Changelog - picture heavy

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Added Fortifications.
These are necessarily somewhat abstract.
There are numerous things you might want to classify as fortifications during our period. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and it's not practical to give a way to draw any of these dynamically.

If you want something that looks like trenches, breastworks or a star fort then you'd use a different mechanism and import your path or picture, then tell the editor that is fortifications.

[Adraeth]

About trenches, fortification:

do you think Red is the right color for them? might them be confused with red army units?

However i can't think about a different color, maybe grey?

[Andy ONeill]

I don't think you'd confuse this red with units, they're a paler sort of red.

Red is extremely intrusive though.
They are going to be fairly important things but maybe we don't want them to stand out quite that much.

There's actually two parts to this. Probably clearer with a picture.
The dashes and center can be different colours.

If you think in terms of castle wall sort of things then this'd look a bit too much like just a stone wall ( one of the boundary options ).
Dark and light gray


I think I prefer Sandy brown and Sepia.

[Adraeth]

Sandy Brown and Sepia is excellent, reminds me of old battle maps 

[bayonetbrant]

FWIW - the obstacles and engineer works appear in green on modern-day US/NATO graphics overlays, with friendlies in blue and enemies in red.

[Andy ONeill]

Green is an interesting thought.
Another boundary type will be hedge though and that'll involve green of course.

Hedges and walls can be quite substantial things in the European countryside.
Not often quite so substantial as in the bocage but still significant defense against small arms.

[Andy ONeill]

Scenario Editor, ModelLib and Map Editor

Added new area terrain type, Mud.


At the moment, all unit types can move through mud.
Some do so very slowly.
Since this is new ( I realised we'd want mud a couple of days ago ) we may decide to make it impassable to some units.
As it stands though, you could just use swamp if you want really really bad mud that most unit types can't move through.

[Adraeth]

Mud is excellent to slow and "disorder" horses and artillery, and can portrait easily  bad weather (rain)

[Andy ONeill]

Mud can be used for any zero height terrain which will impede movement.
You will be able to decide by how much it effects each type of unit on a scenario by scenario basis.

I think mud was quite significant at Waterloo.
There are other similar types of terrain though like moorland or just somewhat marshy ground. Either is very difficult going as anyone who's ever done any hiking walking will tell you.
This can add interest to some battles would otherwise be somewhat featureless.
Maybe Culloden ( I don't know offhand ).
You might consider some "swamps" in French Indian/1812 etc might be more appropriately set to mud.

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Added Boundary as a first iteration.  The first version is intended to be fence.


I'll probably go with red brick walls and of course green hedges.

This particular one led to some discussion about how fence, hedge or wall should work.
These are all slightly different boundaries.

You might think horses can jump fences so they cross them.
It seems they proved too much of an obstacle for some formed units. Maybe the average cavalry nag isn't much of  a jumper and large bodies of men/horse don't do so well with any obstacle.
There is also the issue of the likes of enclosure walls. Often not strong enough to stop a cannon ball so not a fortification really. But if the French could just walk into hougomont then things would have gone rather differently.

At the moment I have fixed "hard coded" settings control who can cross what terrain. This is as well as rates.
It has to be an on off thing because it'll be used real time as you drag a move order "puck" round. No you can't cross one of the pieces of terrain in that direction or yes you can cross all of them.
I'll make this editable per scenario in a new view within scenario editor.
It's then up to you to decide what fences do in a specific scenario stop.

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor and ModelLib

There are now 3 different boundary terrain types -  fence, hedge and wall.
Boundary is just a logical grouping of these though.
A boundary is drawn as a fence and you can then switch between the three options using 3 buttons in the editor for Boundary:



Drawing boundaries works slightly different from most other drawing objects in that the tendency to smooth to a curve is suppressed.
That's because these are one of the few things in the countryside where you may well really want a straight of wiggly line.

Hedge and wall will block line of sight to a height of 2 metres.
To use these as cover, you put a unit on the piece of terrain.
This represents your unit lining on one side of the wall but using it as cover.
If you are not on it then it blocks los for you, unless you or your target are somehow higher than 2m than the wall.

Fences just block movement. Or not - depending on your preferences.
 

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Added Bridge.
Drawing a bridge works somewhat differently from everything else so far in that you're not actually drawing an area or a line. As you mouse down and then up this defines the two ends of a straight bridge between.

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Added Ford.
Since bridges are way better than a ford (in the real world) they count as mud for speed of travel and whether they block some unit types.


In the above picture I've drawn sort of along the river and back in order to show you can do an irregular shape if you want.

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Added first iteration of Place.



In order to do this I've moved a bunch of things round such as the view for places which is now in a common library.
I also resolved a number of issues to implement just clicking to add a point differently from everything else with it's Ink support.

I'm still considering whether to allow multi line names for places and a combo box for the points value. At the moment if you typed a number I've not set a geometry up for, you get nothing in the plaque. I will probably just set up paths for 0-9, force only numeric input and leave it up to the user if they feel 99 is really a sensible VP for a place.
I still have to allow the user to pick which side the place is currently associated with.

In the picture, you will notice that the "marching ants" rather mysteriously continues some distance below the plaque rather than just under it. By default, you get the place name above a plaque. If you position a place close to the top of the  map then of course there is no space for the name above, so it appears below instead.  There are two of the labels in the control. I hide the bottom or top one depending on position. The control positions itself so the centre of the plaque is where you click. In order to do that reasonably easily I divide the width and height by 2 as part of the position calculation. Hence there are always the two labels there in the control, it's just one is hidden but still contributing it's height to the calculation.

For this one, "Top Place", I've clicked close to the top of the map. The label you see is the one below the plaque and hence those ants are marching off the top of the board. 

[Andy ONeill]

Map Editor

Another iteration on Place.
You can now have multiple line place names.
VP are limited to 0-100
You can't type anything but numbers in the vp box.
There's a combobox allows you to pick which side initially "owns" a place that's worth points.
You just get the text (no plaque) if a place is worth zero points.