RE: [Rails-devel] M&H

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

> >> I think we should do this same sort of thing for the other 
> >> special abilities, especially the C&StL.  Right now, after a 
> >> company purchases the C&StL, the UI inexplicably maintains 
> >> the "Lay Tile" buttons after the lays it's normal tile, and 
> >> doesn't give any sort of notification that we're allowing for 
> >> the C&StL tile lay before moving on to laying tokens.
> >
> >Yes, I agree, but I have not yet found a good way to do that.
> >
> >Perhaps we should add a message line over the full width of the
> >SR and OR windows in which we can show a one-line message about 
> >what the player having the turn is supposed to do. Here we could 
> >also add a reminder about special properties that can be exercised.
> >
> 
> That would be helpful. 
> 
> Currently, I think we do just fine with the turn order flow. 
> There's some minor UI cleanups I want to do, but overall I 
> think we're doing well enough.  The only exception being that 
> when we deviate, we need to tell the user why we're altering 
> the normal turn order.  So, maybe a good thing to add is 
> changing the text over the UpgradesPanel to indicate we're 
> allowing for the C&Stl Optional Tile Lay. 

That's also an option.
In fact, I do not much like the visual appearance of the text 
and buttons currently in the upgrades panel. I have thought of
moving (or perhaps duplicating) these buttons to the OR buttons panel.
It's a bit unfriendly that, if you don't want to lay a tile or
a token, you have to click in a place far away from the other buttons.

> I think that, ideally, we should just provide a button for 
> jumping outside the normal turn order, to activate the 
> special ability, and then return back to the normal turn 
> order at the same point we left.

Yes, that would perhaps also have been easier to implement.

> Perhaps rather than a new message line, we should just set 
> the Title on the JFrame to indicate the current stage of the 
> turn.  That would be a bit less intrusive.  What do you think?

Yes. And any special messages in the status bar?

Erik.