Operational Warfare Developer's Blog

Developer's blog for the Operational Art of War series

About the author

Ralph Trickey maintains TOAW III
I set this Blog up for fun, and for my own edication! Nothing is guaranteed, it's for my own use primarily, so even if I say that something may happen with the next release, please understand that it may not. I plan to post random thoughts and other things like that at random times here. I don't have a specific plan for what will be here.
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Disclaimer

The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2010

WPF

WPF is the latest and greated UI Design tool from MS. It's a work in progress right now, it's pretty complete, but the design tools aren't there. It's also the basis of what the new Major League Baseball site, and the Olympics site are built with. It's also what MS is moving all of it's sites to. It can do some very impressive graphics, even things like showing little movies when you click on th units, etc.

That's not why I want to use it, though. I want to use it because it may be the easiest way to bring the graphics into the 21st century.

There are some serious advantages like support for floating dockable windows, OOB Trees, and a bunch of other stuff like that. A web version is even possible, although with the size of the graphics, it probably isn't practical. I talked with someone that is seriously into WPF, and he thinks that it's possible to write a game like TOAW into WPF. I wanted to check, since the map is a lot of polygons to throw on the screen at once. While the hexes would still be 2D, the counters would be vector graphics, which means that they can be made smaller or larger without becoming blurry. The 3D view could even have real 3D figures on it<g>.

Since it looks like it's possible, I'll need to throw together a prototype and see what it does. It's something else for me to shoot for.

Ralph

 

 

 


Posted by Ralph Trickey on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 8:14 PM
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Toolti[s Again

OK, I think I've got them about where I want them. You can contorl how long they're up, and a bunch of other things like the font. I know it's definitely too obtrusive for some people. The default (for now) is that they are about 20% visible, The bitmap always shows up on the side of the bitmap away form the cursor, They show up for about 2 seconds then disappear. I've got a large font for testing.

I've added the AT, Infantry and AP modifiers. I didn't bother with the Vehicle, Static and Attack (River) modifieres. I don't think that there's a lot of need for them.

Please post comments here or on one of the boards.

 


Posted by Ralph Trickey on Sunday, June 01, 2008 11:38 AM
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A better tootip post

More fun<g>. I want to make everything in it customizable, colors, transparency, etc.

Posted by Ralph Trickey on Sunday, May 25, 2008 11:08 PM
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ToolTIps

This is a concept for 3.4 only. If I can work out all the bugs, it makes quite a difference It's the same information that's in the status bar at the bottom.

Yes, it will be optional. Tongue out  Second verion.

 


Posted by Ralph Trickey on Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:31 PM
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Thoughts on Operational Warfare

The counter view is going to look and act like the current counter view. Each of the counters will be a 3D Entity with height, when you move up and down the stack, you will see the top counter display the one your'e hovering over. Some things are going to change, for example, there isn't enough info about the effect on terrain on combat/movement for beginners (or vets,) but I plan to minimize changes, or make them optional where I can.

Posted by Ralph Trickey on Sunday, March 02, 2008 4:42 PM
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