Re: [Rails-devel] Screen messages

[brett l. <wak...@gm...>]

I finally got a chance to check out the changes...

Overall, I like the helper text bar. It's exactly what the UI was needing.

More comments below...


On 2/2/06, Erik Vos <eri...@hc...> wrote:
> I have committed stuff around messages to be displayed during the game.
> For now, during the OR only. Aspects are:
>
> 1. A new, low line near the top of the OR Window, in which one-line messa=
ges
> are displayed
> about what the player can do at each moment in the game. Currently, this
> message line
> disappears between token laying and train buying; I don't understand why,
> but that will no doubt be sorted out in due time.


Looks like it doesn't disappear completely, it just gets resized very
very small.

I suspect we may need a more formal layout for the ORWindow than
BoxLayout.  As painful as GridBag is to deal with, it provides the
most control.


> 2. The messages are internationalised by defining these in a
> language-dependent
> properties file. The default file is LocalisedText.properties. Versions f=
or
> any
> language/country can be added with names like LocalisedText_en_US.propert=
ies
> or LocalisedText_fr.properties.
> In the code, localised messages can be obtained by calling
> Game.getText(messageKey).
>

Uh oh.  You've let the genie out of the bottle. ;-)

Now we're going to have to go through and internationalize all of our strin=
gs.

There's a few new people to the list... this would be a GREAT project
for a newbie. It would provide them a good opportunity to learn their
way around our code.


>
> 3. Messages about special properties that can be exercised will be added
> later,
> I propose in a somewhat lighter colour.
>
> 4. The tile and token laying steps are now explicitly defined (in HexMap)=
,
> and the messages are directly related to these steps. The code is somewha=
t
> reorganised around these steps.
>

I saw this...  I'm not sure I completely agree with the implementation deta=
ils.

I think it may be time to move toward using AbstractActions rather
than static integers to interact with the state of the model.


---Brett.