Research of Advances and SDL UI Improvements

[Eric McDonald]

Lincoln Peters wrote:

> In that case, I'll comment out this part of the code until these tables
> are implemented.

I'll comment out the [ir]relevant documentation.

During my work on implementing unit research and side research support 
in the SDL interface, I discovered that unit research appears to be 
broken/unsupported in the kernel. Only side research appears to work. 
So, there seems to be a lot of little things broken regarding advances.

I just need to do a couple more tweaks to the SDL interface and then I 
think I'll be ready to provide a new prerelease for download. Quite a 
few bugfixes, and some improvements. Here is a sampling:
(1) Prompts for things like saving the game, choosing a build location, 
etc... now appear in the mouseover panel so that there is some indicator 
when the interface is in a "mode" and expecting an user response. (Note 
that the game does not actually save yet, but it pretends to, so that 
one can quit without loss of face (resignation).)
(2) Prefix args are accepted and apply to unit action buttons 
(construct, develop, change type, research) as is relevant 
(construction), as well as the keyboard commands. The mouseover panel 
displays the number of times a construction task will try to execute 
(from doctrine or prefix arg).
(3) If a prefix arg is not specified then the construction buttons 
indicate (via the mouseover panel) the construction run length provided 
by the doctrine (or 1, failing that).
(4) Unit research is supported, but presently useless (see above).
(5) Side research is supported.
(6) Clicking on a cell in which to construct now works correctly. 
Previously, the coords of the target cell were not being picked up.
(7) The title of the window is now of the form, "Xconq - <Game Title> - 
<Side Name> - <Turn Number>" and the taskbar caption is of the form, 
"Xconq - <Game Title>".
Etc, etc....

Hopefully, I'll make it available tomorrow or Thursday evening. After 
that, I will try to finish filling out the other possible unit action 
buttons: delay, skip, sleep, join formation, leave formation, gather 
materials, take needed materials from unit in range, resume stagnant 
build on unit in range, repair unit in range, give needed materials to 
unit in range, help build on unit in range, etc.... In survey mode, 
other possible buttons would include: cancel plan, wake, etc....

Eric