[PATCH] Let observer change perspective

[elexis]

Observers should be able to change the perspective, just like the function in the developers overlay. This way they can experience the game from one players perspective and see their fog of war.

This function is also required by the visual replay of games #9, since the program will be in observer mode then and we want to change the perspective when replaying games too.

[leper]

It might be nice to do so for observers, but doing so without ensuring that observers can't send messages on behalf of the player they switched to is required.

[elexis]

I think the easiest way to go is to make the dropdown list of the change-perspective tool accessible to observers too, but to make sure that all commands are disabled, unless the change-perspective option in the developers overlay is enabled.

[elexis]

Reuses the "change perspective" dropdown list. Works for the top panel (resources, population count, civ icon), trade & diplomacy window and updates the hero & tech research overlay. TODO: (1) Line-of-sight (How to handle SetCurrentDisplayedPlayer? in SimContext??) (2) How to clean GuiInterface? calls ('differentPlayer')? (3) Probably in another ticket implement TODO in menu.js L643, so that one can see researched techs in the ingame tech tree.

[elexis]

The patch should be split into multiple commits, starting with a partial, rebased and cleaned version of the pach above.

[elexis]

Sometimes one wants to compare two specific players throughout the whole game. However selecting the correct item from the dropdown becomes annoying quickly.

A hotkey with which you could switch back the perspective to the previously selected player would be nice.

[Stan]

Actually it should not switch back, it should just switch. In general games at most, you'll have to press the hotkey three times or more, which shouldn't be that much trouble.

[elexis]

Rebased. Has a bug when starting as a player and then changing perspective to observer. Still doesn't change fog-of-war.

[elexis]

This should be committed separately.

[elexis]

Changing the fog-of-war requires C++ changes, to be done afterwards. If I don't get any complaints, the commit message will be:

---

Let observers change perspective.

Disable the controls for observers unless the developer-option is enabled. Don't check for g_IsObserver, since observers should be able to use the developer overlay as well. Update all GUI elements when changing the perspective using onSimulationUpdate(). Enable observermode for defeated players.

[elexis]

In 17675:

Let observers change perspective. Refs #3168.

Disable the controls for observers (unless the developer-option is enabled).
Don't check for g_IsObserver, since observers should be able to use the developer overlay as well.
Update all GUI elements when changing the perspective using onSimulationUpdate().
Enable observermode for defeated players.

[elexis]

Thanks mimo for doing a brief review on satuday.

The ticket is not completely finished since some more things like entity selection and some GUIInterface calls also need to be updated to fully support the dropdown for observers.

[elexis]

In 17704:

Update the unit selection for observers, refs #3168.
Don't disable the deselect button.

[elexis]

Updates the fog of war if the observer changes the viewed player. This means the SimContext must be non-const since that class holds the globals checked by the components.

[elexis]

Remaining TODO for this ticket:

1. Fog of war changes (see patch above)
2. Remove the player argument from GUIInterfaceCall, since that's mostly unused now

[elexis]

In 17733:

Add color indicator to the playerselection in observermode, refs #3168.

[elexis]

In 17735:

Show fog of war in observermode, fixes #3168.

[elexis]

In 17745:

Fix compile error for gcc 4.6, refs #3168.

[elexis]

In 17758:

Improve and fix some wrong observer-checks that didn't take defeated players into account. Refs #3168, #3215.
Introduce isPlayerObserver to easily cover that case.
Move some checks and updates into selectViewPlayer and eliminate setObserverMode.
Initialize the music before changing the perspective.

[elexis]

When an observer changes perspective, the selection and health bars also need to be updated.

PickNonGaiaEntitiesOnScreen (or a called function) needs to remove entities which are not visible in the fog of war of the selected player, if the current playerID is different from the viewed player.

[elexis]

In 17786:

Show time-notifications to observers, refs #3168.

[elexis]

In 17832:

Immediately set the fog-of-war instead of waiting for session.js to load, refs #3168.

[elexis]

In 18201:

Simulation context cleanup, refs #3991, #3168.

Save the viewed player in the CGame class.
Add the const keyword back to the SimContext to help find mistakes at compiletime.

[elexis]

In 18223:

Take new observermode into account in some missing places, refs #3850, #3168.

[elexis]

In 18283:

GUIInterface / observermode cleanup as recommended by leper, fixes #3999.

Default to the viewed player in the GUIInterface to avoid passing that separately in some places, refs #3168.
Thus GetEntityState will be called for the viewed player instead of observer playerID, therefore
fixes a fog-of-war selection relict when changing the perspective, refs #3850.
Also remove some unused player arguments.

[elexis]

In 18346:

Continue to allow cheating and some other commands after winning the game. Refs #3168.