Feature: tags

[KatrinaHoffert]

This implements tags, which is a way to classify units. Upgrades and boosts can be applied to "classes" of units via these tags. These tags work over the entire techtree, so if you have an attack boost that affects units with the "warrior" tag, it will work regardless of which faction those units belong to (provided that they are a target of the boost -- ally, foe, faction, etc).

Use cases:

See the forum discussion

Syntax:

Assigning tags:

Tags are assigned with the <tags> element, which is a child of <parameters> in the unit XML. Units can have any number of tags. Tags are merely strings. Note that tags are case sensitive. The <tags> element is optional and may be empty.

Tags should be restricted to letters, numbers, and underscores. As with units, underscores will be converted to spaces and the first letter of each word capitalized.

Example:

<parameters>
    <!-- ... -->
    <tags>
        <tag value="warrior" />
        <tag value="burnable" />
    </tags>
    <!-- ... -->
</parameters>

Applying upgrades to tagged units:

Tags can be added to the upgrade XML's existing <effects> element. They can be mixed with existing <unit> elements. The upgrade will thus be applied to all units in the player's faction which have that tag.

Example:

<upgrade>
    <!-- ... -->
    <effects>
        <unit name="roundtent"/>
        <tag name="test" />
        <unit name="archer"/>
        <tag name="warrior" />
    </effects>
    <!-- ... -->
</upgrade>

Applying attack boosts to tagged units:

Tags can also be added to the target of attack boosts. The syntax is similar to that of upgrades. The target value (foe, ally, all, etc) will be obeyed.

Example:

<skill>
    <!-- ... -->
    <attack-boost>
        <allow-multiple-boosts value="false" />
        <radius value="5" />
        <target value="all" include-self="false">
            <unit-type name="archer" />
            <tag name="warrior" />
        </target>
        <!-- ... -->
    </attack-boost>
    <!-- ... -->
</skill>

Translating tags

In game, tags are displayed in the "affected unit list". The list is sorted alphabetically, with all units listed before the tags. See attached images. To differentiate tags from units in the list, all tags are preceded with the value of TagDesc (a key in the language file). Note that this key needs to be defined. For convenience, I created a pull request in megaglest-data that has the required change.

I currently have this defined as:

TagDesc=Tag:

As well, the actual tags are translatable in the same manner as unit names. This requires adding keys to the appropriate techtree language file. The format of the keys are TagName_<actual tag name>. Thus, if we have a tag warrior, we can translate it like:

TagName_warrior=Guerrier

Other

• I have tested that saving and loading games correctly apply attack boosts/upgrades to tagged units
• Also tested that the target of attack boosts (foe, ally, etc) is correctly used (particularly since its code was refactored to remove duplication)
• Tags are not matched against anything. This makes it easy to create tags on the fly, but provides no protection against typos. I do not think this is a problem.

Screenshots

[KatrinaHoffert]

Sets are used to simplify handling duplicates. Sets will ignore duplicates. This was a bigger deal back when the implementation was to simply dump all units with a matching tag into the boostUnitList. Although now it's useful to find the intercept of the set of upgrade/attack-boost tags and unit tags, which makes checking if a unit is affected much simpler (if slightly less efficient).

[titiger]

manually merged