Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Improving wesnoth ingame-help

[David White]

Richard Kettering wrote:

> On Feb 20, 2005, at 9:14 AM, address@hidden wrote:
>
> > 1.) We especially disliked, that the unit-descriptions are not really
> > coherent. Some units got only a short "good at - bad-at" description 
> > while
> > others (drakes) got a more epic and rpg like descriptions. We came to 
> > the
> > conclusion that both have their place in the game. But it should 
> > somehow be
> > one "style" for the whole system. We came to the conclusion that it 
> > would
> > make sense to have the short descripions for beginners and beneath a 
> > more
> > epic one for rpg fans. The short version could be done in few words like
> > "good-at:" and "bad-at:". This system would make it more friendly for
> > beginners, because they would have such a list for every unit without 
> > having
> > to search the big bunch of tables.
>
>
> Personally, I think most of our descriptions are terrible.  I would 
> jump at the chance to make really nice, new ones, and could probably 
> grab a friend or two from my college to help.

I concur. Unit descriptions are one of the oldest features in Wesnoth, 
and the original descriptions were written by me more as an attempt to 
show that "hey we support descriptions, now someone please come and 
write proper ones!" than serious attempts at good descriptions. From 
there, we haphazardly went forward, with each new unit having a 
description written usually by the person designing the unit stats, 
rather than someone gifted in created writing.

Re-doing all the unit descriptions would be alot of work, but I think it 
could be worth it. Moreover, I think it could actually be quite fun.

I think though, that not just the unit descriptions need an overhaul, 
but all of the help content. I think what we need is someone who likes 
writing, who is in charge of content for the help system, and makes it 
their job and passion to make the help system both informative and fun.

> I would like some means of having more generally wesnoth-centric unit 
> descriptions, allowing us to add more dimension to our currently 
> rather shallow fantasy world.  They would be structured to be useable 
> in virtually any time period in wesnoth's history - if someone needed 
> to use them in a completely different world, it would be easy enough 
> to simply redefine the few ones that would have place-specific 
> references (the strange elensefarian practice of thieves dying their 
> hair blue, for one example).

IMHO, unit descriptions should consist of a creative, flavorful 
description, and then a paragraph which more formally and succinctly 
explains the unit's abilities.

> I would also like to STRONGLY REITERATE my suggestion of having 
> separate character listings in the help section as well.  All of those 
> portraits I did for HttT are full-size portraits, and it would be nice 
> to use those, it would also solve some problems from other hacks we 
> have had - it would be a solution to the reason we currently do not 
> show any portraits in help, because they would be used by all units of 
> the type, not just main characters (for example - in TEI, all white 
> mages would currently use dacyn's picture).

I concur with this.

David