[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Freeciv] Re: Nations + Feeling

[Jason Dorje Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Stuckey wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 03:55:47PM -0500, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
> > At a glance, it looks like this will be a significant undertaking, and
> > likely to break server-client compatibility completely.  (Obviously
> > others know more about this issue than I, but no doubt most people know
> > little about it, so here goes...)
> 
>         Yes, but the right way to do it also breaks server/client
> compatibility.
> 
>         (The Right Way(tm) is the Civ II way: the Select Nation dialog box
> has a SHORT list of nations, and a button labelled "Custom".)

What did the custom nation selection let you do?  Did you pick from a
longer list of nations, or did you have (get?) to enter everything about
the nation?

A significant amount of work has gone into compiling the list of cities
and other information about each nation.  It would be a waste, IMO, not
to let the end-user use this information.

> > A much smaller issue is with having an overwhelming number of nations.
> > Someone suggested giving each nation a category, which could be used by
> > the GUI code to group them and avoid having a single huge list.  IMO
> > this is a separate issue and can be dealt with later.  Someone else said
> > 63 nations ought to be enough.  My only response to that is to say that
> > everyone who plays FreeCiv will want to have their nation represented,
> > and there are a lot more than 63 nations in the world.
> 
>         There are many responses to that.  If Civ strives to represent the
> historical significance, then "Nation" is quite frequently a misleading
> term.  The Sioux may be the best example of that.  And I for one feel no
> explicit need to cater to an encyclopedic nation list.  See comments above.

I can understand that, but at the same time I think those options should
be available to the user - it's just a matter of structuring the
interface to make them avoid the list being encyclopedic.

The truly "correct" solution IMO would have a short list of nations sent
server->client, with a button labelled "full list" that brings up the
full encyclopedic list (preferably sorted into categories) that is build
from the client's data (that is, not sent from the server).  A separate
button may allow the creation of a "custom" nation (although I'm still
not sure how that would work); presumably this custom nation could then
be added to the client's existing "full list" of nations.

In any of these solutions, though, I don't think a hard-coded limit on
the number of nations is necessary or desirable.

jason