0000022: Adjusting message boxes: sizes & scrollbar (0.71b#55, 56, 57, 58)

MantisBT - VCMI

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Date Submitted

Last Update

0000022

VCMI

GUI - Other

public

2009-10-02 11:42

2010-11-13 15:20

Reporter

Tow dragon

Assigned To

Tow

Priority

normal

Severity

minor

Reproducibility

have not tried

Status

closed

Resolution

fixed

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

0.71

Target Version

Fixed in Version

0.82

Summary

0000022: Adjusting message boxes: sizes & scrollbar (0.71b#55, 56, 57, 58)

Description

71b#55 - The Event message boxes do not adjust their width for larger texts:

http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/?action=view&current=090526-ATerribleRumorH3Cstart.jpg [^]
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/?action=view&current=090526-ATerribleRumorVCMIstart.jpg [^]
H3C: vs VCMI: (map start: A Terrible Rumor)

What we have in VCMI seems to be the minimal width used in H3 for short Event messages. However H3 had 4 different widths (and 3 different length) depending on the size of the message. You can see in the H3C screenshot above the maximum width, or better open the attached map in WoG to check all the different sizes.

EDIT: By loading the attached map, I noticed that VCMI actually does have another Event msg window width, which however should not exist (too narrow): http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/th_090528-SmallestEventmsgboxinVCMI.jpg [^]

71b#56 - While the width is minimal, there seems to be no limit in the length of the Event message boxes. Longer texts even go out of a 1024x768 interface: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/th_090526-ATerribleRumorVCMIstart-cust.jpg [^]

We don’t have to stick to the H3 exact sizes. And I’m saying that because somehow I find it easier to read a message box which longer rather than wider. But the length should at least be limited to that of the game interface. Also, the higher resolutions should allow bigger message boxes (again, preferably in length, not width), to avoid the need of a scroll bar.

71b#57 - Not really a bug, but more an observation: I know the VCMI fonts are different – no issue here – but what I notice by comparing them with the H3 message boxes, is that they seem bolded (or a size bigger?). That’s ok for short Event messages, however for long messages (those not fitting in the standard maximum size box) I’d rather have them seem a smaller rather than bigger as compared to H3.

To reduce the chance that a large message doesn’t fit, as well as the need of scrolling too much, maybe we can have something like:
- Reduce font with 1 size as of 640 message characters (approximate length which seems to still fit w/o scrollbar in H3) /
- And maybe even reduce font with 2 sizes as of 1280 message characters

71b#58 - Scrollbar support for Event message boxes. Even if we implement bigger boxes and/or adjust the fonts, VCMI should of course still be ready to support "too-long-for-most-players-to-read" :-P Event messages.

The full functionality should be:
- only when the message is too long to fit in the maximum size message box
- support for Up/Down arrows (scroll per row)
- support for Page Up/Down (scroll per page)
- NEW: support for mouse scroll (this was missing in H3, while I guess most players would prefer it over any other hotkey)
- NEW: maybe also support for Home/End buttons (scroll to start/end of message) – though this is not so important

Steps To Reproduce

Additional Information

copied from sf tracker. Reported by Zamolxis:
http://forum.vcmi.eu/viewtopic.php?p=2619#2619 [^]