Overwritting - Tips

[Tasyen]

Recently SpiritTauren asked, if one could overwrite tips which is a really smart Idea. Before that, I never read about changing tips at all and so I checked out how tips are saved inside warcraft 3.

Here I wana share what I found out.

Warcraft Tip System

Warcraft 3 has a builtin tip-System, which can be opened during game inside menu. On default the subject of thes tips are default basic game behavoiur or for melee, both are often not very relevant for a custom map differing much from melee.

What's so great on Tips?

One can add alot of Tips and each tip can contain alot of text.
Tips also support color code and they are "easy" to create.
Example have a big Credits list: one could use quests, but quest is quite limited in text lenght. But tips can contain much text.

How to use a Tip-File

Import a txt-file using the import manager.
After importing the txt-File set its path to:

"UI\tipstrings.txt"

How to write a Tip-File

A tip file is an default txt-file. It defines amount of tips and the text of each tip.

[General]
TipCount=3
Tip1="Text of Tip1"
Tip2="Text of Tip2"
Tip3="Text of Tip3"

[General]
TipCount=5
Tip1="Text of Tip1"
Tip2="Text of Tip2"
Tip3="Text of Tip3"
Tip4="Text of Tip4"
Tip5="Text of Tip5"

Some details I tested:

• Tips support warcraft 3 color code.
• Tips do not support line seperator by pressing return/enter, if one does the tip-Text ends on that position.
  • But one can use |n.
• One can not refere Object Editor
• Tips can be large, if a tip contains much text one can scroll a tip with a scrollbar.
  • 1 Tip can contain ~1000 chars.
• the default tips are 60 in numbers, did no testing in that regard.

In my opinion the quest information beeing used often, should be replaced by overwritting Tips instead.
One can write alot of text, needs no triggers and the tips text is more centered (compare quest example with huge tip with scrollbar, inside quest example half of the textpanel is empty, cause quests also always display quest requierments).

 

[DracoL1ch]

Supports up to 1024 bytes string
Limit is defined by TipCount field, any number works, if no tip# exists you will see empty text field
Supports all the same things as normal "DisplayTimedTextToPlayer" would support, except the fact you can't use variables here
Also you can change menu naming by importing war3mapSkin.txt with line
KEY_TIPS="Your text" https://i.imgur.com/smNBgSF.png

 

[Tasyen]

For even longer stuff one could also overwrite "ui\helpstrings.txt", which contains only 1 big text. With no special format just plain text.
(disadvantage: help could contain helpful informations even for a custom map)

Supports warcraft color code
Line seperators by return/enter button

My test was Algebra - Wikipedia.
Copy all text place it in a txt file. (36 kb) (415 lines, 6k words, 36.9k chars) (rounded values)
imported as "ui\helpstrings.txt".

The whole text of the wiki page was displayed, when pressing the help button.
Although the tables didn't look that appealing.



Edit: New test blizzard.j, when pressing the help button the game froze for a short time then it displayed all text of blizzard.j

blizzard.j has 443 kb, 10k lines, 37k words beeing 432.7k chars (rounded values).

On a second opening of the help button there was no freezing.

 

[IcemanBo]

Sounds useful if one doesn't require dynamic creation. Credits could be easier maintained, like when also finally drag & drop for import manager is allowed.

The access to the content in-game might be a problem, at least if more people are like me. ^^ It would be needed excplicitly telling me to check it. Quests instead, feel a bit more in-game, with not having to go to the "meta" gameplay menu, for normal wc3 settings. But maybe others think different here.

 

[Tasyen]

Quests 1 click.
vs
Tips/Help 2 clicks.

Yeah, Quests are indeed nearer to the game.
Also the Icons are a nice way to give each quest something unique.
Buf if one uses quests as hint/info one can not simply use the same menu to have "real" quests, without confusing the user.

It is also about beeing used to something. Most maps having hints/infos inside quest. Therefore the user is used to looking into quest or ask another player, if he does not know something.
One is not used to get something useful for the current custom map inside "help"/"tips". I can see that problem yeah.

 

[SpiritTauren]

Thank you for your efforts, <3.

Quests 1 click vs Tips/Help 2 clicks

I'll write here instead of the editor help zone to keep everything in 1 place.
It is good to know that "help" section can contain rather large (by wc3 standards) texts.

From the point of view of both moder and player, what would you think of such approach:

"quests" are kept for quests, because I need randomly generated/dynamic quests (each significant word of the quest objective (like icons of quests, unit's name, health condition, etc.) is a variable pointing at a specific unique ID object or unit present in game)

the "tips" section will be used for (short) description of peculiar things, characters, factions, etc. Like a wiki. Too bad there's no way to hide or unhide particular tip indices (otherwise I'd use them as character's journal).

the "Message Log" section (in addition to its original purpose) is used for a rogue-like textual turn-based combat/action description.

Now I have doubts about the "help" menu. It can either contain description of custom game mechanics with hot-keys, like a tutorial

or

serve as the written story intro text. (Or any other large text storage)


What would be a more user-friendly option: pop-up a message "read help" to show player(s) how game mechanics work (turn-based combat, for example) upon map initialization, or add a (boolean-regulated On/Off) hint system (hints would appear each time)?
The latter option takes some resources, but allows to spare the "help" section and use it for the story text.

I don't see any other way to optimize the interface any further. Thank you for attention.

 

[Tasyen]

One can also have localized help/tipstrings. If an localized imported file-Version exists for the local users language, it is used instead of the neutral one. Through a custom imported neutral one is taken over the default localized one.

How to add a localized help/tipstring?
In Warcraft 3 since the casc Migration one Imports the file and adds a prefix to the wanted goal Import path.
_Locales\<Lcid>.w3mod\

An example for german help- and tipstrings:
_Locales\deDE.w3mod\UI\helpstrings.txt
_Locales\deDE.w3mod\UI\tipstrings.txt

French would be :
_Locales\frFR.w3mod\UI\helpstrings.txt

Following list is taken from "config.txt". it shows language and their token for Warcraft 3.

//  English (US)            = 'enUS'
//  English (UK)            = 'enGB'
//  French                  = 'frFR'
//  German                  = 'deDE'
//  Spanish                 = 'esES'
//  Italian                 = 'itIT'
//  Czech                   = 'csCZ'
//  Russian                 = 'ruRU'
//  Polish                  = 'plPL'
//  Portuguese (Brazilian)  = 'ptBR'
//  Portuguese (Portugal)   = 'ptPT'
//  Turkish                 = 'tkTK'
//  Japanese                = 'jaJA'
//  Korean                  = 'koKR'
//  Chinese (Traditional)   = 'zhTW'
//  Chinese (Simplified)    = 'zhCN'
//  Thai                    = 'thTH'