to disable it, he can do anyway. There’s no need to enforce that, though.
Commander window is separate functionalty, though it shared some code and graphics for simplicity.
Perhaps we can keep the creature window so flexible that it shows all relevant information and not more. I created the mantis ticket #1614 where I collected some improvements which can be done.
Implementing window from my post above should do exactly this. If there is somebody willing to work on it - then I can finish some remaining bits and upload set of images needed to implement this window.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/sh/fwor43x5xrgzx6q/jVuk54bqKX/gfx/dialog-creature.png?dl=1
Update:
xcf from GIMP + set of exported to png layers can be found here:
dropbox.com/sh/fwor43x5xrgz … OC/gfx?lst
New icons:
since I made one more field (remaining spell points) I had to find a new icon set. Top-most icon with arrows is not used on creature window but can be used for example in town window (creature growth).
Top section:
has 3 versions:
- with artifact and stack experience boxes
- with single box for artifact OR stack exp
- no boxes for SoD mode.
Commander section:
Left side - commander skills
Right side - 6 artifacts + hero backpack 3 slots in size to ease artifact management.
Bottom section:
from left to right:
- place for dismiss button
- place for “Upgrade Creature” text
- buttons for upgrade buttons (only one is present on screenshot)
- wide button to switch between commander view and abilities view (only for commander)
- exit button
Everything else remains as it was in my previous post.
If/when somebody decides to implement this - let me know. Right now I’m not interested in writing support myself but this may change in future.
Resurrecting this thread since I finally started working on it. Mostly finished although I’m still fighting with commander levelup code.
Some questions about commander mechanics, to Warmonger I guess.
- Commanders can level not only skills but also abilities. Is there some limit on how many abilities can be available at level-up at once?
- After leveling hero with vcmiglorfindel commander stopped receiving level-ups dialogs somewhere around level 25. Is this cap intended?
There are some issues with skill icons:
- Most of icons belong to WoG mod, which is folder WoG\Data\zvs\Lib1.res
- Some additional icons come and go with every release and in generla get lost over time. For example, I don’t have them on my HD now, but they should be present in earlier releases.
Probably the right thing to do is to either put all of them in default VCMI package or create mod which enables new interface with all the icons via Launcher.
I am for this! And It will be easier to add new icons/replace them through one mod. Not anybody uses native WOG.