From: John D. G. <jd...@di...> - 2012-09-08 19:10:54
Attachments:
18EU_20120908_1847_OperatingRound 2.1.rails
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I recently had my monitor blow up and had to go back to one about 20 years old with a smaller screen. As a result I've had to twiddle most of the programs I use so that they'll display reasonably on the small screen, and Rails is no exception. Still, I tried a four player game of 18EU. The first thing I notice is that most of the windows are now too tall for the monitor to display without scroll bars. The two most annoying cases are the Game Status and Map windows. The Game Status window insists on re-sizing itself after every single action (and that's typically twice per player turn; once after buying a share, and again after hitting Done). Even saving the game causes the window to resize. And every time it resizes itself it is too tall for the screen, with the Done (or Pass) button completely below the screen and (usually) the title bar part way above the screen, thus requiring three manual moves per occurrence (drag the whole window down by title bar to get to the top edge; then drag the top edge down to make the window fit the screen; then drag the whole window up so that I can get to the Done or Pass button). I can only add that this would not be quite as annoying if the Done or Pass button were within the area controlled by the scroll bars, so it could be reached using them, and/or if there were a keyboard shortcut for Done or Pass. I would like to have the ability to end any action by hitting "D" as I do in Colossus. The Map window is not quite as bad, because it only re-sizes itself at the beginning of each round. However, its scroll bars control only the map proper, so there is no way to resize the company-status lines below the map. The result on my screen is that I have to view the map through a "mail slot" about two hexes tall, with no way to make it bigger -- and I have to scroll that "mail slot" to reach the controls for every single tile or token laying action. Anyhow: the attached game runs, under those conditions, until the end of stock round 3. Then instead of starting the next operating round, it stays on the Game Status window, with the Treasury Shares column highlighted as if it were the end of a company's turn, and with all controls disabled except the Autopass button, which does nothing. So I can't continue. |
From: Erik V. <eri...@xs...> - 2012-09-08 21:34:06
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I can find no problem with your attached file, it runs fine and finishes with a normal start of OR 2.1. The behaviour you describe is typical for an uncatched exception - is anything displayed on the console? On your UI-related remarks: the interplay between cell resizing and scrolling in Java Swing is an esoteric matter, at least to me - hopefully someone out there has a better grasp on it than I do. Erik. > -----Original Message----- > From: John David Galt [mailto:jd...@di...] > Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 9:11 PM > To: rai...@li... > Subject: [Rails-devel] Game report - 1.7.8 - 18EU hangs > > I recently had my monitor blow up and had to go back to one about 20 years > old with a smaller screen. As a result I've had to twiddle most of the > programs I use so that they'll display reasonably on the small screen, and > Rails is no exception. Still, I tried a four player game of 18EU. > > The first thing I notice is that most of the windows are now too tall for the > monitor to display without scroll bars. The two most annoying cases are the > Game Status and Map windows. > > The Game Status window insists on re-sizing itself after every single action > (and that's typically twice per player turn; once after buying a share, and > again after hitting Done). Even saving the game causes the window to resize. > And every time it resizes itself it is too tall for the screen, with the Done (or > Pass) button completely below the screen and (usually) the title bar part way > above the screen, thus requiring three manual moves per occurrence (drag > the whole window down by title bar to get to the top edge; then drag the > top edge down to make the window fit the screen; then drag the whole > window up so that I can get to the Done or Pass button). I can only add that > this would not be quite as annoying if the Done or Pass button were within > the area controlled by the scroll bars, so it could be reached using them, > and/or if there were a keyboard shortcut for Done or Pass. I would like to > have the ability to end any action by hitting "D" as I do in Colossus. > > The Map window is not quite as bad, because it only re-sizes itself at the > beginning of each round. However, its scroll bars control only the map > proper, so there is no way to resize the company-status lines below the map. > The result on my screen is that I have to view the map through a "mail slot" > about two hexes tall, with no way to make it bigger -- and I have to scroll that > "mail slot" to reach the controls for every single tile or token laying action. > > Anyhow: the attached game runs, under those conditions, until the end of > stock round 3. Then instead of starting the next operating round, it stays on > the Game Status window, with the Treasury Shares column highlighted as if it > were the end of a company's turn, and with all controls disabled except the > Autopass button, which does nothing. So I can't continue. |
From: John D. G. <jd...@di...> - 2012-09-08 22:14:32
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On 2012-09-08 14:34, Erik Vos wrote: > I can find no problem with your attached file, it runs fine and finishes > with a normal start of OR 2.1. > The behaviour you describe is typical for an uncatched exception - is > anything displayed on the console? No. What's in the Game Report window is it. |
From: Mike B. <com...@ip...> - 2012-09-09 00:04:55
