Confusing tooltips

[Fürstbischof]

The tooltip of army/air/naval units lists its divisions/wings/squadrons with name, strength, org, unit_type and (last listed) brigade. Especially for ships, listing only one brigade is more confusing than helpful.

Since we're going to allow more brigades than the one we originally had, we'd reconsider showing them at all. Can we remove this or at least make it optional?

 

[Czarina Julie]

I've added this to the list but need to know where this mouse over event occurs (where do you see this tooltip appear)?

Also, there are other areas I'll be looking at that others have brought up ideas for. One that can remember right now, is a mouse over event that will display the long & short name of the tech, the research year of the tech, the required prerequisites, and any optional/choices (or) techs.

 

[Fürstbischof]

I've added this to the list but need to know where this mouse over event occurs (where do you see this tooltip appear)?

Main screen, just hover your mouse pointer over any unit. Just check any squadron with BBs, BCs or cruisers, i.e. ships which can have more than one attachment. Only one of these is listed, thus the information provided is not that helpful. By looking at the tooltip itself, it looks cluttered, so that you'll have to look carefully to identify the unit_type.

Once army divisions can have more than one brigade, the problem arises here, too.

IMHO the clarity and readability of the tooltip will in general improve, if we show only the unit_type.

Also very helpful for improving the readability of this kind of tooltip is adding an addional (empty) line before the second, third, etc. unit.

Also, there are other areas I'll be looking at that others have brought up ideas for. One that can remember right now, is a mouse over event that will display the long & short name of the tech, the research year of the tech, the required prerequisites, and any optional/choices (or) techs.

Yes, a tooltip showing this information is a nice improvement since it removes the necessity to actually click on each and every tech to get this infomation.

 

[Fürstbischof]

There is also a twist:
* detailed information about naval units is shown by hovering over ports
* detailed information about land units is shown by hovering over the province
* detailed information about air units is shown by hovering over the province
* only the name of air units, i.e. air divisions, is shown by hovering over air bases

IIRC HOI 1 had no airbases, thus information about air units could only be gathered by hovering over provinces. When airbases were added by HOI 2, they did not rework the tooltip, instead they introduced a new type which additionally lists the size of the provincial air bases but also only mentions the major air units stationed there. (adding size to the port tooltip would be a nice addition, btw)

It might be a good idea to revise the provincial tooltip(s) in such a way, that each service has its "own" tooltip which is shown by hovering over the province (army), the airbase (airforce) or the port (navy). Then we could tailor "each" tooltip to our needs.

 

[Fürstbischof]

Personally, I wouldn't even mind if the tooltip of (provincial) army/air/naval units would list only a brief summary of unit_types. To reduce size these should be grouped together (see below). The only detailed list would then be available by clicking (and thus activating) the unit itself.
(alternatively only the first/active unit will show detailed information about its subordinated units while the next/all other units only show a summary)

army/province tooltip:

x infantry divisions (Inf/Gar/Mot/Par/Mar/Mtn/Mil)
x cavalry divisions (Cav)
x armoured divisions (Mec/L ARM/Arm)

airforce/airbase tooltip:

x fighter wings (Fig/Int F)
x bomber wings (Str/Tac/CAS/Trp)
x recon wings (Nav, NEW)
x helicopter wings (NEW)

navy/port tooltip:

x battleships (BB, BC)
x carriers (CV, 27)
x cruiser (CA, CL)
few/several/many DDs OR: x destroyer divsion(s) (DD)
few/several/many subs OR: x submarine divsion(s) (SS, NEW)
x flottilas of landing ships (TP)

 

[Czarina Julie]

I can see that you have done a lot of thinking about this. Taking the current format, I created a quick example using a more pronounced outline form.

I could put an • before each major command (Corps, Fleet, Group) and increase the indent for the subordinate units. We could bold the unit type.

We do not need to keep the existing format or even the example. I have no preference how it should be displayed, only how to get/activate the mouse over events for the units:

• Naval Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a province's port or the fleet when at sea
• Air Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a province's airfield or when the fleet/group is moving
• Land Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a land unit (Corps). I wouldn't do the tooltip popup based on when the mouse is over the province...save that for a province tooltip popup.

