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

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

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.

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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The thing is that I try to reduce the work for translators as much as possible. If anybody takes a look into the Lua-files, that’s why I sometimes tear the sentences or phrases apart. The best example is the crew part. Look into it in another language than English and you should understand, what I mean. That’s why I would take a digit – that don’t need to be translated.

On the other hand can I make a complete phrase that has to be translated… In that case I can write the word. I’m not sure, which way is best. Any opinions?

BTW: About using digits or words I found this: http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=544255&idForum=1&lp=ende&lang=de

Two is the oddest prime.

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Note for the developers:
As we all know the formatting options inside the help windows are currently quite limited.
I have reduced the formatting to a minimum, but Venatrix (who does the job of producing the .lua files) still needs to rearrange content for display, and I'd rather have a visually clearer, less space consuming layout for the files.
So here is my ordered wishlist for formatting options:

• Tables, or alternatively tabs and indentation.
• Borders/Boxes to group some content.
• Bullets
• Different colour and size, italique, underlined and bold for fonts.

An additional thought:
My personal experience is, that people writing code and people writing wordy help text and manuals, usually are not the same persons, and tend to lack the fancy or ability for the respective other job.
The html-based help file creation that still exists had the advantage of auto-updating to changes in the conf files. However, it was purely informative and could not create any athmosphere, give hints or best practices nor actually explain caveats. The cheap in-game help now to come can do all of of this (especially in the "in depth" part, that is currently not yet implemented), but will - for that very reason - need constant optimization and modification. At the pace WL develops, there will be need for a constant effort to keep the help files up to date.
Combining these two arguments, we may want to have some sort of editor, that non-coders can easily use. Dealing with panrentheses, dots, commas and quotation marks and so on and all the rest of the unforgiving syntax may well frighten away the sort of person that otherwise would volunteer to keep the new help system up to date.
Given the fact that this is an Widelands specific format, I don't think we will ever see a WYSISYG-editor for the lua help files, but I wonder whether a program could be done, that can convert the output of something (html, may be?) where editors exist, and transform it to what the help system needs?

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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Venatrix wrote:

It’s not long and even you should be able to understand it. face-wink.png

Oh Venatrix, you have no idea where my learning curve would have to start

Your documentation starts very nicely, but the "Real World example" already opens up more questions, than it gives answers for me
But let's cut this short. It doesn't belong here.

I acknowledge that some things I wished for are already possible.
And of course any help for easier formatting is a thing for the future...

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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Next topic: GOLD

EDIT: I have reposted this to the "game suggestion" forum, where it seems more suitable. Sorry for the double posting.

I think on the long run.... very long run, we should re-think the use of Gold for the weapon and armour production.
The difficulty I am facing is that the perception of the gold value must necessarily be seriously decreased by its abundance.
Lets face it, the amount of gold mined, smolten and wrought into weapons and armour is a bit crazy.
What I am saying is, that we cannot expect any of our tribes to use gold as payment, or incentive, or reward, if that metal is so readily available in insane quantities!
So there perception of gold is completely different from what a player would normally expect.
Furthermore the use of gold for weapons and armour was not a good choice.
Anybody knows it's worthless for any functional improvement, and I must invent crazy stories for the "Lore" section to explain such contradictions.
It's not about realism, but about having spoiled the most natural "curency" for cultures.
We have in fact destroyed Gold's value, and must now ressort to something else for the above named uses, if ever we need them (trade coming?)
What can this be? Money? I don't really like that idea.

So maybe, it would be wise to replace the "gold" with "titan", "tungsten" "cobalt" or whatever. Hey, why not have different steel recipes for the tribes?

I'd like to keep the gold (in very small quantities) as an additional mining resource if that is possible, but give it back its value that we are all used to.
It could them be a sort of currency for trade etc.

It's far away, but maybe we should start thinking in this direction.

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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