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It sounds to me like the game 'freeze' is another case of the user interface problems stemming from the small screen size - he is simply unable to find the correct control to move the game on from wherever it is freezing. Just a suspicion, though - it's possible that the small screen is causing some positional element in the display to return an invalid location. That would probably point to a bug not in the game but in the OS environment - a java bug, or a bug in the compiler or wherever. We tend to think of the support infrastructure as being perfect and infallible relative to our own software, but sometimes its not, and we can spend a lot of time assuming that the software we've written is the cause of a bug. When there is a breakdown of the software environment, it can be the last place we think to look, and sometimes it should be higher up the list. If there IS a bug beyond the user interface problems, that would seem the place to look. Mike Bourke Campaign Mastery http://www.campaignmastery.com Co-author, Assassin's Amulet http://www.legaciescampaignsetting.com --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 120908-0, 08/09/2012 Tested on: 9/09/2012 10:05:15 AM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2012 AVAST Software. http://www.avast.com |
From: John D. G. <jd...@di...> - 2012-09-09 01:13:20
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On 2012-09-08 17:05, Mike Bourke wrote: > It sounds to me like the game 'freeze' is another case of the user interface > problems stemming from the small screen size - he is simply unable to find > the correct control to move the game on from wherever it is freezing. Just a > suspicion, though - it's possible that the small screen is causing some > positional element in the display to return an invalid location. That would > probably point to a bug not in the game but in the OS environment - a java > bug, or a bug in the compiler or wherever. At the time it happened, the only windows on the screen were Game Status and Stock Chart. The others were minimized. (Game Report still wants to display at its old bottom right location, which is completely off the screen now; the only way I found to get it back was to right-click the icon in the Windows taskbar and select Maximize.) > We tend to think of the support infrastructure as being perfect and > infallible relative to our own software, but sometimes its not, and we can > spend a lot of time assuming that the software we've written is the cause of > a bug. When there is a breakdown of the software environment, it can be the > last place we think to look, and sometimes it should be higher up the list. > > If there IS a bug beyond the user interface problems, that would seem the > place to look. What can I set in the Configuration? If there were options to reduce the font size and to change the starting place for Game Report, the problems would go away. |
From: Stefan F. <ste...@we...> - 2012-09-09 06:26:42
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> What can I set in the Configuration? If there were options to reduce the> font size and to change the starting place for Game Report, the problems > would go away. > Try: Configuration => Tab Fonts => Font scaling to change the Font size of the UI elements. Starting place for Game Report: Do you refer to the window position on the screen or the position of the report inside the report window. The latter is wrong at startup of the game, as it does not scroll to the bottom. I am under the impression this did work in the past. Will have to check that. If it is the former: All window positions/sizes are saved automatically after closing of Rails. I do not know what happens during the game at resizes (does it resize to the latest saved position or does it resize to the current status?) For me the major annoyance is that windows that are on the second monitor if I start Rails dual-heads. Next time I start up with only one monitor, some windows will be completely hidden (as they are located off-screen). So two possible remedies: A) Provide an option to reset the window positions to some robust defaults). B) Check if a window is located on an invisible position and then move that window back to the default (at least at startup). For future development of the UI: Unfortunately Frederick who did the latest improvements of the Swing UI is not active anymore. There are several issues to fix there, but similar to the core engine, it would make sense to refactor the UI to some degree before changing their behavior and/or adding more functionality. In the mean time a good start is to agree on what are the bad/good issues and make a priority list of potential enhancements. Stefan |
From: John D. G. <jd...@di...> - 2012-09-10 03:23:32
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On 2012-09-08 23:26, Stefan Frey wrote: > Starting place for Game Report: > Do you refer to the window position on the screen or the position of the > report inside the report window. The latter is wrong at startup of the > game, as it does not scroll to the bottom. I am under the impression > this did work in the past. Will have to check that. I'm referring to the position of the window on the screen. I am assuming that the content in the window is always upper left justified, with scrollbars if needed. > If it is the former: All window positions/sizes are saved automatically > after closing of Rails. I do not know what happens during the game at > resizes (does it resize to the latest saved position or does it resize > to the current status?) It seems to use the saved positions (even for a later playing of the same game) even though some of them are now off screen. It would be nice to have a "reset" ability, at least in configuration, but preferably usable in mid-game too. > For me the major annoyance is that windows that are on the second > monitor if I start Rails dual-heads. Next time I start up with only one > monitor, some windows will be completely hidden (as they are located > off-screen). I've never tried dual monitors on a Windows system. > So two possible remedies: > A) Provide an option to reset the window positions to some robust defaults). Yes. (The existing "cascade windows" option seems to work for all except the Report window.) > B) Check if a window is located on an invisible position and then move > that window back to the default (at least at startup). Auto-detecting this would be nice but probably not strictly necessary, unless the off-screen window is going to start causing exceptions to be thrown. |