Would you, or anyone reading this thread, like to come up with some examples? Right now, I'm swamped and just a simple picture is worth a thousand words. Within the code, we have the ability to:

• Use bold, italic, underline, or a combination of either formats in addition to normal text.
• Use color text

 

[Fürstbischof]

I wouldn't do the tooltip popup based on when the mouse is over the province...save that for a province tooltip popup.

Ooops, you got me there. That was sloppy on my part, as we already have a very useful province tooltip popup.

I could put an • before each major command (Corps, Fleet, Group) and increase the indent for the subordinate units. We could bold the unit type.

We do not need to keep the existing format or even the example. I have no preference how it should be displayed, only how to get/activate the mouse over events for the units:

• Naval Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a province's port or the fleet when at sea
• Air Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a province's airfield or when the fleet/group is moving
• Land Units - The tooltip popup will occur when the mouse pauses over a land unit (Corps).

Would you, or anyone reading this thread, like to come up with some examples? Right now, I'm swamped and just a simple picture is worth a thousand words. Within the code, we have the ability to:

• Use bold, italic, underline, or a combination of either formats in addition to normal text.
• Use color text

* I'm definitely in favour of increasing the indent for subordinate units. If one or two TABs will do the trick remains to be seen.
* Can you add a NEWLINE command before the second, third etc. unit to even more clearly differentiate one unit from the other?
* Although it helps readability, I'm not in favour of having the unit_type (and brigade) in bold characters. A very interesting suggestion is using italic characters for the unitnames, but I'm not sure if we actually have a game fonts which supports italic!?! Having the unitnames bold would be an alternative.

A good first intermediate step would be to copy (and remove) the part about air units from the land units mouse over to that of the airbase mouse over. It might be a testbed for improving these mouse overs. Very helpful would also, if airbases and ports show their actual capacity as a x/y value, so that you can easily see from the mouse over which is already overcrowded.

 

[Czarina Julie]

Let me throw out what's currently in the code to show everyone what can be done.

When defining a colored text you give it a name and then the RGB values, the code is:

HOI_BLUE 208,232,248​

When determining the font size, we're limited to the current fonts that have been made (..\gfx\fonts) for now. Although it's easy to make a font and then add a line of code to point to the font, it would have to wait for 1.14 or not at all. There are 6 pitches/sizes (8, 10, 14, 18, 20, & 24) and 2 text types (normal & bold). If we want to do an Italic font, it would take me 1-2 hours depending on how many pitches we want italic for.

Ooops, you got me there. That was sloppy on my part, as we already have a very useful province tooltip popup.

I understand. Once I thought I made a mistake, but I was mistaken.

* I'm definitely in favour of increasing the indent for subordinate units. If one or two TABs will do the trick remains to be seen.

Is the indent in the example above enough or do we want more?​

* Can you add a NEWLINE command before the second, third etc. unit to even more clearly differentiate one unit from the other?

Between the Corps, Fleets, Groups?​

* Although it helps readability, I'm not in favour of having the unit_type (and brigade) in bold characters. A very interesting suggestion is using italic characters for the unitnames, but I'm not sure if we actually have a game fonts which supports italic!?! Having the unitnames bold would be an alternative.

Without having to create a new font, we could bold now and then the 1.14 we could make the font and do it in italics​

 

[Fürstbischof]

When defining a colored text you give it a name and then the RGB values, the code is:

HOI_BLUE 208,232,248​

Colours are very useful for highlighting important information. I've occasionally done that myself. For AOD I can't tell you yet which text to colourise, since I haven't played the game for years. If we ask players for help, they'll certainly help identify some crucial texts.

* I'm definitely in favour of increasing the indent for subordinate units. If one or two TABs will do the trick remains to be seen.

Is the indent in the example above enough or do we want more?​

#1 OK, let's double the indent in the example above and put an • in front of the name of the division.

* Can you add a NEWLINE command before the second, third etc. unit to even more clearly differentiate one unit from the other?

Between the Corps, Fleets, Groups?​

#2 Yes, a separating line between Corps, Fleets, Groups.

* Although it helps readability, I'm not in favour of having the unit_type (and brigade) in bold characters. A very interesting suggestion is using italic characters for the unitnames, but I'm not sure if we actually have a game fonts which supports italic!?! Having the unitnames bold would be an alternative.

