Re: AI is a pushover & UI

[Hans Ronne <hronne at telia dot com>]

>Ok - riddle me this - is there any way to make the AI in this (either
>machine player) a bit of a tougher opponent?  Right now I can pretty
>much clobber the bejezzus out of it, one infantry unit tied behind my
>back.

How tough an opponent the AI (mplayer) is depends a lot on what game you
are playing. Ideally we should have a customized AI for each game, but that
would take whole development team to implement :-).

What you always can do is boost up the AI:s advantage in player setup
dialog. Or play against several enemy sides. The latter can be a real
challenge on a small and crowded map where one AI will fall you in the back
while you are busy fighting another one.

>In other news, is anyone updating the UI, or interested in doing so?

I assume you are talking about the Tcl interface. It will become obsolete
when the SDL interface is complete, so there are no plans to redesign it. I
have fixed a lot of bugs in the Tcl interface recently and spiffed up all
the popup dialogs, but that's about it.

>The one there right now is definitely functional, but I think we could
>reclaim more space for the center map

Yes. The are to many side panes etc. and to little space left for the
center map. The SDL and Mac interfaces are better in that respect.

>1) Add a title bar to the top of the unit, players and world map panes;

Ehm. That would actually steal even more space from the center map.

>2) Add a bit more info on who/what is in a cell to the info display at
>the top;

Ditto.

>3) Put the command buttons (the ones off to the far left of the screen)
>into a squarish arrangement (there's an odd number of elements...) and
>put it to the left of the info about the selected unit;

Actually, these buttons could be done away with since there are keyboard
shortcuts for just about any command. In the Mac interface, you can
customize whether or not to show them. Same goes for scroll bars and the
unit info pane. And in the SDL interface, the buttons are already gone.

>4) Bring the scrolling 'message' pane down to the right of the info
>about the selected unit so it occupies 1/2 of that area.  I assume that
>lines would wrap if they were very long, but it seems like the messages
>displayed here are mostly short;

If I were to change things I would rather move the messages and info panes
to the bottom of the screen. This is how the SDL and Mac interfaces work,
and how most computer games work. People are used to having this kind of
stuff at the bottom of the screen, perhaps orginally from the position of
the dashboard in a car.

>5) Add a thin border to the map that the mouse has to be in to scroll
>that way.  Also  add a delay of, say 1/2 a second before movement

This is how things already work. If you are unhappy with the current border
width (40 pixels) and autoscroll delay (200 ms) you can change them in
tkmain.c and recompile. Be advised, though, that a longer delay makes
scrolling appear sluggish and non-responsive. After a while, you learn not
to rest the cursor within the active border of the map.

Hans