[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Some questions

[Jeff Mallatt <jjm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2000/01/02 19:28 , Daniel Zinsli wrote:
>One thing i would like to see is unit movement "animations" ala
>civ2. That is, instead of a unit "warping" from one cell to another,
>some middle frames are drawn, showing the unit moving. 
>I find it a bit confusing when alot of the enemy civ's units are warping
>at the same time. Is this already implemented, partly implemented, on the
>wishlist, or does someone have some pointers on how to implement it? :-)

There already is something of "smooth unit moves" implemented.  Look in 
Game/Local Options for "Smooth unit moves", and make sure it's "Yes".

This is implemented, for at least some kinds of moves (simple moves and gotos 
are smoothed -- I don't know about other player unit moves), by 
move_unit_map_canvas() in client/gui-{xaw|gtk}/mapview.c.

However, this routine has a problem in that it isn't throttled.  It just blasts 
all the intermediate positions out as fast as it can.  You can see the 
intermediate positions if you add a small delay (I just stuck in a printf()).

However, adding a blocking delay to this would be very bad, as it would 
interfere with other client operations.  A throttled, asynchronous queue of 
some kind might work well, but that could get difficult.  I don't know off 
hand.  Any other ideas?

>Also is it possible to implement a strict turn order on unit movement
>ala civ2, instead of units of all nations moving simultaneously?
>I would think it would be great as a server option, allowing both forms
>of play. (Or am I missing something here? :)

Are you asking for strict turn order amongst the AI players (and the AI 
controlled units of human players), during the AI phase, or amongst the human 
players during normal play as well?

jjm