Without having to create a new font, we could bold now and then the 1.14 we could make the font and do it in italics​

#3 Having the name of the corps etc. in bold would be a good starting point. If necessary we can later also bold the names of divisions etc.

 

[Fürstbischof]

When determining the font size, we're limited to the current fonts that have been made (..\gfx\fonts) for now. Although it's easy to make a font and then add a line of code to point to the font, it would have to wait for 1.14 or not at all. There are 6 pitches/sizes (8, 10, 14, 18, 20, & 24) and 2 text types (normal & bold). If we want to do an Italic font, it would take me 1-2 hours depending on how many pitches we want italic for.

I'm relieved to hear that all those anticipated font file issues can be so easily circumvented. At the moment, the game fonts have certain issues with certain characters although these are regularly supported by files in Ansi format. These issues could be solved by having a more complete fonts file.

My earlier experiments (changing only a few pixels) fizzled out when changes made by paint.net were not accepted by AOD, although the file size was almost the same as before. There must be - and there obviously is - a better way (program) to do this...

 

[Czarina Julie]

I'm relieved to hear that all those anticipated font file issues can be so easily circumvented. At the moment, the game fonts have certain issues with certain characters although these are regularly supported by files in Ansi format. These issues could be solved by having a more complete fonts file.

There is an additional thing when dealing with the different languages in AoD. The languages (English, French, German, ... Polish, Russian, etc.) are done using 3 different page (text file) encodings. The English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese use a Western European Windows-1252 encoding, the Polish uses a Central European Windows-1250 encoding, and the Russian uses a Cyrillic Windows-1251 encoding. You can see this in many files located in the ..\config directory. When the code needs to display text to a player, it opens the file and retrieves the specific language text portion. Then it determines which language font to use.

In summary, if no one objects, I'll:

• double the indent in the example
• I forgot to mention that we don't need to do a full line between them the groups, corps, fleets but just use another sized. So if the text is 10 pitch, I can increase the line spacing between the groups, fleets, or corps by 6 pitch, not a whole line. So I'll increase the space between these but not a full line.
• Bold the group, fleet, or Corps
• put a • in front of the division(s)

 

[Czarina Julie]

My earlier experiments (changing only a few pixels) fizzled out when changes made by paint.net were not accepted by AOD, although the file size was almost the same as before. There must be - and there obviously is - a better way (program) to do this...

There is. What's happening with Paint.net (which I use about 95% of the time) is that it doesn't "capture" the correct color scale when the file is open. You'll have the same issue with the other smaller files like the Genericbutton<size number>.bmp, Hoi_counter_strip.bmp, basically the small 8-bit files. I edit with Paint.net first and if it happens to be an 8-bit file, then edit with Adobe Photoshop (expensive to rent...monthly fee) or as I do GIMP (free).

 

[Fürstbischof]

There is an additional thing when dealing with the different languages in AoD. The languages (English, French, German, ... Polish, Russian, etc.) are done using 3 different page (text file) encodings. The English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese use a Western European Windows-1252 encoding, the Polish uses a Central European Windows-1250 encoding, and the Russian uses a Cyrillic Windows-1251 encoding. You can see this in many files located in the ..\config directory. When the code needs to display text to a player, it opens the file and retrieves the specific language text portion. Then it determines which language font to use.

I ran in that very problem, when I revised the history files of EU3. Without proper programs you simply cannot save text outside of Western European Windows-1252 encoding, which let'd you ignore other languages. Sad, but true.

In summary, if no one objects, I'll:

• double the indent in the example
• I forgot to mention that we don't need to do a full line between them the groups, corps, fleets but just use another sized. So if the text is 10 pitch, I can increase the line spacing between the groups, fleets, or corps by 6 pitch, not a whole line. So I'll increase the space between these but not a full line.
• Bold the group, fleet, or Corps
• put a • in front of the division(s)

That is a nice solution, even better than my proposal. Thanks!

