Topic: Content and looks of the new "cheap in-game help"

Astuur: nothing I say is ever obsolete... it is just the reality that moves too quickly :). But what I mentioned there is still valid - I'd like to delay adding features to the help till after b17 though if possible. If it is good for the moral, I can be convinced to do some work on it before though.

Venatrix: about the translation issues. The best way is to make frequent use of the :format function [1]. Basically, you replace the dynamic element in the sentence via "%s" and make the complete string translatable. Around a plain string, you will need to add brackets like so:

(_"This %s a %s string"):format("is", "cool")

will become "This is a cool string". and the translaters only get the template. A problem remains when the order of the elements would need to be switched in a language. A silly example from english to english: (_"Round %s the %s"):format("is", "house") should be translated into "The house is round", the translated template would look like "The %s %s round" but would show up as "The is house round" because of the order of arguments in the brackets. This is a real problem with some languages, but I suggest to ignore if for the moment (we can rewrite the format method one day to (also) accept a dictionary and a format template like ("%(house)s"):format{house="House"}. Do I make any sense?

[1] http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-string.format

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Another question: I set the textdomain to tribe_barbarians for we at the moment work at this tribe. I wonder if it would be better to make a new textdomain "help" (or whatever it shall be named) and set it in all tribes’ help files? There sure are some phrases needed in all tribes, on the other hand then all the buildings’, workers’ and tools’ names would have to be translated again (Launchpad should suggest the existing ones, but someone has to confirm them, I think. Don’t know, if that is feasible.), that there are sometimes different translations in different tribes for the same English word, doesn’t help here…

Alright… As I write it I think I better leave it as it is… Or do I hear other opinions?

Two is the oddest prime.

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It seems we supassed some limit with the launchpad bugtracker.
The attached files do not display, but there is a note saying something about displaying the fist .... of... (to short to read for me)

Here are again the links to the files for the Limekiln:
the new graphic
the .pdf
the ascii

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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I just "discovered" something:
There are certain wares being produced and soldiers training levels being administered
that reaquire a quantity higher than one of some input wares (2x iron, 2x gold,, 2x meat etc.)
Since we can now limit the storage of input wares in sites, we have created another pitfall for
inexperienced players.
Should they limit the storage to one of each kind, they might not understand why certain wares are not
produced any more althought all the materials are available, and the site produces other wares.
This is something that might need to be mentioned in the in-game help of those buildings, but currently isn't.
Probably for the "in depth" side, though.

Another option could be to prevent this in the code, by disallowing to set an input resource to anything lower (except to "0") than what any product needs at one time for its production.

Clarification: If a toolsmith needs (hypothetical) 3 iron to create a tool "anvil", he will never be able to make an anvil when the input of iron is set to "1" or "2", but will produce other tools that need less iron.
In that case the iron storage in the toolsmithy should only allow the settings 0,3,4,5 ..., but not 1 and 2.

I dont know which solution would be better, or whether we should "fix" this at all.
Comments?

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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Regarding the old discussion about the meaning of the 1st parameter of "mine" production program

Astuur wrote: Yep, that's clear enough - thank you. So ... a stange feature, somehow....... Can we leave that question open for a while, please? I am sure Nasenbaer or Sirver will sooner or later jump in here, and explain why this strange phenomenon was implemented at all. As for now, I am not even sure that it has not happened accidentally face-smile.png

EDIT; Finally found that link to Nasenbaer's explanation. Sorry about overlooking this at first. I still think it's strange to create iron or out of thin air, and I don't really see the logic behind having this dualism of a map maker setting the resources to something he has planned, and the game ignoring these limitations in certain cases. Might be worth some more discussion.

Looking inside the code it seems that the 1st parameters is the range - see my post. Not 100% sure, anyway.

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