Author Topic: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection  (Read 1179 times)

Offline Yankes

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #15 on: November 04, 2024, 11:40:53 pm »
Had a thought about it:

Don't Reselect gets cleared for all units on next turn;

Is it possible to trigger that without going into next turn?
Yes, change like this should be easy as only would need boilerplate for new keybinding as rest of logic should be available or easy to implement.

For "prev" unit, if behavior would be "go to last ignored unit (if was any)" then this could be implemented too relativity easy, as we should only store
one value for last unit (question is if should be remember after save/load?).

Offline Tamren

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2024, 12:52:33 pm »
I fail to see the problem. Yes, I'd have to move back 5 times instead of 1, but how often does this happen? Once per 10 hours of playing? And even if that's the case, what's so hard about this?

Again. EIGHTY. FIVE. SOLDIERS. It's not "1-5 clicks" for me, it's 1-84 clicks looking for a specific soldier with no identifying marks who is indistinguishable from other soldiers with full TUs who have not moved yet, and soldiers with full TUs who were previously hidden for reaction fire purposes. Not a problem on small scales, but a big problem for me because I deal with this on a regular basis.

Enemies attempt to invade my bases multiple times every month, sometimes twice in the same week, and every time that happens I have to control as many as 85 different soldiers, not including any assorted HWPs and war beasts. When sending soldiers to a particularly dangerous mission I often deploy as many as 24. In order to keep up with the daily threats I face I require dozens and dozens of soldiers because missions come fast and often, while wounds and combat fatigue force me to cycle them out after every deployment. This wasn't by choice, this is just how XPiratez is in the midgame.

For "prev" unit, if behavior would be "go to last ignored unit (if was any)" then this could be implemented too relativity easy, as we should only store
one value for last unit (question is if should be remember after save/load?).

Only if it were very easy to add that value to battlescape save files. Otherwise simply keeping it in memory should suffice. The undo button is an "oops" feature that players will use immediately to correct their mistake, or not at all.

Offline Meridian

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2024, 01:38:11 pm »
Only if it were very easy to add that value to battlescape save files. Otherwise simply keeping it in memory should suffice. The undo button is an "oops" feature that players will use immediately to correct their mistake, or not at all.

The implementation efforts are not big.
When I say "not worth the effort", I don't necessarily mean implementation effort.

With requests like this, just finding the correct solution is 98% of the total effort.
If possible, I want a user-friendly, intuitive, discoverable, unobtrusive, non-distracting and non-annoying solution... which is hard to find.

Offline Tamren

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #18 on: November 06, 2024, 10:23:58 am »
If possible, I want a user-friendly, intuitive, discoverable, unobtrusive, non-distracting and non-annoying solution... which is hard to find.

Okay how about this:

When mousing over any button on the battlescape the game displays a tooltip for that button explaining what it does, as shown in the picture. This is where we get the button names "Select Next Unit" and "Don't Reselect Unit". The tooltips for those two buttons could be changed to explain the additional RMB functions, which would look something like:

"Select Next Unit - RMB To Select Previous"
"Don't Reselect Unit - RMB To Undo"


I think this would fulfill your criteria. It's unobtrusive because it doesn't appear unless you mouse over the button. It's easily discoverable because mousing over stuff to read tooltips is normal behaviour for players. It's also intuitive in the sense that adding a right click function to Don't Reselect would match the mechanics for other UI buttons such as Select Next, and the Next button on the pre-battle inventory screen.

Offline Meridian

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #19 on: November 06, 2024, 10:38:02 am »
Those tooltips are from OXC and are updated/synchronized from Transifex automatically.

I would have to change them by a mod
or manually overwrite with each release
or create completely new translation keys (and thus lose all already translated versions).

Possible, but all 3 are a PITA.

Offline Tamren

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #20 on: November 08, 2024, 09:07:32 am »
Ah ok. What if you just implemented this as a hidden feature?

The game is already full of commands like that, XPirates has two whole codex entries which are nothing but lists of shortcut commands, usually those with shift- and ctrl- modifiers because they do not appear in the options menu. It also has a third codex entry that appears automatically and teaches players to try using RMB and MMB on everything because a lot of the hidden features are activated that way such as re-ordering the list of aircraft and bases using right click.

It wouldn't be very discoverable, but I have ideas on how to address that which belong in a separate thread. It would still be intuitive because right clicking to activate alternate functions is a pattern players will learn across various other parts of the UI.

Offline Meridian

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Re: [QoL] Right clicking Don't Reselect Unit button undoes last selection
« Reply #21 on: November 08, 2024, 10:05:01 am »
Ah ok. What if you just implemented this as a hidden feature?

That's the most likely outcome at the end.
But I'll think about it for a while longer.