 

[Fürstbischof]

There is. What's happening with Paint.net (which I use about 95% of the time) is that it does "capture" the correct color scale when the file is open. You'll have the same issue with the other smaller files like the Genericbutton<size number>.bmp, Hoi_counter_strip.bmp, basically the small 8-bit files. I edit with Paint.net first and if it happens to be an 8-bit file, then edit with Adobe Photoshop (expensive to rent...monthly fee) or as I do GIMP (free).

+1

A long time ago I tried GIMP, but that didn't really work out. Maybe I should re-evaluate my former experiences and give it another try to fix some issues re: font files...

 

[Czarina Julie]

I ran in that very problem, when I revised the history files of EU3. Without proper programs you simply cannot save text outside of Western European Windows-1252 encoding, which let'd you ignore other languages. Sad, but true.

I have a very easy solution to this issue if you use Notepad++ and I've attached my Russian Polish text converter. Here are the steps I do (these are in the Russian Polish text converter).

*****************************************************************************************
* Use this file to take Russian and Polish translations (from web) and convert it to *
* ANSI with no character sets (default, what is required for AoD language support) *
*****************************************************************************************

For Russian:
1. Before pasting any text, ensure that the Encoding is set to Cyrillic, Windows-1251
2. Paste the Cyrillic text.

For Polish:
1. Before pasting any text, ensure that the Encoding is set to Central European, Windows-1250
2. Paste the Polish text.

For All:
3. Save the file, if prompted
4. Go to Encoding, Character Sets, Western European, Windows-1252
5. Take the converted text and paste it into the AoD file

I then have another Notepad++ text file (Working Event) that I use to paste translations from Google Translate into a HOI/AoD tech_names.csv file. I can just double-click the language name with the translation from Google or, if Polish or Russian, do the encoding first then double-click the language name.

1. I start with this:

2. Then I select and copy the following text

3. Paste that text

4. Now all I have to do is copy the translations from Google, double-click the correct language, and paste (except for the Russian and Polish which is 1 additional step as shown above). The end result is this:

5. And then I just paste the entire line into the tech_names.csv file. Notice that I don't overwrite the component or tech names.

These two files make translations and proper encoding easy. I also use the steps for any files (scenario_text.csv, extra_text.csv, models.csv, etc.) that require translations.

 

[Fürstbischof]

I have a very easy solution to this issue if you use Notepad++ (...)

Great! That does work indeed. Thanks for the detailed description!

While I'm using Notepad++ for quite a long time, I rarely used conversions (ANSI <-> UTF), but these had occasionally some nasty side effects.

One minor gripe, though, is that you can only translate one string at a time without causing major hassle while using Notepad++. For translating VIP:R, I'm working with texts with up to 5000 characters (limit of free DeepL), which I slap on DeepL and then copy the result back to the spreadsheet and place it in the correct cell. If you're lucky, you can translate up to 100 lines in one go. I've translated up to 16,000 lines with 5 additional languages until now adding in total 10k text to the event_text.csv file. Although it might still worth a try combining your solution with my style of translation since it will save a lot of time once I'll try to correct the Russian and Polish province and area names of the E3 map.

For adding missing pieces of text to my EU3 mod, this is a good workaround. Thanks a lot for your advice.

 

[Czarina Julie]

Great! That does work indeed. Thanks for the detailed description!

While I'm using Notepad++ for quite a long time, I rarely used conversions (ANSI <-> UTF), but these had occasionally some nasty side effects.

One minor gripe, though, is that you can only translate one string at a time without causing major hassle while using Notepad++. For translating VIP:R, I'm working with texts with up to 5000 characters (limit of free DeepL), which I slap on DeepL and then copy the result back to the spreadsheet and place it in the correct cell. If you're lucky, you can translate up to 100 lines in one go. I've translated up to 16,000 lines with 5 additional languages until now adding in total 10k text to the event_text.csv file. Although it might still worth a try combining your solution with my style of translation since it will save a lot of time once I'll try to correct the Russian and Polish province and area names of the E3 map.

For adding missing pieces of text to my EU3 mod, this is a good workaround. Thanks a lot for your advice.

You might want to look into online Google Spreadsheet Editor and their Google Translate API (Application Program Interface) for translations. Example; You type English in one cell and you can have "formulas" do the translations for as many languages (spreadsheet cells). The only issue is that you'll need to do an additional step for Polish and another for Russian.