Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Wesnoth 0.9.1

[Richard Kettering]

> On Tuesday, 12 de April de 2005 10:27, Isaac Clerencia wrote:
> * help doesn't mention 'dextrous' and the description for 'loyal' is 
> the old one

Proposals for these two:

If we mandate that dextrous is elf-only:
"Elves are known for their uncanny grace, and their great facility with 
the bow.  Some, however, are gifted with natural talent that exceeds 
their brethren.  These elves inflict an additional point of damage with 
each arrow to reflect this skill."

If we leave it open for other races to have this trait later (I vote 
that we do not, and that we come up with more unique-to-a-group 
traits):
"Some warriors are gifted with an unusual facility at using ranged 
weapons.  They inflict an additional point of damage with each 
projectile to reflect this skill."


And for loyal:
"This unit incurs no cost in upkeep, ever."  or "This unit never incurs 
upkeep costs."

I would go for a more verbose work, though:
"Most units incur an upkeep cost at the end of every turn, which is 
equal to their level.  A level-2 unit costs a player 2 gold per turn, a 
level-1 unit costs one, and a level-0 unit does not incur a per-turn 
cost.
(Paragraph break)
During campaigns, certain units may join the player's forces, of their 
own volition.  These units are marked with the "loyal" trait.  Though 
they do require payment to be recalled, they never incur any upkeep 
costs, and thus can be invaluable at times during a campaign, when 
money is short.  This trait is never given to recruited units, it is 
only given to those who join during a campaign, therefore, it may be 
wise not to dismiss them from one's recall list.  Also, this directly 
implies that this trait is never seen in multiplayer games."


-----
If people are fine with these, I would like to commit the elf-specific 
one, and the more verbose Loyal description.



I think our trait descriptions are quite lacking - right now they do a 
perfect job of directly describing what the trait does, but - so does 
the roll-over tooltip.
If we bother to have a description in the help section, I think we 
should put the extra space to a good use.  I would like to describe all 
of the salient implications of the trait, all of the subtle effects it 
can have on gameplay.  Instead of telling the person what they already 
know, let's tell them something they actually might *not* know.  
Otherwise, what's the point in even having a listing in help?

For example, for the quick trait, it might serve to mention that it can 
have a lot more effect on very slow troops like dwarves than it has on 
faster troops.  Or, for the strong trait, note that it is much more 
useful for units with multiple attacks.


To the same end, I would like to do the same thing with our currently 
non-existent terrain descriptions, if that's even possible right now.  
For example, when describing a terrain, you could note what races and 
groups of units generally do better on it in certain ways.